I've decided to stop posting on this site for a while. But you catch all my ramblings at Kat Wilder's My So-Called Midlife
Hope you stop by ...
Friday, October 5, 2007
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Baby, don't hurt me
If you've ever been in love with someone who deceived or hurt you, it's hard not to carry that into the next relationship ... and the next ... and the next. It's like it becomes woven into the fabric of who you are.
Does it have to be that way?
Kristin stopped by this weekend to borrow a book, and we ended up sitting a few hours curled up all cozy on my couch, sipping a glass of wine and talking about — what else? — men.
She's been seeing someone for a few weeks, someone she really, really likes.
It seems as if he likes her, too — he calls her often just to see how she's doing and to ask her out. But there was something about the way she was talking ... a hesitation. I was curious.
"And ...?" I asked.
"And, well, I just don't know. Ever since Tony ..."
Ah, yes, spoken like a woman who'd been deceived.
"But he's not Tony!" I reminded her.
I could tell she wasn't hearing that though.
It's hard to put our trust in people again after we've been hurt. It seems natural that we'd want to be cautious when we first meet someone. I'm certainly not against taking it slow in the beginning; that's smart because it helps separate lust from love and puts the brakes on a desire to make a "relationship" out of someone who may be marginally fling material, let alone partner material. But I don't think it helps us to dump a former lover's — or lovers' — bad behavior onto whomever we're digging.
I mean, give the poor new guy a break!
And I don't think there's a way to get close to someone without understanding this: I may get hurt. If we carry fear of past hurts repeating themselves with new loves, we will always be on guard, and we won't be able to experience the person as our authentic self. We will only experience him through the filter of She Who Has Been Hurt/Wronged/Deceived.
Getting to know someone, sharing who and what we are — warts and all — and having someone share that with us, makes us incredibly vulnerable. But that's what intimacy does. I'm still going to choose that.
Do you open yourself up to all that a new relationship offers, or do you live in the shadow of those who have hurt you?
And if you feel that someone you're interested in is dumping former relationships' bad mojo on you, what do you do?
Does it have to be that way?
Kristin stopped by this weekend to borrow a book, and we ended up sitting a few hours curled up all cozy on my couch, sipping a glass of wine and talking about — what else? — men.
She's been seeing someone for a few weeks, someone she really, really likes.
It seems as if he likes her, too — he calls her often just to see how she's doing and to ask her out. But there was something about the way she was talking ... a hesitation. I was curious.
"And ...?" I asked.
"And, well, I just don't know. Ever since Tony ..."
Ah, yes, spoken like a woman who'd been deceived.
"But he's not Tony!" I reminded her.
I could tell she wasn't hearing that though.
It's hard to put our trust in people again after we've been hurt. It seems natural that we'd want to be cautious when we first meet someone. I'm certainly not against taking it slow in the beginning; that's smart because it helps separate lust from love and puts the brakes on a desire to make a "relationship" out of someone who may be marginally fling material, let alone partner material. But I don't think it helps us to dump a former lover's — or lovers' — bad behavior onto whomever we're digging.
I mean, give the poor new guy a break!
And I don't think there's a way to get close to someone without understanding this: I may get hurt. If we carry fear of past hurts repeating themselves with new loves, we will always be on guard, and we won't be able to experience the person as our authentic self. We will only experience him through the filter of She Who Has Been Hurt/Wronged/Deceived.
Getting to know someone, sharing who and what we are — warts and all — and having someone share that with us, makes us incredibly vulnerable. But that's what intimacy does. I'm still going to choose that.
Do you open yourself up to all that a new relationship offers, or do you live in the shadow of those who have hurt you?
And if you feel that someone you're interested in is dumping former relationships' bad mojo on you, what do you do?
Friday, August 3, 2007
When girlfriends go MIA
The Beatles can't get by without a little help from their friends, the Carpenters told us good friends are for keeps and James Taylor and Carole King both told us we've got a friend.
I wouldn't argue with any of them, but when you're going through a divorce and then start your new life as a divorced woman, your friendships get a workout even better than the one Madonna or Christina get with their personal trainers before they go on tour.
There's no way that I would have made it though my divorce without my girlfriends. Although I hid what was going on from most of them for a long, long time, they were supportive and loving once it all came bursting out of me.
They were not so kind to Rob, however. "What a creep," one said. "Bastard!" said another. And he was! But even though I know they meant well, looking back on it now — as I hear them rally around another friend whose marriage is likely to bust up — I'm wondering if that's as helpful as just being a sympathetic but nonjudgmental ear. I mean, what if we got back together? Those little dinner parties might be a little uncomfortable with Kat and The Man Formerly Known as Bastard in attendance.
There are a lot of complicated feelings if one of the "sisters" gets a divorce. We may be living in the year 2007, but sometimes the thinking is more like 1934, when "The Gay Divorcee" came out. Women, including your longtime female friends, are still afraid that single women — and that means you — are a threat to their marriage, and sometimes they are right — not because the new divorcee wants to be, but because a lot of men lose all sense of boundaries and reality.
Not too long after Rob and I split, I was hanging at the Sweetwater when I ran into a married neighbor I barely know beyond the occasional smile and "Nice day, isn't it?" chitchat. Somehow through the grapevine, he had heard of my split and at least some of the nasty little details. "Any time you want to talk," he said with a lusty pseudo-sweetness into my ear, "I'm here for you." And then he put his hand on my butt.
Right. You'll be the first one I call ...
But even if you haven't turned into a threat, some of your married girlfriends look at your newfound freedom and sexual explorations with longing and jealousy, especially if their marriage is on shaky grounds — and, sadly, I don't know many that aren't.
Somehow, you're ousted from the casual get-togethers and sit-down dinner parties unless there's someone they can fix you up with or you can find someone on your own. Five is an unhappy number for an intimate soiree.
But the true test happens in the dating world. That's when you learn a lot more about female friendships and females in general, and it isn't always pretty.
Several weeks ago, Kristin and I made plans to head over to the Buckeye for a glass of wine, maybe dinner — a little catch-up time. And, of course, flirt time.
That afternoon, I checked my cell phone voicemail.
“Hey, it’s me. Listen, about tonight ...”
I didn’t even have to hear the rest of the message. I knew exactly what was coming next.
But — glutton for punishment that I am — I listened anyway, partly miffed, partly disappointed and already working out alternative “Whom can I call?” scenarios in my head.
“Remember that guy I met last week, Paul? He called and wants to take me to Farallon tonight. I know we had plans but ... you don’t mind, do you? We can get together next week. Kisses!”
It wasn’t the first time Kristin had dumped me or another girlfriend at the last minute for a guy. And I must fess up — I’ve been guilty of that myself a few times in the past. But it’s been bothering me more and more, and not just because it sometimes has left me all alone on a Friday night.
It's why I hate call waiting — if you’re talking to me, talk to me. You can call the other person later. If it’s an emergency, she’ll get through. And if you make a plan with a girlfriend, don’t break it for a guy — and it’s always a guy.
There are exceptions to that, obviously, like if he happens upon tickets to "Avenue Q," a Giants game or a backstage pass to a Springsteen concert. I mean, I’m not the Girlfriend From Hell.
But if your girlfriend always dumps her friends whenever a guy comes calling, it sends a message: “You are only important to me when there are no other options with men available."
And if a guy calls a gal last minute and she’s always available, it sends a message to him, too: "I don’t have friends, activities, plans — or a life — without you.”
It isn't any better if she tells him that she’s made plans with a friend but she’ll "see if I can break them." If I were the guy and a woman said that to me, I’d think, “Hmm, if she’s so willing to break a date with a friend, one day she may break a date with me if a better offer comes along.”
Sean, the single dad I see from time to time, doesn’t get it.
“If a friend called and said, ‘Dude, that hottie I met last week just called and we’re going to get together,’ and we’d made plans, I’d say, ‘Go for it!’”
“But, isn’t it rude?” I protest.
“Babe,” he laughs, “he’s going to get laid.”
Hmm, it's obviously a gender thing.
Of course, just as distressing is the girlfriend who’s got a New Man, or the phase I call “O Girlfriend, Wherefore Art Thou?” You've been girlfriend junkies together and now you have to go cold turkey. You go from this intense "let's go here, let's do this" relationship and daily phone calls to ... nothing. She doesn't call to tell you which hot band's playing where and do you wanna go? Oh, she's still going — but with New Man. It's just as sad and lonely as a love breakup.
Of course, I'm ecstatic when my friends find love, or at least someone who holds the promise of it. And I know they feel the same way about me.
Maybe it’s just that, as a single woman I’ve come to realize — and truly treasure — the incredible comfort and love of girlfriends, and have tried to nurture that more than I ever did before. Husbands and boyfriends may come and go, but girlfriends hang in there for a long, long time. I mean, who else could I turn to for advice — “Definitely wear those jeans — they make your butt look great.” And who else is going to say, no matter how judgmental it may be, "Bastard!"
And so when I saw there was a voicemail on my cell phone from Kristin this week, I didn’t even have to hear the rest of her tearful message. I knew exactly what was coming next.
I called her immediately.
"Oh sweetie. I'm so sorry. Come on over and I'll make us some Cosmos ..."
I wouldn't argue with any of them, but when you're going through a divorce and then start your new life as a divorced woman, your friendships get a workout even better than the one Madonna or Christina get with their personal trainers before they go on tour.
There's no way that I would have made it though my divorce without my girlfriends. Although I hid what was going on from most of them for a long, long time, they were supportive and loving once it all came bursting out of me.
They were not so kind to Rob, however. "What a creep," one said. "Bastard!" said another. And he was! But even though I know they meant well, looking back on it now — as I hear them rally around another friend whose marriage is likely to bust up — I'm wondering if that's as helpful as just being a sympathetic but nonjudgmental ear. I mean, what if we got back together? Those little dinner parties might be a little uncomfortable with Kat and The Man Formerly Known as Bastard in attendance.
There are a lot of complicated feelings if one of the "sisters" gets a divorce. We may be living in the year 2007, but sometimes the thinking is more like 1934, when "The Gay Divorcee" came out. Women, including your longtime female friends, are still afraid that single women — and that means you — are a threat to their marriage, and sometimes they are right — not because the new divorcee wants to be, but because a lot of men lose all sense of boundaries and reality.
Not too long after Rob and I split, I was hanging at the Sweetwater when I ran into a married neighbor I barely know beyond the occasional smile and "Nice day, isn't it?" chitchat. Somehow through the grapevine, he had heard of my split and at least some of the nasty little details. "Any time you want to talk," he said with a lusty pseudo-sweetness into my ear, "I'm here for you." And then he put his hand on my butt.
Right. You'll be the first one I call ...
But even if you haven't turned into a threat, some of your married girlfriends look at your newfound freedom and sexual explorations with longing and jealousy, especially if their marriage is on shaky grounds — and, sadly, I don't know many that aren't.
Somehow, you're ousted from the casual get-togethers and sit-down dinner parties unless there's someone they can fix you up with or you can find someone on your own. Five is an unhappy number for an intimate soiree.
But the true test happens in the dating world. That's when you learn a lot more about female friendships and females in general, and it isn't always pretty.
Several weeks ago, Kristin and I made plans to head over to the Buckeye for a glass of wine, maybe dinner — a little catch-up time. And, of course, flirt time.
That afternoon, I checked my cell phone voicemail.
“Hey, it’s me. Listen, about tonight ...”
I didn’t even have to hear the rest of the message. I knew exactly what was coming next.
But — glutton for punishment that I am — I listened anyway, partly miffed, partly disappointed and already working out alternative “Whom can I call?” scenarios in my head.
“Remember that guy I met last week, Paul? He called and wants to take me to Farallon tonight. I know we had plans but ... you don’t mind, do you? We can get together next week. Kisses!”
It wasn’t the first time Kristin had dumped me or another girlfriend at the last minute for a guy. And I must fess up — I’ve been guilty of that myself a few times in the past. But it’s been bothering me more and more, and not just because it sometimes has left me all alone on a Friday night.
It's why I hate call waiting — if you’re talking to me, talk to me. You can call the other person later. If it’s an emergency, she’ll get through. And if you make a plan with a girlfriend, don’t break it for a guy — and it’s always a guy.
There are exceptions to that, obviously, like if he happens upon tickets to "Avenue Q," a Giants game or a backstage pass to a Springsteen concert. I mean, I’m not the Girlfriend From Hell.
But if your girlfriend always dumps her friends whenever a guy comes calling, it sends a message: “You are only important to me when there are no other options with men available."
And if a guy calls a gal last minute and she’s always available, it sends a message to him, too: "I don’t have friends, activities, plans — or a life — without you.”
It isn't any better if she tells him that she’s made plans with a friend but she’ll "see if I can break them." If I were the guy and a woman said that to me, I’d think, “Hmm, if she’s so willing to break a date with a friend, one day she may break a date with me if a better offer comes along.”
Sean, the single dad I see from time to time, doesn’t get it.
“If a friend called and said, ‘Dude, that hottie I met last week just called and we’re going to get together,’ and we’d made plans, I’d say, ‘Go for it!’”
“But, isn’t it rude?” I protest.
“Babe,” he laughs, “he’s going to get laid.”
Hmm, it's obviously a gender thing.
Of course, just as distressing is the girlfriend who’s got a New Man, or the phase I call “O Girlfriend, Wherefore Art Thou?” You've been girlfriend junkies together and now you have to go cold turkey. You go from this intense "let's go here, let's do this" relationship and daily phone calls to ... nothing. She doesn't call to tell you which hot band's playing where and do you wanna go? Oh, she's still going — but with New Man. It's just as sad and lonely as a love breakup.
Of course, I'm ecstatic when my friends find love, or at least someone who holds the promise of it. And I know they feel the same way about me.
Maybe it’s just that, as a single woman I’ve come to realize — and truly treasure — the incredible comfort and love of girlfriends, and have tried to nurture that more than I ever did before. Husbands and boyfriends may come and go, but girlfriends hang in there for a long, long time. I mean, who else could I turn to for advice — “Definitely wear those jeans — they make your butt look great.” And who else is going to say, no matter how judgmental it may be, "Bastard!"
And so when I saw there was a voicemail on my cell phone from Kristin this week, I didn’t even have to hear the rest of her tearful message. I knew exactly what was coming next.
I called her immediately.
"Oh sweetie. I'm so sorry. Come on over and I'll make us some Cosmos ..."
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Has anyone seen my brain?
I don’t dwell on the missteps of my past, but I do have two very big regrets.
I’m sorry that I didn’t buy that cute little $1 million two-bedroom cottage around the block when my neighbor couldn’t give it away for $300,000. And I’m so incredibly sorry that I didn’t invest in 3M, maker of Post-its, because if I knew back then that I’d have to rely on those colorful sticky papers to remember things instead of my middle-aged brain, I would be a multimillionaire.
A forgetful one, true, but still …
My mind has begun to fail me in the most unusual ways. It often takes me a half a day to remember what I ordered for dinner at D’Angelos just two days ago, but I can remember every word to Don McLean’s “American Pie.”
What exactly is that about?
Lately, I’ve been feeling a lot like Marina, the heroine of “The Madonnas of Leningrad,” whose mind is slowly losing a battle with Alzheimer’s, but she can recall every detail of the paintings in Leningrad’s famous Hermitage museum and where they hung.
I am trying to negotiate the art of dating with a midlife brain. If you’re in a monogamous relationship, it’s no problem. But if you’re trying to play the field as I am, it can often be about as surreal as a Dali painting.
Sean and I were having a playful, leisurely morning after a playful, if slightly more energetic night. It seemed a good time to have “a talk.” Nothing serious, mind you — just a clarification of a conversation we’d had a week or so before that I’d been mulling over. Something about the “women you just sleep with” and the “women you date.”
It’s important to know which category one’s in.
“Babe, remember a few days ago we were talking about …” I started, keeping it casual, nonaccusatory and inclusive. Hey, I’ve been around men long enough to know how to kill a dialog before it even starts.
I watched as his face transformed from playful to serious and back to playful. “No, I don’t because I never said that,” he said, as he ran his hand lightly down my back and then gently smacked my butt. “Must have been one of your other guys.”
Ouch! Even though we both date others and aren’t in a committed, monogamous relationship, being confronted with an in-your-face promiscuous reality still stings.
But even worse than the ouch factor — he might have been right! One of the “other guys” might have indeed said that. No matter how careful I try to be about remembering who grew up in Philly and who in Long Beach, who has three siblings and who has two, whose ex is on Prozac and whose sister is on Zoloft, I make mistakes. Often.
The midlife brain is ripe for creating misunderstanding and utter befuddlement. It forgets things. It confuses things. It loses things.
And if you don’t have a long-standing supportive, loving network — like a husband or a committed partner — you are all alone.
I remember when my mother got her midlife brain. Objects, places and people became replaced by one word: Thing.
“Honey, can you bring the thing to me?”
“Mom, what thing?”
“You know, the thing, the thing.”
Because repeating “thing” will somehow make it clearer ...
But that was back in the days when kids were polite to their elders.
Now that I’ve morphed into a version of my mother and “thing” is increasingly slipping into my vocabulary, Trent, my 14-year-old, isn’t quite as understanding.
“Trent, honey, can you please bring the thing to me?”
“Get the friggin’ ‘thing’ yourself. I’m not your slave. I don’t even know what the heck you’re talking about. Can’t you speak English?”
So much for my long-standing supportive, loving network.
When I threw myself into the online dating world after my divorce and put my profile up on a few sites at one time, I knew I couldn’t rely on my brain alone to keep Mr. Larkspur separate from Mr. Novato and Mr. San Francisco.
At first, I printed out each man’s complete profile and carried around the three or four with whom I’d be in contact that day.
That worked OK for a while — although it practically filled a briefcase — until I got an unexpected call on my lunch hour one day.
“Hey, Kat. How are you?
“Um, good. How are you, um …?”
“Bobby. Great. You know, I really liked chatting with you. I think we should get together and take that bike ride this weekend. You game?”
My mind raced as I tried to figure out, who was Bobby? The 45-year old never-married techie from Corte Madera who looked kinda cute, or the 51-year-old-still-bitter-over-his-divorce musician from Fairfax? I hadn’t brought his dossier with me to work!
That’s when I knew I needed to carry a little bit about each guy with me at all times. So, just like in grade school, I created little crib sheets with a few basic but essential facts. Name, age, single/divorced, kids/no kids, activities, cute/not so cute. I bundled them up, alphabetized, in a rubber band and plopped them in my purse … until I switched from the heavy black leather winter purse to the creamy woven summer purse and the bundle was left at home.
Clearly, I needed help.
I needed technology.
I needed Excel. Yeah, I know it’s a spreadsheet program for businesses but I had some business, too. The business of love.
So I drove to Best Buy to check out the latest gadgets that would help me. After more than an hour of comparing the pros and cons of the BlackBerry versus the Palm versus the Treo, I left with the new Amy Winehouse CD and a frazzled brain — the very reason I needed a stupid PDA!
And then I thought, this is crazy. I’m not going to spend $400 to keep my mind and my men in order. Either my brain was going to have to get with the program, or my men were going to have to get with my brain and repeat themselves. Maybe they’d see my absentmindedness as a bit endearing.
Or perhaps I needed to date much older guys who were struggling with memory issues of their own.
When I got home, exhausted, my cell phone rang.
It was Sean.
“Hey. You know, you were right.”
“I was? See! Um, about what?”
“About women and dating and sex. I remember something like that.”
“You do?” I said, feeling a tad smug.
“Yeah.”
“And …?”
“Date.”
I had no idea what he was talking about but it seemed like the right answer. So I wrote “Date!!!” in big letters on a hot pink Post-it and stuck it on that thing that’s in my bedroom.
Gee, I wonder where he’s taking me …
I’m sorry that I didn’t buy that cute little $1 million two-bedroom cottage around the block when my neighbor couldn’t give it away for $300,000. And I’m so incredibly sorry that I didn’t invest in 3M, maker of Post-its, because if I knew back then that I’d have to rely on those colorful sticky papers to remember things instead of my middle-aged brain, I would be a multimillionaire.
A forgetful one, true, but still …
My mind has begun to fail me in the most unusual ways. It often takes me a half a day to remember what I ordered for dinner at D’Angelos just two days ago, but I can remember every word to Don McLean’s “American Pie.”
What exactly is that about?
Lately, I’ve been feeling a lot like Marina, the heroine of “The Madonnas of Leningrad,” whose mind is slowly losing a battle with Alzheimer’s, but she can recall every detail of the paintings in Leningrad’s famous Hermitage museum and where they hung.
I am trying to negotiate the art of dating with a midlife brain. If you’re in a monogamous relationship, it’s no problem. But if you’re trying to play the field as I am, it can often be about as surreal as a Dali painting.
Sean and I were having a playful, leisurely morning after a playful, if slightly more energetic night. It seemed a good time to have “a talk.” Nothing serious, mind you — just a clarification of a conversation we’d had a week or so before that I’d been mulling over. Something about the “women you just sleep with” and the “women you date.”
It’s important to know which category one’s in.
“Babe, remember a few days ago we were talking about …” I started, keeping it casual, nonaccusatory and inclusive. Hey, I’ve been around men long enough to know how to kill a dialog before it even starts.
I watched as his face transformed from playful to serious and back to playful. “No, I don’t because I never said that,” he said, as he ran his hand lightly down my back and then gently smacked my butt. “Must have been one of your other guys.”
Ouch! Even though we both date others and aren’t in a committed, monogamous relationship, being confronted with an in-your-face promiscuous reality still stings.
But even worse than the ouch factor — he might have been right! One of the “other guys” might have indeed said that. No matter how careful I try to be about remembering who grew up in Philly and who in Long Beach, who has three siblings and who has two, whose ex is on Prozac and whose sister is on Zoloft, I make mistakes. Often.
The midlife brain is ripe for creating misunderstanding and utter befuddlement. It forgets things. It confuses things. It loses things.
And if you don’t have a long-standing supportive, loving network — like a husband or a committed partner — you are all alone.
I remember when my mother got her midlife brain. Objects, places and people became replaced by one word: Thing.
“Honey, can you bring the thing to me?”
“Mom, what thing?”
“You know, the thing, the thing.”
Because repeating “thing” will somehow make it clearer ...
But that was back in the days when kids were polite to their elders.
Now that I’ve morphed into a version of my mother and “thing” is increasingly slipping into my vocabulary, Trent, my 14-year-old, isn’t quite as understanding.
“Trent, honey, can you please bring the thing to me?”
“Get the friggin’ ‘thing’ yourself. I’m not your slave. I don’t even know what the heck you’re talking about. Can’t you speak English?”
So much for my long-standing supportive, loving network.
When I threw myself into the online dating world after my divorce and put my profile up on a few sites at one time, I knew I couldn’t rely on my brain alone to keep Mr. Larkspur separate from Mr. Novato and Mr. San Francisco.
At first, I printed out each man’s complete profile and carried around the three or four with whom I’d be in contact that day.
That worked OK for a while — although it practically filled a briefcase — until I got an unexpected call on my lunch hour one day.
“Hey, Kat. How are you?
“Um, good. How are you, um …?”
“Bobby. Great. You know, I really liked chatting with you. I think we should get together and take that bike ride this weekend. You game?”
My mind raced as I tried to figure out, who was Bobby? The 45-year old never-married techie from Corte Madera who looked kinda cute, or the 51-year-old-still-bitter-over-his-divorce musician from Fairfax? I hadn’t brought his dossier with me to work!
That’s when I knew I needed to carry a little bit about each guy with me at all times. So, just like in grade school, I created little crib sheets with a few basic but essential facts. Name, age, single/divorced, kids/no kids, activities, cute/not so cute. I bundled them up, alphabetized, in a rubber band and plopped them in my purse … until I switched from the heavy black leather winter purse to the creamy woven summer purse and the bundle was left at home.
Clearly, I needed help.
I needed technology.
I needed Excel. Yeah, I know it’s a spreadsheet program for businesses but I had some business, too. The business of love.
So I drove to Best Buy to check out the latest gadgets that would help me. After more than an hour of comparing the pros and cons of the BlackBerry versus the Palm versus the Treo, I left with the new Amy Winehouse CD and a frazzled brain — the very reason I needed a stupid PDA!
And then I thought, this is crazy. I’m not going to spend $400 to keep my mind and my men in order. Either my brain was going to have to get with the program, or my men were going to have to get with my brain and repeat themselves. Maybe they’d see my absentmindedness as a bit endearing.
Or perhaps I needed to date much older guys who were struggling with memory issues of their own.
When I got home, exhausted, my cell phone rang.
It was Sean.
“Hey. You know, you were right.”
“I was? See! Um, about what?”
“About women and dating and sex. I remember something like that.”
“You do?” I said, feeling a tad smug.
“Yeah.”
“And …?”
“Date.”
I had no idea what he was talking about but it seemed like the right answer. So I wrote “Date!!!” in big letters on a hot pink Post-it and stuck it on that thing that’s in my bedroom.
Gee, I wonder where he’s taking me …
Friday, July 13, 2007
You don't know Jack (or Kat)
Sometimes when you catch a glimpse of yourself as viewed through someone else's filter, you have to wonder whose reality is the real one — theirs or yours?
I was over a friend's house recently, catching up and enjoying the slide show of the pictures she took of the backpacking trip she, her husband and another couple took in Utah's Bryce Canyon National Park.
The photos were amazing, and they reminded my of my wonderful backpacking trip there some 22 years ago.
"You backpacked in Bryce?" she asked me, astonished.
"Yeah. Didn't I ever tell you that?"
"No, and I just can't even imagine you carrying around a 50-pound pack and roughing it. I mean, I've never even seen you without your stilettos and mascara on!"
I laughed along with her, but something inside me was annoyed. I was a big backpacker and camper back in my teens and 20s. How could she only know the fussy girlie side of me?
But the more i thought about it, the more I realized she'd only known me as the Mrs. to Rob, and his idea of roughing it was having to stay in a Motel 6. Rob hadn't backpacked or camped since he was a Boy Scout, and when we married, I gave up that part of me, too. He didn't ask or tell me to; I did it because he wasn't all that interested in it and, as much as I was, I was more interested in him. When Trent was born, I figured at some point we'd start going on family camping trips because boys love that stuff, right? But it never happened, and eventually my backpack, tent and sleeping bag made their way into the Goodwill donation bins.
When Rob and I divorced, I realized that I really missed that part of me. I love my weekly hikes and bike rides and occasional canoeing and kayaking trips, but I want to reclaim the more outdoorsy "me," too. And I know now that whomever I eventually partner with, if that ever happens, will want to backpack and camp with me — or will at least support my desire to do it on my own or with my friends.
Now, I know that loving and living with someone means all sorts of compromises and adjustments. Nothing wrong with that. But I know many people who have either given up something they love to do, or a part of themselves that they love, to be with their partner, but .. is that the way it has to be? Do you have to lose a part of yourself to become part of a couple?
What have you given up for love?
I was over a friend's house recently, catching up and enjoying the slide show of the pictures she took of the backpacking trip she, her husband and another couple took in Utah's Bryce Canyon National Park.
The photos were amazing, and they reminded my of my wonderful backpacking trip there some 22 years ago.
"You backpacked in Bryce?" she asked me, astonished.
"Yeah. Didn't I ever tell you that?"
"No, and I just can't even imagine you carrying around a 50-pound pack and roughing it. I mean, I've never even seen you without your stilettos and mascara on!"
I laughed along with her, but something inside me was annoyed. I was a big backpacker and camper back in my teens and 20s. How could she only know the fussy girlie side of me?
But the more i thought about it, the more I realized she'd only known me as the Mrs. to Rob, and his idea of roughing it was having to stay in a Motel 6. Rob hadn't backpacked or camped since he was a Boy Scout, and when we married, I gave up that part of me, too. He didn't ask or tell me to; I did it because he wasn't all that interested in it and, as much as I was, I was more interested in him. When Trent was born, I figured at some point we'd start going on family camping trips because boys love that stuff, right? But it never happened, and eventually my backpack, tent and sleeping bag made their way into the Goodwill donation bins.
When Rob and I divorced, I realized that I really missed that part of me. I love my weekly hikes and bike rides and occasional canoeing and kayaking trips, but I want to reclaim the more outdoorsy "me," too. And I know now that whomever I eventually partner with, if that ever happens, will want to backpack and camp with me — or will at least support my desire to do it on my own or with my friends.
Now, I know that loving and living with someone means all sorts of compromises and adjustments. Nothing wrong with that. But I know many people who have either given up something they love to do, or a part of themselves that they love, to be with their partner, but .. is that the way it has to be? Do you have to lose a part of yourself to become part of a couple?
What have you given up for love?
Sunday, July 8, 2007
When parting's not so sweet
I’ve had enough romantic breakups to know that they’re never really easy or all that kind, even if at some point you can get past things and become “friends.”
But a few breakups have happened lately in such an unsettling way — and I don’t mean Britney’s famous text message to her then-hubby, K-Fed — that I’m wondering if we’re on to a new trend.
The “I’m Going to Spend a Weekend Romancing You and Then I’m Going to Dump You” breakup.
It happened first to Jennifer. She met Carl, a fortysomething dad who lives in Healdsburg. A few of us headed up to Wine Country for a day of wine-tasting, and there he was — all dimples and smiles and crystal blue eyes that clearly were focused on Jennifer and Jennifer only.
We all chatted until it was time to head back on the highway, and he gave her his e-mail address. “Write me,” he told her.
She didn’t waste too much time before e-mailing him, and they had a few flirty exchanges and phone calls before she invited him to spend the weekend.
It was even more romantic than she had hoped — they had so much in common — and she started to get gushy. “I think I could fall in love with him,” she told me, all starry-eyed.
“You barely know him,” I counseled her, like the mom that I am. “Take it slowly, so you don’t confuse lust with love.”
When she had to call on a client not too far from Healdsburg, she told him she’s be in his ’hood, and he asked her to spend the weekend with him. It was just as magical as the first time.
Until it was time for her to leave.
Carl suddenly got quiet.
“What’s up?” Jennifer asked, as her glowy mood changed to one of confusion.
“Well, I don’t know how to tell you this but, I don’t think we’re right for each other,” Carl said.
“When did you feel like that?” Jennifer said, holding back the tears.
“I’ve felt like that for a while now.”
“But you still invited me to come here?”
Carl was silent. Jennifer left, hurt and questioning how someone could ask a woman to spend the weekend with him when he knew he wasn’t into her. Well, unless it was just about the sex.
Anna had a similar experience, but she and John had been seeing each other for a few months. He took his profile off the online dating site; she did, too. He was the one calling her, just to chat and to make plans to see each other.
Here is a good man, Anna told us — kind, courteou s, interesting, smart, sexy as could be and honest.
So she was stunned and hurt when he called her Monday from a Phoenix business trip — after a wonderful weekend together during which he cooked her a fabulous meal and they never left his bed for very long — to tell her that he was breaking it off.
“But why?” she asked.
“I’ve been thinking about it for the last week, and I don’t think we’re a good match.”
“The last week? Then what was this weekend about?”
Anna was fuming. She felt so betrayed. And rightfully so.
She and Jennifer saw their weekends as an indication that things were deepening in their relationships, while the men were either getting in one last booty call before dumping them or were trying to sort out their feelings.
I’ve always thought that there isn’t a good way to breakup, but I suppose there can be a better way — certainly better than being hurtful, deceptive or downright cruel.
One friend told me that when he and a former lover split, they approached it this way: they realized they didn’t have the same ideas of what their future looked like, and even though they weren’t heading in the same direction, that did not negate the genuine love and friendship that they had together. That’s not to say that it still wasn’t a painful breakup — it was — just that it’s easier to absorb when you acknowledge the truth. Sometimes we try so hard to make a relationship be what we want it to be, that we’re not really seeing it for what it is.
I can’t say that’s what happened a few years ago when I spent a weekend with Olivier Martinez — well, it wasn’t really Olivier, just Jean Claude, a look-alike French businessman in town for the week — but we definitely had different expectations.
We met at the Clift, where Mia, Jennifer and I were enjoying post-theater martinis.
He entered the bar, my pulse raced and my jaw dropped.
“Oh my!” I gushed to them. “I think Olivier Martinez just walked in!”
And then, from across the room ... he smiled at me. I smiled back, and the next thing I knew, he was standing next to me.
Jean Claude and I spent the rest of the night chatting. I was fascinated by his tales of what single life is like in Paris. I was eager to show him my city, so we made plans to get together Friday.
Friday spilled into Saturday, and we had a great time exploring the city, strolling SFMOMA, eating, talking, laughing. He was charming, smart, sweet and just so darn cute. But ... I wasn’t sexually attracted to him, try as I might, and I found myself just going through the motions. I think we was too sweet.
But, hey, he lives in Paris, I live here — it’s just a fling, I thought.
We kept in touch by e-mail, and when he came back to San Francisco a few months later, we met for lunch. But when he suggested we get together that night, I had to tell him the truth — we weren’t clicking sexually, so let’s just be friends.
Basically, I dumped him.
I’m not saying that the men who wooed Anna and Jennifer weren’t sexually attracted to them. I don’t know. But maybe they needed a few days “living” together before they could really figure out what was — or wasn’t — clicking for them.
That’s OK, but I still think there must have been a better way to handle sharing that with Anna and Jennifer.
Way before her romantic weekend fiasco, Jennifer had asked me why I never spend an entire weekend with a man.
As much as I like the idea of a romantic two-day rendezvous, I haven’t had one since Jean Claude. I’m too busy, I convince myself. I’ve got to catch up on all those things that I don’t get to do working full time — bills, housecleaning, yard work, errands — and my mom duties, too.
But perhaps the real reason is something much more subconscious — I just don’t want to get dumped!
But a few breakups have happened lately in such an unsettling way — and I don’t mean Britney’s famous text message to her then-hubby, K-Fed — that I’m wondering if we’re on to a new trend.
The “I’m Going to Spend a Weekend Romancing You and Then I’m Going to Dump You” breakup.
It happened first to Jennifer. She met Carl, a fortysomething dad who lives in Healdsburg. A few of us headed up to Wine Country for a day of wine-tasting, and there he was — all dimples and smiles and crystal blue eyes that clearly were focused on Jennifer and Jennifer only.
We all chatted until it was time to head back on the highway, and he gave her his e-mail address. “Write me,” he told her.
She didn’t waste too much time before e-mailing him, and they had a few flirty exchanges and phone calls before she invited him to spend the weekend.
It was even more romantic than she had hoped — they had so much in common — and she started to get gushy. “I think I could fall in love with him,” she told me, all starry-eyed.
“You barely know him,” I counseled her, like the mom that I am. “Take it slowly, so you don’t confuse lust with love.”
When she had to call on a client not too far from Healdsburg, she told him she’s be in his ’hood, and he asked her to spend the weekend with him. It was just as magical as the first time.
Until it was time for her to leave.
Carl suddenly got quiet.
“What’s up?” Jennifer asked, as her glowy mood changed to one of confusion.
“Well, I don’t know how to tell you this but, I don’t think we’re right for each other,” Carl said.
“When did you feel like that?” Jennifer said, holding back the tears.
“I’ve felt like that for a while now.”
“But you still invited me to come here?”
Carl was silent. Jennifer left, hurt and questioning how someone could ask a woman to spend the weekend with him when he knew he wasn’t into her. Well, unless it was just about the sex.
Anna had a similar experience, but she and John had been seeing each other for a few months. He took his profile off the online dating site; she did, too. He was the one calling her, just to chat and to make plans to see each other.
Here is a good man, Anna told us — kind, courteou s, interesting, smart, sexy as could be and honest.
So she was stunned and hurt when he called her Monday from a Phoenix business trip — after a wonderful weekend together during which he cooked her a fabulous meal and they never left his bed for very long — to tell her that he was breaking it off.
“But why?” she asked.
“I’ve been thinking about it for the last week, and I don’t think we’re a good match.”
“The last week? Then what was this weekend about?”
Anna was fuming. She felt so betrayed. And rightfully so.
She and Jennifer saw their weekends as an indication that things were deepening in their relationships, while the men were either getting in one last booty call before dumping them or were trying to sort out their feelings.
I’ve always thought that there isn’t a good way to breakup, but I suppose there can be a better way — certainly better than being hurtful, deceptive or downright cruel.
One friend told me that when he and a former lover split, they approached it this way: they realized they didn’t have the same ideas of what their future looked like, and even though they weren’t heading in the same direction, that did not negate the genuine love and friendship that they had together. That’s not to say that it still wasn’t a painful breakup — it was — just that it’s easier to absorb when you acknowledge the truth. Sometimes we try so hard to make a relationship be what we want it to be, that we’re not really seeing it for what it is.
I can’t say that’s what happened a few years ago when I spent a weekend with Olivier Martinez — well, it wasn’t really Olivier, just Jean Claude, a look-alike French businessman in town for the week — but we definitely had different expectations.
We met at the Clift, where Mia, Jennifer and I were enjoying post-theater martinis.
He entered the bar, my pulse raced and my jaw dropped.
“Oh my!” I gushed to them. “I think Olivier Martinez just walked in!”
And then, from across the room ... he smiled at me. I smiled back, and the next thing I knew, he was standing next to me.
Jean Claude and I spent the rest of the night chatting. I was fascinated by his tales of what single life is like in Paris. I was eager to show him my city, so we made plans to get together Friday.
Friday spilled into Saturday, and we had a great time exploring the city, strolling SFMOMA, eating, talking, laughing. He was charming, smart, sweet and just so darn cute. But ... I wasn’t sexually attracted to him, try as I might, and I found myself just going through the motions. I think we was too sweet.
But, hey, he lives in Paris, I live here — it’s just a fling, I thought.
We kept in touch by e-mail, and when he came back to San Francisco a few months later, we met for lunch. But when he suggested we get together that night, I had to tell him the truth — we weren’t clicking sexually, so let’s just be friends.
Basically, I dumped him.
I’m not saying that the men who wooed Anna and Jennifer weren’t sexually attracted to them. I don’t know. But maybe they needed a few days “living” together before they could really figure out what was — or wasn’t — clicking for them.
That’s OK, but I still think there must have been a better way to handle sharing that with Anna and Jennifer.
Way before her romantic weekend fiasco, Jennifer had asked me why I never spend an entire weekend with a man.
As much as I like the idea of a romantic two-day rendezvous, I haven’t had one since Jean Claude. I’m too busy, I convince myself. I’ve got to catch up on all those things that I don’t get to do working full time — bills, housecleaning, yard work, errands — and my mom duties, too.
But perhaps the real reason is something much more subconscious — I just don’t want to get dumped!
Saturday, June 23, 2007
A walk on the wild side
Sometimes I think living in Marin is a lot like the opening scene of David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet” — all blue skies, waving firemen leading parades and sunny smiles on the surface, but hundreds of Dennis Hoppers quietly sniffing laughing gas (or whatever that was) and indulging in all sorts of fetishes and debauchery in private.
I wasn’t really aware of it as a sheltered Marin soccer/Little League mom, but cast out into the odd World o’ Singles as a fortysomething divorcee after 15 years of marriage, I, like an amateur anthropologist, have uncovered a Marin I didn’t fully appreciate.
I know, of course, that years ago, a few hotels around the county were used for filming porn. I’m aware of the famous people here who offer no-holds-barred tantric weekends. And I’m pretty sure I’ve seen a few famous porn stars walk around Lytton Square (although why I can remember them by their faces is a mystery to me).
And in indulging in my semi-obsession, Craigslist, I’ve discovered there’s an entire world of activities and interests a few miles from my home that I would never have been privy to unless the online community existed. Women looking for men to have a baby with, people seeking others to listen to an L.A. radio talk show twice a month, cuddle parties (you know, pay $30 and spend an afternoon of “nurturing touch and playful communication in a supportive, non-sexual environment”) and a “Naked in Public” workshop that will help you set up a podcast or blog and “keep some privacy while getting naked on the Web.”
Sometimes, it makes me feel, well, rather dull.
But I got fully thrust into Marin’s sexual underworld by accident ... or perhaps karma.
I look at my midlife singleness as a time to reinvent myself, a time to get to know myself better, having lost so much of who I am in my marriage. I also see this as a time to push myself outside my comfort zone when it comes to dating and relationships. I don’t want to feel like Babs in “Chicken Run”: “All me life flashed before me eyes. It was really borin’.”
Sometimes the universe helps you along by having someone enter your life who guides you through that, someone to challenge your ideas of who and what you are.
Nina was that person for me.
I met her on the trails I often head to for my walks with my dog. We started chatting one day and discovered we had a few things in common: her son and mine are about the same age, we’re both divorced and we both love the same books.
But mostly, we like talking about sex.
One winter day as we walked the muddy trail and shared our latest escapades, Nina turned to me and said, “I want you to meet my dear friends, Diana and Clay. I’ve been telling them all about you. They want to know you.”
“Sure. What are they like?”
“Oh, you’ll love them. They’re super-creative, intellectual, out-there people. They throw these amazing, lavish parties at their mansion. You’ll come with me! It’ll be wonderful.”
A party? I’m not one to turn down a good party and a chance to meet creative people. Nina, a former actress, was edgy, with an uncertain past but one that most definitely involved flirtations — or more — with women, and she had interesting friends. I was intrigued.
“I can be your date,” I teased.
As it turned out, Diana and Clay were planning a party soon.
“So, what should I wear?” I asked Nina, imaging I might meet a nice guy there.
“Oh, anything ... or nothing!” she laughed. “Maybe something latex or vinyl. Sexy, you know.”
Latex or vinyl?
I began to sweat, and it had nothing to do with my perimenopausal hot flashes, either.
“Well, I just happen to have the most perfect vinyl outfit!” I joked, hoping my voice didn’t betray me. “So, um, just what kind of party is it anyway? Birthday? Cocktail? Costume?”
“No, silly,” she said, as she flashed me a sly smile. “It’s a sex party. I’ll call you later, and we can plan.”
And then she kissed me — on the lips! It was nothing like that Madonna-Britney kiss; just a quick peck. All of a sudden, Jill Sobule’s “I Kissed a Girl” filled my head — “I kissed a girl, her lips were sweet. She was just like kissing me ...”
“Oh, of course. Sure,” I said, flustered, but I knew that I wasn’t sounding all that convincing.
I’d heard of sex parties, of course, and know people who go to them — aren’t they always in far-flung places like Vacaville or Fremont? — and places like the Power Exchange in San Francisco. But as much as I was open to exploring new ways of thinking and living, I wasn’t so sure this was the direction I was headed.
But I went shopping for an outfit anyway; to Pleasures of the Heart first, figuring if I couldn’t find something there, I’d hit V.I.P. on the way home. But as I looked through the red-vinyl bustiers and black latex hot pants, I had an epiphany of sorts — I just couldn’t do it.
I couldn’t help conjuring up visions of that scene in “Eyes Wide Shut” with a lot of people in various states of dress and undress standing around doing whatever it is that one does at a sex party. I imagined running into the people I see around my hometown — the young barista I flirt with, the waiter I think is hot, the woman who does my dry cleaning, my stuffy mortgage broker, the arrogant attorney I frequently see on the express bus or, perhaps worst of all, one of Trent’s teachers — in that room, doing things that I’m not sure I’d want to see them doing (except, of course, the cute barista and the hottie waiter).
For all my so-called willingness to go to the edge of experimentation, for all Nina’s and my suggestive banter, I was still pretty much more of a Marin soccer mom than a Marin dominatrix.
I needed an out, and just as the universe delivered Nina to me, it delivered a convenient excuse — Rob, my former hubby, asked me if I could watch Trent that night so he could go out of town for business.
I’ve never wanted to watch The Kid more than I did that night, even though he insisted we spend the evening in front of the tube watching yet another blood-and-guts action flick on DVD.
“Help me find ‘Excalibur,’ OK?” Trent pleaded as we searched the titles up and down the aisles at Video Droid.
And there was “Excalibur” — right next to “Eyes Wide Shut.”
I couldn’t help but smirk.
“What?” Trent asked me, puzzled, as he reached for the DVD case.
“Oh, nothing. You wouldn’t understand.”
“Mom, you’re sooooo out there.”
Actually, not that out there ...
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Married to Mr. Mom
I know two wonderful men who would like to settle down. One would like to start a family, the other would like to give his teenager a sibling or two.
They are both smart, genuine, funny, sexy, engaging, fit, spiritual, educated, talented, interesting and health conscious. They also happen to be hot. Women notice them, flirt with them, come on to them wherever they go. One’s 30, the other 45. They would make beautiful babies.
So, what’s the problem? Well, there really isn’t a problem, unless, of course, there is for you. See, both of them are poor by Marin County (and Bay Area) standards, and both want to be Mr. Moms.
I need to clarify poor. Poor around these parts is not really poor, after all. They’re both employed and make a decent living, enough to afford (rented) housing, a car, necessities, fun and travel. It’s just that neither of them makes enough to buy the American Dream: the 2,500-plus-square-foot house with a Lexus and Porsche SUV parked outside, kids on the Squaw ski team, summers in Paris, winters in Aspen, spring break in Costa Rica and dinners at Boulevard and the French Laundry (if all that’s your version of a dream and not some bourgeois nightmare).
And neither has the desire to have that or to hustle to make an income to support that (not that they’re against making money. It’s just not the be all and end all).
But mostly they imagine the joys of staying home — the way some 159,000 men already do, according to the U.S. census — cleaning, watching after the kids and then cooking a fabulous meal to share with their sweetie when she comes home after a day at the office (or in the field, or at the lab, or in the courtroom). A way of living that I and many of my girlfriends knew.
Being a mom and housewife is not something I dreamed about. I always imagined I would get married and eventually have kids. Having grown up in a feminist world, though, I knew I was going to have a career and was pretty focused on making that happen.
How much money a man made never seemed to enter into my love equation, much to my mother’s chagrin (“Honey,” she still counsels me during our weekly phone chats, “it’s just as easy to fall in love with a wealthy man as it is with a poor man.”)
I was in my 20s when I met Rob, and when we talked about marrying and having a family, we made a decision that, hardship or not — and, living in Mill Valley, it often was one — one of us should be home with our son. Since Rob made more than I did, we let that be the deciding factor. But I always had a part-time job in addition to my full-time one: Mothering. I also did all the cooking, cleaning, shopping, errands, homework, overseeing the day-to-day maintenance as well as volunteering at Trent’s schools. My big luxury was a weekly two-hour hike with my girlfriends that sometimes spilled over into a coffee date, too. I was not a classic Marin Matron, spending my days lunching with the ladies, organizing galas and shopping the boutiques. I was more a 1950s-like homemaker. That seemed to work fine during Trent’s childhood, but when all hell broke loose in the marriage, an ugly bitterness appeared seemingly out of nowhere.
“Why don’t you go off to work every day, and I can stay home with Trent and take two-hour hikes?” Rob said angrily, pointing his finger at me as we sat in couples counseling.
I was stunned. I started to hyperventilate. Where in the world did this come from? Not only would we be poorer if I were the breadwinner, but … I didn’t want to do it! And it wasn’t just that I would miss my so-called freedom — I actually thought that all his lunch hours, business trips and even commute time offered him more flexibility, more alone time, than I had. Staying at home can be a very isolated world at times. Plus if I wanted a break, I had to either take it during Trent’s limited school hours or pay for a baby sitter, a luxury we couldn’t afford.
No, the main reason I feared him being Mr. Mom is that I didn’t trust that he would take care of things. (Translation: Take care of things the way I did.)
I know a few women who are the breadwinners in their families. Although I acknowledge that it wasn’t a life I would choose, I admire them for their choices. It’s been only recently that I learned that so many of them — now divorced — were biding their time, getting angrier and angrier that they were cranking out the paycheck while their hubbies were off having “all the fun.”
Missed piano recitals, school plays, Little League games, field trips. Working moms — and dads — don’t often have the flexibility to take time off during the day to take part in many activities in their children’s lives. Rob never seemed to be ruffled by that — I think he might have even been thankful — but for the full-time working moms I know, it was a different story.
Beyond that, the men never seemed to handle the kids and the house the way the women wanted them to, causing arguments that inevitably were never resolved.
“Of course you’re going to get resentful after a while,” says Anna, a CFO who brought the big bucks home while her former husband watched their kids — or, as she says, watched TV with the kids.
“But then couldn’t all men feel the same way about their stay-at-home wives, who have the choice of working or not? Wouldn’t it work both ways?” I ask, squirming, thinking back to the way Rob looked in the counseling office. He looked ... resentful.
Doesn’t a man have the right to stay home, too, to raise his kids? Wouldn’t that benefit his family — and society?
Even if a man doesn’t want to stay at home, his income can be an issue with women. Gary, a successful business owner I know, says his former wife as well as almost all the women he’s had relationships with since, left him for men who made more money than he does. It doesn’t make me feel too good about my gender, but I know there are many women who look at a man’s worth — and the lifestyle it can get them — and little beyond that. And there’s a new generation of women who look at their harried supermoms who did it all — career, marriage, motherhood — and say, “Screw that. I want to be married and stay home.” And that will take a hubby with bucks, especially in Marin.
Which leads me back to my “poor” Mr. Mom wannabes. For the 45-year-old who already has a child, it’s just a “that’s life” sadness that he may never have another child or find a woman who’d delight in coming home from work to him, his luminous smile and an immaculate house (that she would have to buy, of course). For the 30-year-old, however, the sadness is much greater.
How nice if couples could decide what their partnership will look like with enough honesty that resentments didn’t factor in, and neither was tweaked by who made the money and who stayed home. And how nice if, when they shared that decision with others, they could be greeted with, “Congratulations. What a great choice.”
They are both smart, genuine, funny, sexy, engaging, fit, spiritual, educated, talented, interesting and health conscious. They also happen to be hot. Women notice them, flirt with them, come on to them wherever they go. One’s 30, the other 45. They would make beautiful babies.
So, what’s the problem? Well, there really isn’t a problem, unless, of course, there is for you. See, both of them are poor by Marin County (and Bay Area) standards, and both want to be Mr. Moms.
I need to clarify poor. Poor around these parts is not really poor, after all. They’re both employed and make a decent living, enough to afford (rented) housing, a car, necessities, fun and travel. It’s just that neither of them makes enough to buy the American Dream: the 2,500-plus-square-foot house with a Lexus and Porsche SUV parked outside, kids on the Squaw ski team, summers in Paris, winters in Aspen, spring break in Costa Rica and dinners at Boulevard and the French Laundry (if all that’s your version of a dream and not some bourgeois nightmare).
And neither has the desire to have that or to hustle to make an income to support that (not that they’re against making money. It’s just not the be all and end all).
But mostly they imagine the joys of staying home — the way some 159,000 men already do, according to the U.S. census — cleaning, watching after the kids and then cooking a fabulous meal to share with their sweetie when she comes home after a day at the office (or in the field, or at the lab, or in the courtroom). A way of living that I and many of my girlfriends knew.
Being a mom and housewife is not something I dreamed about. I always imagined I would get married and eventually have kids. Having grown up in a feminist world, though, I knew I was going to have a career and was pretty focused on making that happen.
How much money a man made never seemed to enter into my love equation, much to my mother’s chagrin (“Honey,” she still counsels me during our weekly phone chats, “it’s just as easy to fall in love with a wealthy man as it is with a poor man.”)
I was in my 20s when I met Rob, and when we talked about marrying and having a family, we made a decision that, hardship or not — and, living in Mill Valley, it often was one — one of us should be home with our son. Since Rob made more than I did, we let that be the deciding factor. But I always had a part-time job in addition to my full-time one: Mothering. I also did all the cooking, cleaning, shopping, errands, homework, overseeing the day-to-day maintenance as well as volunteering at Trent’s schools. My big luxury was a weekly two-hour hike with my girlfriends that sometimes spilled over into a coffee date, too. I was not a classic Marin Matron, spending my days lunching with the ladies, organizing galas and shopping the boutiques. I was more a 1950s-like homemaker. That seemed to work fine during Trent’s childhood, but when all hell broke loose in the marriage, an ugly bitterness appeared seemingly out of nowhere.
“Why don’t you go off to work every day, and I can stay home with Trent and take two-hour hikes?” Rob said angrily, pointing his finger at me as we sat in couples counseling.
I was stunned. I started to hyperventilate. Where in the world did this come from? Not only would we be poorer if I were the breadwinner, but … I didn’t want to do it! And it wasn’t just that I would miss my so-called freedom — I actually thought that all his lunch hours, business trips and even commute time offered him more flexibility, more alone time, than I had. Staying at home can be a very isolated world at times. Plus if I wanted a break, I had to either take it during Trent’s limited school hours or pay for a baby sitter, a luxury we couldn’t afford.
No, the main reason I feared him being Mr. Mom is that I didn’t trust that he would take care of things. (Translation: Take care of things the way I did.)
I know a few women who are the breadwinners in their families. Although I acknowledge that it wasn’t a life I would choose, I admire them for their choices. It’s been only recently that I learned that so many of them — now divorced — were biding their time, getting angrier and angrier that they were cranking out the paycheck while their hubbies were off having “all the fun.”
Missed piano recitals, school plays, Little League games, field trips. Working moms — and dads — don’t often have the flexibility to take time off during the day to take part in many activities in their children’s lives. Rob never seemed to be ruffled by that — I think he might have even been thankful — but for the full-time working moms I know, it was a different story.
Beyond that, the men never seemed to handle the kids and the house the way the women wanted them to, causing arguments that inevitably were never resolved.
“Of course you’re going to get resentful after a while,” says Anna, a CFO who brought the big bucks home while her former husband watched their kids — or, as she says, watched TV with the kids.
“But then couldn’t all men feel the same way about their stay-at-home wives, who have the choice of working or not? Wouldn’t it work both ways?” I ask, squirming, thinking back to the way Rob looked in the counseling office. He looked ... resentful.
Doesn’t a man have the right to stay home, too, to raise his kids? Wouldn’t that benefit his family — and society?
Even if a man doesn’t want to stay at home, his income can be an issue with women. Gary, a successful business owner I know, says his former wife as well as almost all the women he’s had relationships with since, left him for men who made more money than he does. It doesn’t make me feel too good about my gender, but I know there are many women who look at a man’s worth — and the lifestyle it can get them — and little beyond that. And there’s a new generation of women who look at their harried supermoms who did it all — career, marriage, motherhood — and say, “Screw that. I want to be married and stay home.” And that will take a hubby with bucks, especially in Marin.
Which leads me back to my “poor” Mr. Mom wannabes. For the 45-year-old who already has a child, it’s just a “that’s life” sadness that he may never have another child or find a woman who’d delight in coming home from work to him, his luminous smile and an immaculate house (that she would have to buy, of course). For the 30-year-old, however, the sadness is much greater.
How nice if couples could decide what their partnership will look like with enough honesty that resentments didn’t factor in, and neither was tweaked by who made the money and who stayed home. And how nice if, when they shared that decision with others, they could be greeted with, “Congratulations. What a great choice.”
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
The cruelest cut
It was one of those perfect sensuous moments. Fresh flowers were scattered throughout the room, lightly fragranced candles cast an intimate glow, smooth French jazz played softly in the background. Loving hands were massaging me, anointing me with an intoxicating organic lavender-rosemary essence, fingers pressing with perfect pressure on all the right spots.
The vibe was right for sharing, and so I did — my fears, my most intimate secrets, my dreams, all heard and validated with kindness, not judgment. I felt safe enough to ask for what I really wanted, and I actually got it.
When I finally was ready to go home, I not only felt relaxed and revived, but I looked so much better, too. It does that to you, you know.
So is it any wonder, then, why I’m so in love ...
... with my hair stylist?
I’m not sure if men have the same experience with their stylists, but for women, a hair stylist is more than someone who just cuts and colors your hair. She’s your confidante, your therapist, your BBF (that’s best best friend, for those of you who don’t have kids).
And I’ve come to realize something as more of my friends have gotten divorced — no woman in her right mind would dump her hair stylist as quickly as she might dump her lover or hubby. And we always seem to be much more forgiving of her mistakes than a guy’s. We’ll stay with her even when she occasionally lets us down.
I can’t say we always do the same with our men.
Some of my friends have had the same hair stylist for more than 13 years — longer than their marriages!
I’ve been going to mine for about eight years. Not only does Rosie know all my split ends and the way my hair curls in the most unfortunate place; she also knows all the dirty little details of my marriage bust-up, who I’m sleeping with now and my single-mother woes. And I get some interesting dish from her as well — who’s doing her personal trainer, who got a nip and tuck, who’s about to kick the old man out.
That’s why it’s so painful to break up with one — almost as painful as a romantic split, perhaps even worse.
Sadly, I had to do that once. Thirteen years later, it still feels awkward whenever I pass by the salon.
I’d been going to Jade for about four years. She was a tall, free-spirited Daryl Hannah-ish blonde. Her own hair was atrocious — a cross between the lead singer of A Flock of Seagulls and Madonna in her “Like a Virgin” days — but she was quirky, sassy and funny. I was a new mom and she was single, and I loved listening to all her dating adventures.
But whenever I looked at my hair, it never looked quite right. Often it was so uneven I had to tilt my head to feel balanced. At first, I lumped it with all the other changes I’d gone through as a new mom — my feet got bigger, my breasts got smaller and my gums were sensitive. But then I finally figured it out — she couldn’t cut hair for crap. In my heart, I knew we were done, but how could I tell her?
At first, I strung out the cuts — from four weeks to five to six, until I was seeing her about every three months, hitting the $12 places in between. I started making excuses; money was “tight,” I was just so busy with the baby, the baby-sitter flaked on me and so on until I just stopped going.
Then one day as I passed by, baby in stroller on our daily walk, Jade saw me through the salon window and came running out. “Hey, I never see you anymore! When are you coming in?”
“Oh, that’s so funny!” I said, nervously. “I was just thinking I was due for a cut. I have to look in my date book. I’ll call you.”
I couldn’t believe it, but I was using a classic male I’m-just-not-that-into-you line — on my hair stylist! Of course I never did call, and from that day on, I knew I could never walk on the north side of the street after 10 a.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays.
I had dumped her, and I had taken the easy way out. I disappeared … just like a few men I have since dated.
But at some point you realize that any relationship that’s going to go past the surface level needs two things: trust and forgiveness. I feel bad that Jade had to be the fall gal in that, and so when I started seeing Rosie, I decided she’d be the one I’d commit to.
It hasn’t always been easy. Rosie has made some mistakes. Like the time I asked her to add a few reddish streaks in my hair, and I ended up with big, wide swaths of reds and blonds. I looked like something you’d see on a Jean Paul Gautier runway.
“Um, I’m not so sure I like this,” I told her, in as loving a way as I could.
“You look great. Edgy. Try it.”
So I walked out into the world on faith alone. Oddly enough, I did get a few compliments, but I still didn’t feel like zebra-head was the look I was aiming for.
“Rosie, I can’t do this anymore,” I pleaded on the phone during my lunch hour.
“OK, come in and I’ll fix you.”
And like all relationships, the biggest lessons are learned the hard way. About a year ago, in between my foilings, I spritzed on a little Sun In as I worked under the summer sun in my garden. But instead of the “natural blond highlights” I’d hoped for, I looked brassy, and my hair was drier than Mount Tam in the fall.
The next time I showed up for a trim, Rosie eyed my hair suspiciously.
“I sure hope your love life is doing better than your hair,” she said. “It’s a mess.”
I kept my face in my Cosmo, pretending to be engrossed with “Ten Sex Tips Every Woman Must Know That Will Drive Him Wild.”
“Kat, did you do something to your hair?”
“Um, I don’t think so,” I mumbled.
“You must have! You look horrible. I’m going to glam you up.”
“OK, OK, I confess. I had an incident with Sun In.”
“Kat, you know things are really bad when you lie to your stylist!”
She was so right. I am learning. Be honest with the people who hold your beauty in their hands. And if you’re going to dump someone — be it a stylist or a lover — don’t just disappear.
The vibe was right for sharing, and so I did — my fears, my most intimate secrets, my dreams, all heard and validated with kindness, not judgment. I felt safe enough to ask for what I really wanted, and I actually got it.
When I finally was ready to go home, I not only felt relaxed and revived, but I looked so much better, too. It does that to you, you know.
So is it any wonder, then, why I’m so in love ...
... with my hair stylist?
I’m not sure if men have the same experience with their stylists, but for women, a hair stylist is more than someone who just cuts and colors your hair. She’s your confidante, your therapist, your BBF (that’s best best friend, for those of you who don’t have kids).
And I’ve come to realize something as more of my friends have gotten divorced — no woman in her right mind would dump her hair stylist as quickly as she might dump her lover or hubby. And we always seem to be much more forgiving of her mistakes than a guy’s. We’ll stay with her even when she occasionally lets us down.
I can’t say we always do the same with our men.
Some of my friends have had the same hair stylist for more than 13 years — longer than their marriages!
I’ve been going to mine for about eight years. Not only does Rosie know all my split ends and the way my hair curls in the most unfortunate place; she also knows all the dirty little details of my marriage bust-up, who I’m sleeping with now and my single-mother woes. And I get some interesting dish from her as well — who’s doing her personal trainer, who got a nip and tuck, who’s about to kick the old man out.
That’s why it’s so painful to break up with one — almost as painful as a romantic split, perhaps even worse.
Sadly, I had to do that once. Thirteen years later, it still feels awkward whenever I pass by the salon.
I’d been going to Jade for about four years. She was a tall, free-spirited Daryl Hannah-ish blonde. Her own hair was atrocious — a cross between the lead singer of A Flock of Seagulls and Madonna in her “Like a Virgin” days — but she was quirky, sassy and funny. I was a new mom and she was single, and I loved listening to all her dating adventures.
But whenever I looked at my hair, it never looked quite right. Often it was so uneven I had to tilt my head to feel balanced. At first, I lumped it with all the other changes I’d gone through as a new mom — my feet got bigger, my breasts got smaller and my gums were sensitive. But then I finally figured it out — she couldn’t cut hair for crap. In my heart, I knew we were done, but how could I tell her?
At first, I strung out the cuts — from four weeks to five to six, until I was seeing her about every three months, hitting the $12 places in between. I started making excuses; money was “tight,” I was just so busy with the baby, the baby-sitter flaked on me and so on until I just stopped going.
Then one day as I passed by, baby in stroller on our daily walk, Jade saw me through the salon window and came running out. “Hey, I never see you anymore! When are you coming in?”
“Oh, that’s so funny!” I said, nervously. “I was just thinking I was due for a cut. I have to look in my date book. I’ll call you.”
I couldn’t believe it, but I was using a classic male I’m-just-not-that-into-you line — on my hair stylist! Of course I never did call, and from that day on, I knew I could never walk on the north side of the street after 10 a.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays.
I had dumped her, and I had taken the easy way out. I disappeared … just like a few men I have since dated.
But at some point you realize that any relationship that’s going to go past the surface level needs two things: trust and forgiveness. I feel bad that Jade had to be the fall gal in that, and so when I started seeing Rosie, I decided she’d be the one I’d commit to.
It hasn’t always been easy. Rosie has made some mistakes. Like the time I asked her to add a few reddish streaks in my hair, and I ended up with big, wide swaths of reds and blonds. I looked like something you’d see on a Jean Paul Gautier runway.
“Um, I’m not so sure I like this,” I told her, in as loving a way as I could.
“You look great. Edgy. Try it.”
So I walked out into the world on faith alone. Oddly enough, I did get a few compliments, but I still didn’t feel like zebra-head was the look I was aiming for.
“Rosie, I can’t do this anymore,” I pleaded on the phone during my lunch hour.
“OK, come in and I’ll fix you.”
And like all relationships, the biggest lessons are learned the hard way. About a year ago, in between my foilings, I spritzed on a little Sun In as I worked under the summer sun in my garden. But instead of the “natural blond highlights” I’d hoped for, I looked brassy, and my hair was drier than Mount Tam in the fall.
The next time I showed up for a trim, Rosie eyed my hair suspiciously.
“I sure hope your love life is doing better than your hair,” she said. “It’s a mess.”
I kept my face in my Cosmo, pretending to be engrossed with “Ten Sex Tips Every Woman Must Know That Will Drive Him Wild.”
“Kat, did you do something to your hair?”
“Um, I don’t think so,” I mumbled.
“You must have! You look horrible. I’m going to glam you up.”
“OK, OK, I confess. I had an incident with Sun In.”
“Kat, you know things are really bad when you lie to your stylist!”
She was so right. I am learning. Be honest with the people who hold your beauty in their hands. And if you’re going to dump someone — be it a stylist or a lover — don’t just disappear.
Friday, June 8, 2007
You can't be too rich, too thin or too old
Sunday is health day around my house. Nah, it's not some weird ritualistic practice or a weekly herbal detox.
It's the day I call my parents.
My parents aren't all that old — mid- and late-70s — but my dad has heart issues and my mom's on half a dozen pills for assorted ailments, and each week's call is like a romp through the "Physicians' Desk Reference." Health is the No. 1 topic.
After all their years of worrying about me, it's come full circle, and I am the one worrying about them, thousands of miles away from me. (well, that's not fully true. They still really worry about me. The family that worries together stays together?)
So I began to think of Freida Birnbaum, the 60-year-old New Jersey woman who recently gave birth to twins, and who says she hopes other women are empowered by her actions and look to her as a role model.
Birnbaum and Ken, her husband of 38 years, already have three children, two sons, 33 and 6, and a daughter, 29, who says she isn't happy with her parents' decision.
Of course, there have been older women who've had babies. Earlier this year, a 67-women gave birth in Spain.
I'm not going to talk about the dangers — to mother and child — of giving birth so late in life. I'm not going to get into the moral arguments of whether older women should be getting fertility treatments or access to donor eggs. I'm not going to talk about how few bat an eye when a 77-year-old Tony Randall becomes a dad or an 80-year-old Hugh Hefner says he wants more kids. I'm not even going to talk about how ridiculous it is when people act in self-serving ways under the guise of empowering women, like Ms. Birnbaum and like Amy Deming's soft-core porn site for MILPHS.
I'm just going to talk about the two little boys, because the Birnbaums don't seem to be talking them, about what their life is going to be like when they're teens and their parents are in their lates 70s — just like my parents are. I struggle with my parents' health issues, but I'm fortysomething — the Birnbaum twins will be dealing with their parents' health at the height of their hormonally charged adolescence.
Isn't that an unnecessary burden on a kid?
I think of my friend Ali, whose older dad died when she was just 21. True, she was an "adult," but his early death left a hole in her that affects her today, 20-plus later.
Of course, none of us becomes a parent for the kid's sake — we do it for our own very selfish reasons, and some of us end up doing it very poorly, too.
I'm all for people making choices for themselves, and not by what "society dictates," as Birnbaum says.
But I'm also for personal responsibility and accountability in those choices.
What do you think?
It's the day I call my parents.
My parents aren't all that old — mid- and late-70s — but my dad has heart issues and my mom's on half a dozen pills for assorted ailments, and each week's call is like a romp through the "Physicians' Desk Reference." Health is the No. 1 topic.
After all their years of worrying about me, it's come full circle, and I am the one worrying about them, thousands of miles away from me. (well, that's not fully true. They still really worry about me. The family that worries together stays together?)
So I began to think of Freida Birnbaum, the 60-year-old New Jersey woman who recently gave birth to twins, and who says she hopes other women are empowered by her actions and look to her as a role model.
Birnbaum and Ken, her husband of 38 years, already have three children, two sons, 33 and 6, and a daughter, 29, who says she isn't happy with her parents' decision.
Of course, there have been older women who've had babies. Earlier this year, a 67-women gave birth in Spain.
I'm not going to talk about the dangers — to mother and child — of giving birth so late in life. I'm not going to get into the moral arguments of whether older women should be getting fertility treatments or access to donor eggs. I'm not going to talk about how few bat an eye when a 77-year-old Tony Randall becomes a dad or an 80-year-old Hugh Hefner says he wants more kids. I'm not even going to talk about how ridiculous it is when people act in self-serving ways under the guise of empowering women, like Ms. Birnbaum and like Amy Deming's soft-core porn site for MILPHS.
I'm just going to talk about the two little boys, because the Birnbaums don't seem to be talking them, about what their life is going to be like when they're teens and their parents are in their lates 70s — just like my parents are. I struggle with my parents' health issues, but I'm fortysomething — the Birnbaum twins will be dealing with their parents' health at the height of their hormonally charged adolescence.
Isn't that an unnecessary burden on a kid?
I think of my friend Ali, whose older dad died when she was just 21. True, she was an "adult," but his early death left a hole in her that affects her today, 20-plus later.
Of course, none of us becomes a parent for the kid's sake — we do it for our own very selfish reasons, and some of us end up doing it very poorly, too.
I'm all for people making choices for themselves, and not by what "society dictates," as Birnbaum says.
But I'm also for personal responsibility and accountability in those choices.
What do you think?
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
What a bloody mess we're in
I was hanging at the square in Mill Valley this weekend when I overhead a twentysomething man on his cell phone (because everyone talks, you know, so discreetly on them).
“... and she’s, like, so whacked out or something. Like she’s got PMS all the time.”
And there, in the middle of a beautiful, sunny day, in my beautiful little town, was the answer to all the big, bad problems with women.
We bleed.
But maybe not for much longer.
There's been big news lately in the World o' The Curse, mostly a pill that stops periods.
I'm no fan of periods, although it's a part of who I am as a woman and I accept that. But, really, it's not called The Curse for nothing. It hurts, it's messy, we worry about it when it doesn't come (and hate it when it does), most men (and even women) don't fully understand it and then there's the PMS thing that turns (or so many men say) normally nice women into raging, weepy, bitchy monsters.
I was thinking about PMS and that twentysomething's conversation while I was on the bowl at work this week (and I have to say, I love that I get paid to do that. I figure with all the water, coffee and green tea I drink throughout the day, I’m probably pulling in about $25, $30 a day just to take care of the same bodily functions I do at home for free!). The reason why it came to my (troubled, as one reader says) mind is because I noticed the red “Biological Hazard” sticker on the little metal container for women to place their soiled sanitary products. We are always being reminded, no matter where we go, not to flush those things down the toilet.
And we are always being reminded — even while we're enjoying a lazy Mill Valley day — about how "whacked out" our periods make us.
Could it be that a little pill would make all of that a thing of the past?
And that got me thinking about periods in the past. So I had to go back to my favorite weird Web site, the Museum of Menstruation and Women’s Health, which has a fascinating article on what women here and in Europe did before tampons and sanitary pads were invented (which was relatively recent). And you know what? Most wore ... nothing.
Think about that ...
So, even though women back in those days didn't have many periods to begin with (the Web site explains why), still — there were a lot of bloody women around.
And because of our bloody ways:
Right. We're evil, weepy slackers. And whacked.
I'm not so sure people still think women aren't doing our "job" if we're infertile (although I imagine there is some subtle judgment about that), but myths about women and their periods persist, so it’s no wonder why women want it to go away.
Men, too, because what man hasn’t blamed PMS for whatever thing his lover has ever said or done wrong to piss him off?
And, evidently, the no-period pill seems to help with PMS, which is a good thing, too, because I often imagined that at some point, some "whacked" women tired of the whole "blame-PMS thing" were going to unite and, carrying bags of those "biological hazards" — our own personal WMD — hold their lovers, hubbies, fathers and bosses hostage or something and demand that they stop blaming us for our hormones!
So — who's going with the no-period pill and who's not, and why?
And what's the oddest thing your sweetie has blamed your PMS for?
One more odd thing. When The Kid was a baby, I wrestled with the disposable/cloth diaper thing because of environmental concerns. But it never even occurred to me the impact of all my sanitary needs. Amazingly enough, it has had a huge impact on society, according to Susan Strasser's "Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash" (Henry Holt & Company), which explores the relationship between women's periods and our throw-away culture. Yes, you read that right. There's a big link. Go figure.
From the early 1800s to the 1920s, women were pretty clever at fashioning all sort of needs out of what they had on hand, including transforming rags into menstrual pads. But after the turn of the 20th century, Kotex and Modess appeared, promoting "cleanliness and convenience." Their ads also played into our anxieties about how we stacked up against others, and even our snobiness. "80 percent or more better-class women have discarded ordinary ways for Kotex,'' one 1920s ad trumpeted.
Knowing how many women can be rather competitive, I wonder if the Ladies Who Lunch compare sanitary products, too ....
“... and she’s, like, so whacked out or something. Like she’s got PMS all the time.”
And there, in the middle of a beautiful, sunny day, in my beautiful little town, was the answer to all the big, bad problems with women.
We bleed.
But maybe not for much longer.
There's been big news lately in the World o' The Curse, mostly a pill that stops periods.
I'm no fan of periods, although it's a part of who I am as a woman and I accept that. But, really, it's not called The Curse for nothing. It hurts, it's messy, we worry about it when it doesn't come (and hate it when it does), most men (and even women) don't fully understand it and then there's the PMS thing that turns (or so many men say) normally nice women into raging, weepy, bitchy monsters.
I was thinking about PMS and that twentysomething's conversation while I was on the bowl at work this week (and I have to say, I love that I get paid to do that. I figure with all the water, coffee and green tea I drink throughout the day, I’m probably pulling in about $25, $30 a day just to take care of the same bodily functions I do at home for free!). The reason why it came to my (troubled, as one reader says) mind is because I noticed the red “Biological Hazard” sticker on the little metal container for women to place their soiled sanitary products. We are always being reminded, no matter where we go, not to flush those things down the toilet.
And we are always being reminded — even while we're enjoying a lazy Mill Valley day — about how "whacked out" our periods make us.
Could it be that a little pill would make all of that a thing of the past?
And that got me thinking about periods in the past. So I had to go back to my favorite weird Web site, the Museum of Menstruation and Women’s Health, which has a fascinating article on what women here and in Europe did before tampons and sanitary pads were invented (which was relatively recent). And you know what? Most wore ... nothing.
Think about that ...
So, even though women back in those days didn't have many periods to begin with (the Web site explains why), still — there were a lot of bloody women around.
And because of our bloody ways:
"People could, and often did, interpret menstruation as something bad — a sign of infertility, for example, and meaning the woman was not doing her 'job.' Reinforcing this was the fact that the appearance of non-menstrual blood indicated something amiss; why should menstrual blood be any different? This might partly account for the many beliefs about the evil effects of menstruating women: they weren’t doing their job as women."
Right. We're evil, weepy slackers. And whacked.
I'm not so sure people still think women aren't doing our "job" if we're infertile (although I imagine there is some subtle judgment about that), but myths about women and their periods persist, so it’s no wonder why women want it to go away.
Men, too, because what man hasn’t blamed PMS for whatever thing his lover has ever said or done wrong to piss him off?
And, evidently, the no-period pill seems to help with PMS, which is a good thing, too, because I often imagined that at some point, some "whacked" women tired of the whole "blame-PMS thing" were going to unite and, carrying bags of those "biological hazards" — our own personal WMD — hold their lovers, hubbies, fathers and bosses hostage or something and demand that they stop blaming us for our hormones!
So — who's going with the no-period pill and who's not, and why?
And what's the oddest thing your sweetie has blamed your PMS for?
One more odd thing. When The Kid was a baby, I wrestled with the disposable/cloth diaper thing because of environmental concerns. But it never even occurred to me the impact of all my sanitary needs. Amazingly enough, it has had a huge impact on society, according to Susan Strasser's "Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash" (Henry Holt & Company), which explores the relationship between women's periods and our throw-away culture. Yes, you read that right. There's a big link. Go figure.
From the early 1800s to the 1920s, women were pretty clever at fashioning all sort of needs out of what they had on hand, including transforming rags into menstrual pads. But after the turn of the 20th century, Kotex and Modess appeared, promoting "cleanliness and convenience." Their ads also played into our anxieties about how we stacked up against others, and even our snobiness. "80 percent or more better-class women have discarded ordinary ways for Kotex,'' one 1920s ad trumpeted.
Knowing how many women can be rather competitive, I wonder if the Ladies Who Lunch compare sanitary products, too ....
Friday, June 1, 2007
I promise to love, honor and cherish ... money
It's June, when the paddocks are opened and the bridal season busts out as eagerly as the favored filly at Bay Meadows.
I wouldn't want to put a damper on that, but I have a message for some brides, and you know who you are, too.
If you are getting married for any reason other than eyes-wide-open true love with a man who shares your life-goals, don't!.
Just like Clarence in "It's a Wonderful Life," I am going to give you a peek into your future if you get married to someone who you are vaguely attracted to and ambivalently in love with, but is going to provide you with a very cushy lifestyle — weekly spa treatments, the opulent house, the luxury cars, the exotic vacations, the cosmetic surgery, the tennis and swim club membership, the private schools and the designer clothes..
Your future is Rocco.
Rocco is a man I know, a very attractive, fit, charming thirtysomething straight man who is a gigolo. Well, that's not his official job, but for all intents and purposes, that's what he does, and he does it well. His real job puts him in a place where privileged women frequent, and he has been privy to their secrets for the past few years.
Here's what he's learned: Despite the lavish lifestyles these women have, given to them by the hard work (or not) of their big-wig hubbies and one in which they are constantly measuring themselves up against others, including their neighbors and close friends and the women in their book clubs and on the gala-planning committees, they are bored and unhappy and they are ever-so-eager to take Rocco for a romp in the sack to fill up the void and give them a reason to feel alive.
Most of their hubbies are cheating on them and they know that. They either put up with it (because, you know, look at all that they have!) and get back at them by letting Rocco drive their $60,000 Porsche or Lexus while they take him out shopping and a fancy meal before they bang him silly, or they're biding their time, all the while planning how they're going to screw their hubby in divorce court and take him for everything he has — right after they let Rocco drive their $60,000 Porsche or Lexus while http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifthey take him out shopping and a fancy meal before they bang him silly.
So before you say "I do" anytime soon, think about what you're truly saying "I do" to. And if a lavish lifestyle is all you're after, if you're not marrying the man you really want to love and cherish in sickness, health, for better and for worse, well, you can have it — and Rocco, too. He'll be waiting for you.
Read all my blogs here
I wouldn't want to put a damper on that, but I have a message for some brides, and you know who you are, too.
If you are getting married for any reason other than eyes-wide-open true love with a man who shares your life-goals, don't!.
Just like Clarence in "It's a Wonderful Life," I am going to give you a peek into your future if you get married to someone who you are vaguely attracted to and ambivalently in love with, but is going to provide you with a very cushy lifestyle — weekly spa treatments, the opulent house, the luxury cars, the exotic vacations, the cosmetic surgery, the tennis and swim club membership, the private schools and the designer clothes..
Your future is Rocco.
Rocco is a man I know, a very attractive, fit, charming thirtysomething straight man who is a gigolo. Well, that's not his official job, but for all intents and purposes, that's what he does, and he does it well. His real job puts him in a place where privileged women frequent, and he has been privy to their secrets for the past few years.
Here's what he's learned: Despite the lavish lifestyles these women have, given to them by the hard work (or not) of their big-wig hubbies and one in which they are constantly measuring themselves up against others, including their neighbors and close friends and the women in their book clubs and on the gala-planning committees, they are bored and unhappy and they are ever-so-eager to take Rocco for a romp in the sack to fill up the void and give them a reason to feel alive.
Most of their hubbies are cheating on them and they know that. They either put up with it (because, you know, look at all that they have!) and get back at them by letting Rocco drive their $60,000 Porsche or Lexus while they take him out shopping and a fancy meal before they bang him silly, or they're biding their time, all the while planning how they're going to screw their hubby in divorce court and take him for everything he has — right after they let Rocco drive their $60,000 Porsche or Lexus while http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifthey take him out shopping and a fancy meal before they bang him silly.
So before you say "I do" anytime soon, think about what you're truly saying "I do" to. And if a lavish lifestyle is all you're after, if you're not marrying the man you really want to love and cherish in sickness, health, for better and for worse, well, you can have it — and Rocco, too. He'll be waiting for you.
Read all my blogs here
Friday, May 25, 2007
Is he or isn't he?
I can’t say I have a particular type of man I like to hang with. I’ve been attracted to guy’s guys and metrosexuals. But as I sat across the table from my date recently, I realized I might have entered new territory. All night, I couldn’t help but wonder, is he or isn’t he?
It was my first date with Stephan, a slightly younger San Francisco man I’d been flirting with online for the past few weeks. We agreed to meet at Cav, a swanky little wine bar next to Zuni. He was even cuter in person, with more delicate features than his profile photos.
I had a feeling he might be a bit different than anyone I’d dated recently — as we checked in with each other by phone that afternoon to firm up our plans, he mentioned nonchalantly, “Oh, by the way, my nipples are pierced. Is that going to be a problem?”
Well, I wasn’t really planning on seeing his nipples that night, or him mine, so I said no. But I did give his profile pictures a good look again to see if there were any obnoxious facial piercings or body modifications I had somehow missed.
Thankfully, there weren’t — not that I have nothing against tasteful tats or piercings.
And that alone isn’t much of anything, but when we met, I was definitely picking up a vibe.
The gay vague vibe.
Mia felt the same way the first time she met Rex.
“He’s just so effeminate,” she sighed after their first coffee date. “I don’t think I’m into that.”
That all changed on date No. 2, when he pushed her up against a wall and kissed her so lustfully that she’s not sure she’ll ever view kissing quite the same way.
Stephan reminded me of Craig, a guy I dated in college for a while. Craig was a gorgeous part-time model with the most amazingly lush lips. What I loved most about him, though, was his irreverent humor, and he had the same passion for indie flicks as I did.
We started our romance slowly, but on the third date, as we sat in the darkened theater waiting for the movie to begin, he reached over and kissed me — a long, wet, passionate and sensuous kiss that made me weak with desire. I wanted him to kiss every part of me like that, and I couldn’t wait for the movie to end. But when it did, and he drove me to my apartment, he declined my invitation to come in.
I was disappointed but determined. Plus I sorta liked his coyness. I started planning the seduction for date No. 4. Date four came, then five and six and … a few months later and we had still never gotten past his wonderful kisses. Every attempt I made to go beyond that was gently but firmly refused.
I’d never experienced anything like that with any guy before, and it wasn’t feeling right.
I started to freak — was it me, or him?
One day, I came right out with it.
“Craig, are you … gay?”
“Gay? Of course not. Why do you ask?”
“Because all I want to do is get you naked and do nasty things to you, but you don’t seem too interested in having sex with me.”
“It’s not you. I’m just not interested in that with anyone right now.”
Oh great, I thought — he’s asexual! But I let it go at that because I wanted to believe him and I loved his company. But the more I saw him with his friends — all of whom I’d call “pretty boys” — I had to wonder if he was being honest with me — or himself.
We eventually stopped seeing each other romantically — whatever little “romance” there was — because I wanted more than just kisses from my lover, no matter how passionate they were. But we remained friends until life took its course.
Now here was pierced (and tattooed, it turns out) Stephan, with all the affectations of a gay, or perhaps bisexual, man, despite all his talk about the ex (wife, that is) and the kids. I felt like I was a contestant on “Gay, Straight or Taken?” — there was no way to know. Although I eventually was pretty blunt with Craig, I couldn’t do the same with Stephan, especially on date No. 1.
Now, I have several gay, lesbian and bi friends, and I consider myself a broad-minded gal. But I needed to ask myself — do I want to date someone who’s bi?
I know some people believe that we’re all bisexual. That’s what Owen, my adorable twentysomething colleague, says. Owen looks about as gay as a man can be, and constantly catches the eye of any number of San Francisco men. Yet there on his left hand ring finger is a gold band that his equally cute new bride, Ava, had placed just 10 months ago.
One night after work, we went to get a drink at Voda, a few blocks from our office, and we started chatting about life, love and how he and Ava met. He admitted that he was attracted to men, but never acted on it — although he wasn’t necessarily against it. But then he met Ava. “I fell in love,” he told me, “and it just happened to be with a woman.”
I can’t say I’ve ever felt that way. Although I can appreciate another woman’s beauty and sexiness, whenever I have fallen in love it more than “just happened” to be with a man. And I suspect it always will be.
And some people argue that there is no bisexuality — just men “caught between two worlds and are really lost,” according to Bonnie Kaye, author of “Is He Straight?” They’re attracted to men, but don’t want to live the gay lifestyle.
I’m not so sure I believe that, but I have no desire to one day have to write a tell-all book like Dina Matos McGreevey, the estranged wife of James McGreevey, the former New Jersey governor who resigned after revealing that he’s gay.
So I was happy when Stephan suggested that for our second date he’d cook dinner for me — at his place. I’ve been around long enough to read between the lines on that one, but I figured it would give me an opportunity to ask about HIV, STDs and bisexuality in a good context.
I showed up at his well-appointed Noe Valley pad ready for seduction. He cooked us a wonderful ribeye with wilted spinach salad; I brought dessert — two mini-molten chocolate cakes and, possibly, me.
http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif
But as I moved closer to him and gently stroked his arm as we sat on the couch, he pulled back. “Hey, don’t take this the wrong way but I’m not interested in getting sexual right now,” he said.
Oh no! I had somehow channeled Craig!
I never heard from Stephan again, and I didn’t call him, either.
Maybe it was me, maybe it was him, maybe it was the dessert that I overbaked and ended up being not very molten at all.
But the next time a man asks me if I’d have a problem with his pierced nipples, I might just say yes.
Read all my stuff at
It was my first date with Stephan, a slightly younger San Francisco man I’d been flirting with online for the past few weeks. We agreed to meet at Cav, a swanky little wine bar next to Zuni. He was even cuter in person, with more delicate features than his profile photos.
I had a feeling he might be a bit different than anyone I’d dated recently — as we checked in with each other by phone that afternoon to firm up our plans, he mentioned nonchalantly, “Oh, by the way, my nipples are pierced. Is that going to be a problem?”
Well, I wasn’t really planning on seeing his nipples that night, or him mine, so I said no. But I did give his profile pictures a good look again to see if there were any obnoxious facial piercings or body modifications I had somehow missed.
Thankfully, there weren’t — not that I have nothing against tasteful tats or piercings.
And that alone isn’t much of anything, but when we met, I was definitely picking up a vibe.
The gay vague vibe.
Mia felt the same way the first time she met Rex.
“He’s just so effeminate,” she sighed after their first coffee date. “I don’t think I’m into that.”
That all changed on date No. 2, when he pushed her up against a wall and kissed her so lustfully that she’s not sure she’ll ever view kissing quite the same way.
Stephan reminded me of Craig, a guy I dated in college for a while. Craig was a gorgeous part-time model with the most amazingly lush lips. What I loved most about him, though, was his irreverent humor, and he had the same passion for indie flicks as I did.
We started our romance slowly, but on the third date, as we sat in the darkened theater waiting for the movie to begin, he reached over and kissed me — a long, wet, passionate and sensuous kiss that made me weak with desire. I wanted him to kiss every part of me like that, and I couldn’t wait for the movie to end. But when it did, and he drove me to my apartment, he declined my invitation to come in.
I was disappointed but determined. Plus I sorta liked his coyness. I started planning the seduction for date No. 4. Date four came, then five and six and … a few months later and we had still never gotten past his wonderful kisses. Every attempt I made to go beyond that was gently but firmly refused.
I’d never experienced anything like that with any guy before, and it wasn’t feeling right.
I started to freak — was it me, or him?
One day, I came right out with it.
“Craig, are you … gay?”
“Gay? Of course not. Why do you ask?”
“Because all I want to do is get you naked and do nasty things to you, but you don’t seem too interested in having sex with me.”
“It’s not you. I’m just not interested in that with anyone right now.”
Oh great, I thought — he’s asexual! But I let it go at that because I wanted to believe him and I loved his company. But the more I saw him with his friends — all of whom I’d call “pretty boys” — I had to wonder if he was being honest with me — or himself.
We eventually stopped seeing each other romantically — whatever little “romance” there was — because I wanted more than just kisses from my lover, no matter how passionate they were. But we remained friends until life took its course.
Now here was pierced (and tattooed, it turns out) Stephan, with all the affectations of a gay, or perhaps bisexual, man, despite all his talk about the ex (wife, that is) and the kids. I felt like I was a contestant on “Gay, Straight or Taken?” — there was no way to know. Although I eventually was pretty blunt with Craig, I couldn’t do the same with Stephan, especially on date No. 1.
Now, I have several gay, lesbian and bi friends, and I consider myself a broad-minded gal. But I needed to ask myself — do I want to date someone who’s bi?
I know some people believe that we’re all bisexual. That’s what Owen, my adorable twentysomething colleague, says. Owen looks about as gay as a man can be, and constantly catches the eye of any number of San Francisco men. Yet there on his left hand ring finger is a gold band that his equally cute new bride, Ava, had placed just 10 months ago.
One night after work, we went to get a drink at Voda, a few blocks from our office, and we started chatting about life, love and how he and Ava met. He admitted that he was attracted to men, but never acted on it — although he wasn’t necessarily against it. But then he met Ava. “I fell in love,” he told me, “and it just happened to be with a woman.”
I can’t say I’ve ever felt that way. Although I can appreciate another woman’s beauty and sexiness, whenever I have fallen in love it more than “just happened” to be with a man. And I suspect it always will be.
And some people argue that there is no bisexuality — just men “caught between two worlds and are really lost,” according to Bonnie Kaye, author of “Is He Straight?” They’re attracted to men, but don’t want to live the gay lifestyle.
I’m not so sure I believe that, but I have no desire to one day have to write a tell-all book like Dina Matos McGreevey, the estranged wife of James McGreevey, the former New Jersey governor who resigned after revealing that he’s gay.
So I was happy when Stephan suggested that for our second date he’d cook dinner for me — at his place. I’ve been around long enough to read between the lines on that one, but I figured it would give me an opportunity to ask about HIV, STDs and bisexuality in a good context.
I showed up at his well-appointed Noe Valley pad ready for seduction. He cooked us a wonderful ribeye with wilted spinach salad; I brought dessert — two mini-molten chocolate cakes and, possibly, me.
http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif
But as I moved closer to him and gently stroked his arm as we sat on the couch, he pulled back. “Hey, don’t take this the wrong way but I’m not interested in getting sexual right now,” he said.
Oh no! I had somehow channeled Craig!
I never heard from Stephan again, and I didn’t call him, either.
Maybe it was me, maybe it was him, maybe it was the dessert that I overbaked and ended up being not very molten at all.
But the next time a man asks me if I’d have a problem with his pierced nipples, I might just say yes.
Read all my stuff at
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Sisters in secrets
No sooner than I blog about not being into the whole celeb thing when I come to realize that the late Anna Nicole and I happen to have, amazingly enough, one thing in common.
Steamy diaries.
Unlike kids today who post their thoughts about love and life for all to see on MySpace and Facebook, I grew up in an era when girls keep all their secrets in small, mostly pink, locked diaries.
Of course, anyone could have picked those locks — or just cut the strap, for goodness sake! — to read the contents, which made them about as private as today's online diaries. But that didn't stop me, and probably all the other adolescent girls of my generation, from rushing home from school every day to spill all, feverishly and furtively, about the day's forays into love, lust and loss.
While doing some spring cleaning recently, I stumbled on a handful from my teen years and sat down for an hour to look through them. Re-reading the entries after so many years was like time-traveling into the often confused but always curious mind of girl-to-woman Kat. Written in there, in girlish script, are the usual suspects: insecurities — "This morning the vulnerability, the doubt. Why? I'm not so sure but this morning I felt the strong desire to tell him I love him" — questions — "I sometimes am aware of people I know acting contrary to their personality to other people; I wonder if others see this in me?" — the oh-so meaningful quotations — "I don't want to change the world, but I don't want the world to change me," Eli Wiesel — and the absolute ho-hum girlie banalities — "El and I went shopping. Saw J there. At night, we saw a movie. It sucked." But then there was my essay on "what makes a good marriage" that surprised me in its rather sage grasp of the compromise and work it would take.
Reading a few entries made me want to go back in time, take that young Kat by the hand and say, "Honey, let me set you straight on a few things so I can save you a lot of heartache ..."
And then, of course, there's the rather explicit talk of sex — wanting it, liking it (or not) with different boyfriends — that bordered on erotica. The parts I can read, that is, as I guess at some point in my past I decided I needed to write as if I were writing on the top of a pinhead. Tiny. And that's if I can actually figure out just who the initials stand for — I wisely (or not) didn't identify my boyfriends by their names, so now, 20-something years later, I can't even remember who I'm talking about. This worries me!
No wonder why my adolescent friends and I made pacts to find and burn each other's diaries if anything happened to us. If our parents only knew! And I wonder what will happen, 30, 40, 50 years down the road when The Kid discovers my diaries in the bowels of the basement while cleaning out my crap when I'm dead and gone.
Will he get a better grasp of who and what his mother was about? Or will he be horrified to discover a side of me that he'd just rather not know? A situation that I imagine, one day, Anna Nicole's child, Dannielynn Hope, will have to face, too.
At some point I abandoned diaries, although when my marriage went bust a few years ago, I started writing again — now called journaling — to help me work through the staggering emotions. I don't have a desire to revisit that journal, though. That story is still very present in my mind.
So yes, like Anna, I have secrets that may end up one day in unsympathetic hands. Unlike Anna's however, no one is offering me six figures to read about them. And, unlike Anna's, there are, thankfully, very few spelling or grammatical errors. And, also thankfully, not quite the sadness that permeated her life.
If someone in the future discovers your diaries or journals, containing your most private thoughts, what would be the most surprising discovery?
And when you read the journaled thoughts of your adolescent mind, what surprises you?
Steamy diaries.
Unlike kids today who post their thoughts about love and life for all to see on MySpace and Facebook, I grew up in an era when girls keep all their secrets in small, mostly pink, locked diaries.
Of course, anyone could have picked those locks — or just cut the strap, for goodness sake! — to read the contents, which made them about as private as today's online diaries. But that didn't stop me, and probably all the other adolescent girls of my generation, from rushing home from school every day to spill all, feverishly and furtively, about the day's forays into love, lust and loss.
While doing some spring cleaning recently, I stumbled on a handful from my teen years and sat down for an hour to look through them. Re-reading the entries after so many years was like time-traveling into the often confused but always curious mind of girl-to-woman Kat. Written in there, in girlish script, are the usual suspects: insecurities — "This morning the vulnerability, the doubt. Why? I'm not so sure but this morning I felt the strong desire to tell him I love him" — questions — "I sometimes am aware of people I know acting contrary to their personality to other people; I wonder if others see this in me?" — the oh-so meaningful quotations — "I don't want to change the world, but I don't want the world to change me," Eli Wiesel — and the absolute ho-hum girlie banalities — "El and I went shopping. Saw J there. At night, we saw a movie. It sucked." But then there was my essay on "what makes a good marriage" that surprised me in its rather sage grasp of the compromise and work it would take.
Reading a few entries made me want to go back in time, take that young Kat by the hand and say, "Honey, let me set you straight on a few things so I can save you a lot of heartache ..."
And then, of course, there's the rather explicit talk of sex — wanting it, liking it (or not) with different boyfriends — that bordered on erotica. The parts I can read, that is, as I guess at some point in my past I decided I needed to write as if I were writing on the top of a pinhead. Tiny. And that's if I can actually figure out just who the initials stand for — I wisely (or not) didn't identify my boyfriends by their names, so now, 20-something years later, I can't even remember who I'm talking about. This worries me!
No wonder why my adolescent friends and I made pacts to find and burn each other's diaries if anything happened to us. If our parents only knew! And I wonder what will happen, 30, 40, 50 years down the road when The Kid discovers my diaries in the bowels of the basement while cleaning out my crap when I'm dead and gone.
Will he get a better grasp of who and what his mother was about? Or will he be horrified to discover a side of me that he'd just rather not know? A situation that I imagine, one day, Anna Nicole's child, Dannielynn Hope, will have to face, too.
At some point I abandoned diaries, although when my marriage went bust a few years ago, I started writing again — now called journaling — to help me work through the staggering emotions. I don't have a desire to revisit that journal, though. That story is still very present in my mind.
So yes, like Anna, I have secrets that may end up one day in unsympathetic hands. Unlike Anna's however, no one is offering me six figures to read about them. And, unlike Anna's, there are, thankfully, very few spelling or grammatical errors. And, also thankfully, not quite the sadness that permeated her life.
If someone in the future discovers your diaries or journals, containing your most private thoughts, what would be the most surprising discovery?
And when you read the journaled thoughts of your adolescent mind, what surprises you?
Monday, May 14, 2007
Are we searching for Frankenstein?
A few years ago, I remember walking into my cousin's house only to be confronted with a grand medieval Playmobil battle complete with elaborate castles, princesses in distress and knights in shining armor. In the midst of it all were her 9-year-old son and her husband, Dan, sprawled on the floor, happily playing together.
"That's quite a project they've got going in there," I said to her.
"They've been at it for hours," she sighed.
At that moment, I felt something I'd never felt before in all my years of marriage.
Husband envy. Or perhaps father envy, as I wasn't really interested in being married to Dan, as nice as he is. It's just that he is exactly the kind of father I imagined I wanted for my kid, one who would be engaged and really present in Trent's life. A get-down-on-your-knees-and-play kinda dad.
I can't say Rob was ever like that, and that always made me kind of sad and sometimes disappointed in him, which I know wasn't fair.
So when my cousin called me recently to tell me that she was unhappy in her marriage and thinking of leaving Dan after 17 years, I couldn't believe it. I genuinely like Dan. He's what you'd call a good guy — stable, kind, sucessful, gentle, if a bit dull.
"But why? He's such a loving and devoted dad."
"He just doesn't have any fire in him. I'm bored and I want more."
That's funny, I thought. Rob sure had fire — and humor and looks and charm and sex appeal. But he lacked other things, some pretty essential things, too, to be committed for the long haul. And then there was the "fathering issue."
When marriages split, what's created is a gigantic human garage sale — one person's cast-off is another person's treasure. Rob's "fathering issue" isn't a problem at all for his girlfriend just like Dan's lack of fire won't matter too much to whomever he ends up hooking up with because he's a "good guy" and a devoted father. What woman wouldn't want that? Well, my cousin, I guess.
In a way, it makes me feel like in our search for love, we are wanting to create our own perfect man a la Victor Frankenstein, or we're building a fantastic meal at a buffet table, a little of this, a little of that — Dan's fathering, Rob's charm and humor, Johnny Depp's looks (sorry, a gal can dream ...) and so on.
Which, I guess, gets down to this — are we looking for perfection in a mate, or are we looking for someone who fits perfectly the qualities that're important to us?
There's a big difference there. Thoughts?
"That's quite a project they've got going in there," I said to her.
"They've been at it for hours," she sighed.
At that moment, I felt something I'd never felt before in all my years of marriage.
Husband envy. Or perhaps father envy, as I wasn't really interested in being married to Dan, as nice as he is. It's just that he is exactly the kind of father I imagined I wanted for my kid, one who would be engaged and really present in Trent's life. A get-down-on-your-knees-and-play kinda dad.
I can't say Rob was ever like that, and that always made me kind of sad and sometimes disappointed in him, which I know wasn't fair.
So when my cousin called me recently to tell me that she was unhappy in her marriage and thinking of leaving Dan after 17 years, I couldn't believe it. I genuinely like Dan. He's what you'd call a good guy — stable, kind, sucessful, gentle, if a bit dull.
"But why? He's such a loving and devoted dad."
"He just doesn't have any fire in him. I'm bored and I want more."
That's funny, I thought. Rob sure had fire — and humor and looks and charm and sex appeal. But he lacked other things, some pretty essential things, too, to be committed for the long haul. And then there was the "fathering issue."
When marriages split, what's created is a gigantic human garage sale — one person's cast-off is another person's treasure. Rob's "fathering issue" isn't a problem at all for his girlfriend just like Dan's lack of fire won't matter too much to whomever he ends up hooking up with because he's a "good guy" and a devoted father. What woman wouldn't want that? Well, my cousin, I guess.
In a way, it makes me feel like in our search for love, we are wanting to create our own perfect man a la Victor Frankenstein, or we're building a fantastic meal at a buffet table, a little of this, a little of that — Dan's fathering, Rob's charm and humor, Johnny Depp's looks (sorry, a gal can dream ...) and so on.
Which, I guess, gets down to this — are we looking for perfection in a mate, or are we looking for someone who fits perfectly the qualities that're important to us?
There's a big difference there. Thoughts?
Friday, May 4, 2007
Is jealousy the real villain?
A woman falls in love with a man whose heart is in the right place — keeping his loved ones and strangers safe from harm. He sacrifices a lot to be with her, but he does so willingly because he knows he can't — and doesn't want to — live without her.
But when his career thrusts him ever more into the public eye and attracts a legion of adoring fans (and an especially hot woman), the core of their love is threaten by something even a superhero may not be able to conquer — jealousy.
OK, I am talking about 'Spider-Man 3,' which opens today. I'll probably take The Kid to see it, but in between the special-effects, I'll be focusing on the jealousy angle. Why? Because, sad to say, I understand.
Why does love sometimes turn people into jealous fools?
I'm not a jealous person, but years ago I flirted with the reality that I might be becoming one. I had fallen in love with Rick, a charmer who liked to push the edges. Early in our romance, there was an "incident" — a party, an inebriated woman, a girlfriend (that would be me) who felt uncomfortable with his misplaced attentions, and an immaturity in being able to deal with it honestly.
"I really wish we could have spent more time together tonight," I said perhaps a little too gently for the emotions I was feeling as we drove home that night. "Did you get off on the woman falling all over you and dancing with you all night long?"
"Oh, she was drunk. Anyway, I was hoping you'd come rescue me."
Hmm. I'd never experienced a man needing to be rescued before, especially when it appeared as if he was enjoying it and making no attempt to stop it. And as I was the "new" girlfriend, I really didn't want to appear to be the bitchy, possessive new girlfriend laying down what he could or couldn't do. So I let it be.
But, of course, I didn't really, because whenever there was another situation that involved him, me and another women, the "incident" reared its ugly head. That's when I realized I was jealous — and insecure — in that relationship. Ultimately, that jealousy and insecurity — not entirely unfounded — helped destroy it.
I'm no longer that jealous woman, but that experience made me realize how easily a woman can find herself in that position if she doesn't have confidence in herself and her relationship and the ability to express herself.
I'm going to take a guess that Mary Jane's jealousy of Peter Parker/Spider-Man's fame — and stolen kiss with his hottie college lab partner, Gwen Stacy (Bryce Dallas Howard) — doesn't totally destroy their love, but I'm pretty confident that dealing with it will take a much bigger toll on him than his battles with Sandman, Venom and other villains.
How have you handled jealousy in your relationships?
Are there situations in your life or certain types of men who draw that jealousy out?
And can "Spider-Man 3" even possibly be as good — or better — than "Spider-Man 2"?
But when his career thrusts him ever more into the public eye and attracts a legion of adoring fans (and an especially hot woman), the core of their love is threaten by something even a superhero may not be able to conquer — jealousy.
OK, I am talking about 'Spider-Man 3,' which opens today. I'll probably take The Kid to see it, but in between the special-effects, I'll be focusing on the jealousy angle. Why? Because, sad to say, I understand.
Why does love sometimes turn people into jealous fools?
I'm not a jealous person, but years ago I flirted with the reality that I might be becoming one. I had fallen in love with Rick, a charmer who liked to push the edges. Early in our romance, there was an "incident" — a party, an inebriated woman, a girlfriend (that would be me) who felt uncomfortable with his misplaced attentions, and an immaturity in being able to deal with it honestly.
"I really wish we could have spent more time together tonight," I said perhaps a little too gently for the emotions I was feeling as we drove home that night. "Did you get off on the woman falling all over you and dancing with you all night long?"
"Oh, she was drunk. Anyway, I was hoping you'd come rescue me."
Hmm. I'd never experienced a man needing to be rescued before, especially when it appeared as if he was enjoying it and making no attempt to stop it. And as I was the "new" girlfriend, I really didn't want to appear to be the bitchy, possessive new girlfriend laying down what he could or couldn't do. So I let it be.
But, of course, I didn't really, because whenever there was another situation that involved him, me and another women, the "incident" reared its ugly head. That's when I realized I was jealous — and insecure — in that relationship. Ultimately, that jealousy and insecurity — not entirely unfounded — helped destroy it.
I'm no longer that jealous woman, but that experience made me realize how easily a woman can find herself in that position if she doesn't have confidence in herself and her relationship and the ability to express herself.
I'm going to take a guess that Mary Jane's jealousy of Peter Parker/Spider-Man's fame — and stolen kiss with his hottie college lab partner, Gwen Stacy (Bryce Dallas Howard) — doesn't totally destroy their love, but I'm pretty confident that dealing with it will take a much bigger toll on him than his battles with Sandman, Venom and other villains.
How have you handled jealousy in your relationships?
Are there situations in your life or certain types of men who draw that jealousy out?
And can "Spider-Man 3" even possibly be as good — or better — than "Spider-Man 2"?
Monday, April 30, 2007
Body and self
When I was married, and Rob and I would head out for a night of fun, I didn’t really think about what else I needed to put on other than something I liked to wear.
As a fortysomething divorcee, I’ve learned that a woman needs more than a hot outfit and brains. She needs one particular accessory, and it can’t be bought.
Jennifer and I decided to dress up and play adult for the Mill Valley Film Festival opening party. As we mingled and schmoozed, we ran into my former neighbor who moved away a few years ago, a zaftig-plus late-fiftysomething Goddess-type who favored big flowy dresses and clunky but comfortable shoes. There she was, hand-in-hand with an attractive older man — her fiancé, I later discovered.
We chatted for a while, caught up on neighborhood comings and goings, and said our goodbyes. Then, as Jennifer and I stood by ourselves, I looked at her and realized we both had the same impression, a politically incorrect one at that.
“If she could find a man … ” said Jennifer, dressed in leopard-print stilettos and a tight black dress that accentuated her curves and cleavage. Unhappy with the dating scene, she’d been getting really discouraged.
“I know, I know, I know. Don’t say it.”
“But …”
“Jen, the difference is this. She’s always looked like that, and she’s OK with it. She’s totally comfortable in her skin. And you know what? The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that that’s the sexiest and most attractive thing a woman can be. Confident.”
Jennifer was quiet after that, but in my mind I was replaying a conversation I’d had with Elaine the day before.
Elaine is a knockout, a smart, sassy divorcee with a toned, shapely body. But when she, her boyfriend Geoff and I had taken a bike ride on the Tiburon loop one Sunday — ostensibly to enjoy the gorgeous day and get a workout but in reality to head to Sam’s for laughs, people-watching and a shared plate of fried calamari — I saw a side of Elaine I’d really never seen before.
But a side that, sadly, so many women display all too often.
“Oh, I can’t eat another calamari ring,” she exclaimed after eating about three. “I had so much to eat last night, I can barely fit into my jeans anymore.”
“Babe, you look great,” Geoff said. “Eat!”
“No, I’ve just gotta lose those five pounds…”
“You’ve got to be kidding. You look bitchin’,” I chimed in half-heartedly, not because she doesn’t — she does — but I just hate to hear women put themselves down like that, especially in front of their lovers. I looked at Geoff — I’m pretty sure I detected a look of exasperation and disgust. I could see this kind of talk wasn’t sitting well with him, and he was right.
It’s so unattractive for a woman to diss herself — much more so than the extra five pounds, imagined or not.
The next day, I called Elaine. I love her too much as a friend not to say something.
She already knew what I was going to say. “I know, I know. Geoff hates when I talk like that, and we had a big fight about it recently. He told me I sound needy and insecure. I’ve got to stop. I will.”
My heart went out to her, but I know where Elaine is coming from. We women focus on those extra pounds, the saggy breasts, the cellulite thighs, the wrinkly stomach from giving birth. We think that’s all that others see in us, too. Then we look around us here in Marin — we’re surrounded by bodies perfectly sculpted with the help of personal trainers and hours of spinning classes and yoga. And whatever jiggly stuff remains after that, well, there’s Botox, liposuction and implants. And there’s our model of “beauty.”
No wonder our teenage daughters are puking in their high school bathrooms a few weeks before the prom so they can fit in their slinky dresses, as I heard a counselor at Redwood High once say at a parenting conference. No wonder a recent study by Girls Inc. found that 84 percent of girls believe they have to be thin to be popular.
I don’t want to buy into that, and I don’t chat up my weight or my imperfections in front of the men I date (no matter what I think or what I share with girlfriends). But as I look in the mirror, my flaws — which seem to be increasing with each birthday — are the first things I see. And I’m not immune from self-degradation, either, subtle as mine might be.
It was pretty apparent me early one Sunday morning. I had just finished my morning hike when my cell rang. It was Sean, the single dad I see from time to time. He sounded shaken.
“I’ve just been in an accident. I’m OK, but my car’s totaled. Can you come pick me up?”
“I’m on my way,” I said, as I hopped into my van and zoomed up 101.
I picked him up, took him home and as we sat outside his condo, I noticed him looking at me. Well, staring was more like it. Then it dawned on me. I’d just rolled out of bed and headed for the hills without a shower, combed hair, deodorant or my “face” — the eyeshadow, mascara and lipstick I always wear, except on my hikes.
For the first time, Sean was seeing “me” — Kat Unplugged.
“Oh my! I’m practically naked!” I sorta joked, but he didn’t hear me because he was talking at the same time. I didn’t hear him, either.
“What did you say?” I asked.
“I said you’re beautiful.”
I blushed and chortled. “You hit your head and smashed your glasses in the crash, remember? You’re practically blind.”
“No, I’m not, and you’re beautiful.”
I felt embarrassed, not only by the compliment, but by my inability to believe what he said, to embrace it, to accept it for what it is.
Why is it so hard to take a compliment like that? Why do I, like Elaine, like so many other women, want to disallow it, make fun of it, put ourselves down?
It reminded me of my former neighbor, comfortable in her skin, in her own beauty. No wonder she attracted a man, a man who saw in her the same things she saw in herself — “I am beautiful, and I celebrate my femininity and my beauty.” It made perfect sense that a confident woman would end up with a man who wanted to be more than just her lover — he wanted to be her fiancé, her partner. We are so quick to judge each other — and ourselves — and we are missing the point.
I thought about that recently, as Sean and I woke up in a sweaty tangle of arms and legs and with his face in front of mine, his eyes studying my face.
I know exactly what that face looks like first thing in the morning; smeared eye makeup that I forgot to remove the night before; the dehydrated bags under my eyes, courtesy of the two glasses of red wine I had with dinner; god knows how many errant hairs that managed to escape my aging eyes and the tweezers; and what is up with that breath?
“You’re beautiful,” he said, as he kissed the tip of my nose.
What could I say but, “thank you”?
As a fortysomething divorcee, I’ve learned that a woman needs more than a hot outfit and brains. She needs one particular accessory, and it can’t be bought.
Jennifer and I decided to dress up and play adult for the Mill Valley Film Festival opening party. As we mingled and schmoozed, we ran into my former neighbor who moved away a few years ago, a zaftig-plus late-fiftysomething Goddess-type who favored big flowy dresses and clunky but comfortable shoes. There she was, hand-in-hand with an attractive older man — her fiancé, I later discovered.
We chatted for a while, caught up on neighborhood comings and goings, and said our goodbyes. Then, as Jennifer and I stood by ourselves, I looked at her and realized we both had the same impression, a politically incorrect one at that.
“If she could find a man … ” said Jennifer, dressed in leopard-print stilettos and a tight black dress that accentuated her curves and cleavage. Unhappy with the dating scene, she’d been getting really discouraged.
“I know, I know, I know. Don’t say it.”
“But …”
“Jen, the difference is this. She’s always looked like that, and she’s OK with it. She’s totally comfortable in her skin. And you know what? The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that that’s the sexiest and most attractive thing a woman can be. Confident.”
Jennifer was quiet after that, but in my mind I was replaying a conversation I’d had with Elaine the day before.
Elaine is a knockout, a smart, sassy divorcee with a toned, shapely body. But when she, her boyfriend Geoff and I had taken a bike ride on the Tiburon loop one Sunday — ostensibly to enjoy the gorgeous day and get a workout but in reality to head to Sam’s for laughs, people-watching and a shared plate of fried calamari — I saw a side of Elaine I’d really never seen before.
But a side that, sadly, so many women display all too often.
“Oh, I can’t eat another calamari ring,” she exclaimed after eating about three. “I had so much to eat last night, I can barely fit into my jeans anymore.”
“Babe, you look great,” Geoff said. “Eat!”
“No, I’ve just gotta lose those five pounds…”
“You’ve got to be kidding. You look bitchin’,” I chimed in half-heartedly, not because she doesn’t — she does — but I just hate to hear women put themselves down like that, especially in front of their lovers. I looked at Geoff — I’m pretty sure I detected a look of exasperation and disgust. I could see this kind of talk wasn’t sitting well with him, and he was right.
It’s so unattractive for a woman to diss herself — much more so than the extra five pounds, imagined or not.
The next day, I called Elaine. I love her too much as a friend not to say something.
She already knew what I was going to say. “I know, I know. Geoff hates when I talk like that, and we had a big fight about it recently. He told me I sound needy and insecure. I’ve got to stop. I will.”
My heart went out to her, but I know where Elaine is coming from. We women focus on those extra pounds, the saggy breasts, the cellulite thighs, the wrinkly stomach from giving birth. We think that’s all that others see in us, too. Then we look around us here in Marin — we’re surrounded by bodies perfectly sculpted with the help of personal trainers and hours of spinning classes and yoga. And whatever jiggly stuff remains after that, well, there’s Botox, liposuction and implants. And there’s our model of “beauty.”
No wonder our teenage daughters are puking in their high school bathrooms a few weeks before the prom so they can fit in their slinky dresses, as I heard a counselor at Redwood High once say at a parenting conference. No wonder a recent study by Girls Inc. found that 84 percent of girls believe they have to be thin to be popular.
I don’t want to buy into that, and I don’t chat up my weight or my imperfections in front of the men I date (no matter what I think or what I share with girlfriends). But as I look in the mirror, my flaws — which seem to be increasing with each birthday — are the first things I see. And I’m not immune from self-degradation, either, subtle as mine might be.
It was pretty apparent me early one Sunday morning. I had just finished my morning hike when my cell rang. It was Sean, the single dad I see from time to time. He sounded shaken.
“I’ve just been in an accident. I’m OK, but my car’s totaled. Can you come pick me up?”
“I’m on my way,” I said, as I hopped into my van and zoomed up 101.
I picked him up, took him home and as we sat outside his condo, I noticed him looking at me. Well, staring was more like it. Then it dawned on me. I’d just rolled out of bed and headed for the hills without a shower, combed hair, deodorant or my “face” — the eyeshadow, mascara and lipstick I always wear, except on my hikes.
For the first time, Sean was seeing “me” — Kat Unplugged.
“Oh my! I’m practically naked!” I sorta joked, but he didn’t hear me because he was talking at the same time. I didn’t hear him, either.
“What did you say?” I asked.
“I said you’re beautiful.”
I blushed and chortled. “You hit your head and smashed your glasses in the crash, remember? You’re practically blind.”
“No, I’m not, and you’re beautiful.”
I felt embarrassed, not only by the compliment, but by my inability to believe what he said, to embrace it, to accept it for what it is.
Why is it so hard to take a compliment like that? Why do I, like Elaine, like so many other women, want to disallow it, make fun of it, put ourselves down?
It reminded me of my former neighbor, comfortable in her skin, in her own beauty. No wonder she attracted a man, a man who saw in her the same things she saw in herself — “I am beautiful, and I celebrate my femininity and my beauty.” It made perfect sense that a confident woman would end up with a man who wanted to be more than just her lover — he wanted to be her fiancé, her partner. We are so quick to judge each other — and ourselves — and we are missing the point.
I thought about that recently, as Sean and I woke up in a sweaty tangle of arms and legs and with his face in front of mine, his eyes studying my face.
I know exactly what that face looks like first thing in the morning; smeared eye makeup that I forgot to remove the night before; the dehydrated bags under my eyes, courtesy of the two glasses of red wine I had with dinner; god knows how many errant hairs that managed to escape my aging eyes and the tweezers; and what is up with that breath?
“You’re beautiful,” he said, as he kissed the tip of my nose.
What could I say but, “thank you”?
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
A throbbing, heaving education
Here's one thing you're never quite prepared for as a parent — the sex talk.
I know, I know. I should have been talking about it naturally all along. And I have been having lots of sex talks — just, you know, not with my kid.
His schools have been more or less taking care of it since fifth grade, but, still, I'm always on his dad — "Did you talk to him yet?"
"Let him learn on the school yard like I did."
Oh great, because that really has been helping generations of men (and frustrated women)!
But whenever I've tried to bring up the subject with The Kid, I get shut down faster than the bars at 2 a.m. "Mom!!!!!"
So the way I've handled it is to leave all sorts of books on puberty, babies, etc., around. Whenever anyone comes over, I get the odd look or two, but I can tell by the dog-eared pages that someone's reading them — and hopefully not my male guests.
But when you come down to it, how did most of us learn about sex? Some women have written in to LisaBindaCity's on romance novels, Bodice Rippers, and how reading them as teens introduced them to the world of carnal knowledge — where everything is throbbing and heaving.
I'm all for throbbing and heaving but that was, for better or worse, not exactly my intro to sex. I actually learned about sex from my parents. Oh goodness, no — they didn't talk to me about it, but they sure had a lot of books — "The Joy of Shttp://www2.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifex," "Our Bodies Ourselves," "The Kama Sutra" — in their bedroom. So I did a lot of reading, even though I had to do a lot of sneaking around to do it. (Note to Mom and Dad: Sorry! I went to confession and God forgives me. Do you?) But the best education was, of course, my best friend's older brother's Playboys, which he conveniently left "hidden" under his bed. In other words, good ol' fashioned porn.
The funny thing is, romance novels — which the says account for 26.4 percent of all book purchased, about $1.4 billion a year — offer women the same thing porn — be it Playboy, Hustler or sites like EuroTeenSluts.com — offer men: part titillation, part escape, part promise of something other (and presumably better) than what they have.
And the rather innocent bodice-ripping/throbbing members of the past have now taken a decidedly more erotic turn, becoming more pornlike than ever.
But then again, so have things like cookbooks and food blogs lately, not to mention whatever's happening in the movies, on TV and displayed in magazines. I don't know anything that hasn't been pornified.
When I was young, we had to work really hard to see things we weren't supposed to see. Now kids can download it on their cell phones or open a romance novel ... or cookbook for that matter!
So, what's porn and what's not?
Do kids know more about sex than we did at their age, or are they just getting a skewed version of it?
And shouldn't "throbbing manhood" be a part of everyone's daily vocabulary (if not activity)?
I know, I know. I should have been talking about it naturally all along. And I have been having lots of sex talks — just, you know, not with my kid.
His schools have been more or less taking care of it since fifth grade, but, still, I'm always on his dad — "Did you talk to him yet?"
"Let him learn on the school yard like I did."
Oh great, because that really has been helping generations of men (and frustrated women)!
But whenever I've tried to bring up the subject with The Kid, I get shut down faster than the bars at 2 a.m. "Mom!!!!!"
So the way I've handled it is to leave all sorts of books on puberty, babies, etc., around. Whenever anyone comes over, I get the odd look or two, but I can tell by the dog-eared pages that someone's reading them — and hopefully not my male guests.
But when you come down to it, how did most of us learn about sex? Some women have written in to LisaBindaCity's on romance novels, Bodice Rippers, and how reading them as teens introduced them to the world of carnal knowledge — where everything is throbbing and heaving.
I'm all for throbbing and heaving but that was, for better or worse, not exactly my intro to sex. I actually learned about sex from my parents. Oh goodness, no — they didn't talk to me about it, but they sure had a lot of books — "The Joy of Shttp://www2.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifex," "Our Bodies Ourselves," "The Kama Sutra" — in their bedroom. So I did a lot of reading, even though I had to do a lot of sneaking around to do it. (Note to Mom and Dad: Sorry! I went to confession and God forgives me. Do you?) But the best education was, of course, my best friend's older brother's Playboys, which he conveniently left "hidden" under his bed. In other words, good ol' fashioned porn.
The funny thing is, romance novels — which the says account for 26.4 percent of all book purchased, about $1.4 billion a year — offer women the same thing porn — be it Playboy, Hustler or sites like EuroTeenSluts.com — offer men: part titillation, part escape, part promise of something other (and presumably better) than what they have.
And the rather innocent bodice-ripping/throbbing members of the past have now taken a decidedly more erotic turn, becoming more pornlike than ever.
But then again, so have things like cookbooks and food blogs lately, not to mention whatever's happening in the movies, on TV and displayed in magazines. I don't know anything that hasn't been pornified.
When I was young, we had to work really hard to see things we weren't supposed to see. Now kids can download it on their cell phones or open a romance novel ... or cookbook for that matter!
So, what's porn and what's not?
Do kids know more about sex than we did at their age, or are they just getting a skewed version of it?
And shouldn't "throbbing manhood" be a part of everyone's daily vocabulary (if not activity)?
Monday, April 23, 2007
Do you feel lucky? Well, do you?
Sara and I were out for a bite the other night, catching up, when she asked me how a mutual friend was doing.
"Great," I said. "Kids are doing well in school, she just signed a big client and she's been seeing a really great guy for a few months now."
"She's so lucky in love," Sara sighed.
I started to agree but then stopped. Just what does it mean to be lucky in love?
People lump together luck and love a lot, or so it seems.
The dictionary defines luck as:
1. The chance happening of fortunate or adverse events; fortune
2. Good fortune or prosperity; success.
3. One's personal fate or lot
That puts love into someone else's hands other than our own. But is that how it works?
I think we're confusing a serendipitous meeting as "lucky in love" — the charming, smart, handsome man visiting from New York who happens to be in same San Francisco restaurant at the same time you are, sparks fly and months later you're strolling Fifth Avenue together. But the guy could have just as easily ended up being a two-timing, Vicodin-addicted spousal abuser.
So when you meet someone, randomly or purposefully — like online — and there's a connection, you enter the tentative beginnings of a romance. When exactly does the luck factor in?
I have met men, felt the connection and then, a few dates or months later realized that he _____ (fill in the blank): drinks too much, treats waiters and others "below him" rudely, talks like a homophobic racist — take your pick. Or maybe we not sexually compatible. And then, he and I part ways because I have decided that someone who talks or acts like that is not someone I want to be with, friend or lover.
That frees me to meet someone who isn't that way instead of trying to make something "work" with someone by hoping he'll change or trying to ignore it or staying with him because there's no one else around right now — aka the BTN (better than nothing) boyfriend.
Isn't that choice and not luck? Because if you continually make choices like that, I think at some point you chose the someone who seems more in tune with what you truly want — and that isn't luck. And if you choose to stay with that guy who drinks too much or puts down gays and blacks, and then you're unhappy sometime later, that does not make you "unlucky" in love, especially he was like that all along whether or not you saw it.
Do you think luck has anything to do with love?
Do the lyrics to Primus' song "Is It Luck?" say it all?
Would getting married in Vegas increase your odds of being lucky in love?
And if you truly believed you were lucky in love, would you ever wear it on your chest?
"Great," I said. "Kids are doing well in school, she just signed a big client and she's been seeing a really great guy for a few months now."
"She's so lucky in love," Sara sighed.
I started to agree but then stopped. Just what does it mean to be lucky in love?
People lump together luck and love a lot, or so it seems.
The dictionary defines luck as:
1. The chance happening of fortunate or adverse events; fortune
2. Good fortune or prosperity; success.
3. One's personal fate or lot
That puts love into someone else's hands other than our own. But is that how it works?
I think we're confusing a serendipitous meeting as "lucky in love" — the charming, smart, handsome man visiting from New York who happens to be in same San Francisco restaurant at the same time you are, sparks fly and months later you're strolling Fifth Avenue together. But the guy could have just as easily ended up being a two-timing, Vicodin-addicted spousal abuser.
So when you meet someone, randomly or purposefully — like online — and there's a connection, you enter the tentative beginnings of a romance. When exactly does the luck factor in?
I have met men, felt the connection and then, a few dates or months later realized that he _____ (fill in the blank): drinks too much, treats waiters and others "below him" rudely, talks like a homophobic racist — take your pick. Or maybe we not sexually compatible. And then, he and I part ways because I have decided that someone who talks or acts like that is not someone I want to be with, friend or lover.
That frees me to meet someone who isn't that way instead of trying to make something "work" with someone by hoping he'll change or trying to ignore it or staying with him because there's no one else around right now — aka the BTN (better than nothing) boyfriend.
Isn't that choice and not luck? Because if you continually make choices like that, I think at some point you chose the someone who seems more in tune with what you truly want — and that isn't luck. And if you choose to stay with that guy who drinks too much or puts down gays and blacks, and then you're unhappy sometime later, that does not make you "unlucky" in love, especially he was like that all along whether or not you saw it.
Do you think luck has anything to do with love?
Do the lyrics to Primus' song "Is It Luck?" say it all?
Would getting married in Vegas increase your odds of being lucky in love?
And if you truly believed you were lucky in love, would you ever wear it on your chest?
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Coming soon to a relationship near you
All relationships take a little give and take. This we know.
But must they be so bloody and stupid?
Let's face it — some men like testosterone-driven action flicks as much as some women like sappy, happily-ever-after chick flicks. It's a gender thing.
I have been dragged to many war, monster and Western movies in my time. I'm not always happy about it, but I generally don't try to fight it if I like the guy and it pleases him — at least the popcorn and Dots are always the same (and I've been known to fall asleep at the movies, so ...). But I have drawn the line on Adam Sandler movies. The answer is, no, I won't go. His movies are beyond stupid. I just don't have the time to waste. And there's no way I'm going to a slasher horror movie, either. I'm sensitive, I get nightmares. I'm still recuperating from "The Silence of the Lambs," and that came out in 1991!
I'm not too much of a chick-flick watcher, either, although if it's clever and genuine, maybe. I prefer small, smart, indie or foreign films that make me think, that expand my consciousness, that don't always end happily. I long to find a man who appreciates those, too, but I accept that I'll most likely be watching them with my girlfriends or by myself.
But even sites like AskMen.com advise guys they'll need to compromise, offering some suggestions with Chick Flicks We Can Stomach
I've enjoyed my share of "guy flicks" — "Gladiator," "Saving Private Ryan" and "Jarhead" come to mind. Even "Troy" was OK — barely — just to see a beautifully buff Brad Pitt in bed with two women. But maybe that's just me.
So when "The Departed" came out on DVD, I was asked by a date to come over and watch it.
"C'mon, it'll put hair on your chest," he chided me.
"I don't want hair on my chest!" I protested — forgetting to point out that he probably wouldn't want it there, either.
But off I went to watch and I actually liked it, until it all ended in a (way-too convenient) bloody mess. And then, lo, an aberrant hair in a place Janet Jackson knows all too well appeared on my chest — a hair so long it could be dreadlocked.
Could it be?
Do you watch willingly or begrudgenly guy's flicks because it'll make him happy?
Do you drag your guy to chick flicks — and does he watch to make you happy?
And could you really fall in love with an Adam Sandler fan?
But must they be so bloody and stupid?
Let's face it — some men like testosterone-driven action flicks as much as some women like sappy, happily-ever-after chick flicks. It's a gender thing.
I have been dragged to many war, monster and Western movies in my time. I'm not always happy about it, but I generally don't try to fight it if I like the guy and it pleases him — at least the popcorn and Dots are always the same (and I've been known to fall asleep at the movies, so ...). But I have drawn the line on Adam Sandler movies. The answer is, no, I won't go. His movies are beyond stupid. I just don't have the time to waste. And there's no way I'm going to a slasher horror movie, either. I'm sensitive, I get nightmares. I'm still recuperating from "The Silence of the Lambs," and that came out in 1991!
I'm not too much of a chick-flick watcher, either, although if it's clever and genuine, maybe. I prefer small, smart, indie or foreign films that make me think, that expand my consciousness, that don't always end happily. I long to find a man who appreciates those, too, but I accept that I'll most likely be watching them with my girlfriends or by myself.
But even sites like AskMen.com advise guys they'll need to compromise, offering some suggestions with Chick Flicks We Can Stomach
I've enjoyed my share of "guy flicks" — "Gladiator," "Saving Private Ryan" and "Jarhead" come to mind. Even "Troy" was OK — barely — just to see a beautifully buff Brad Pitt in bed with two women. But maybe that's just me.
So when "The Departed" came out on DVD, I was asked by a date to come over and watch it.
"C'mon, it'll put hair on your chest," he chided me.
"I don't want hair on my chest!" I protested — forgetting to point out that he probably wouldn't want it there, either.
But off I went to watch and I actually liked it, until it all ended in a (way-too convenient) bloody mess. And then, lo, an aberrant hair in a place Janet Jackson knows all too well appeared on my chest — a hair so long it could be dreadlocked.
Could it be?
Do you watch willingly or begrudgenly guy's flicks because it'll make him happy?
Do you drag your guy to chick flicks — and does he watch to make you happy?
And could you really fall in love with an Adam Sandler fan?
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Boys gone mild?
I don't understand why men and women don't get why the other sex moves in the world so differently.
Ah, but that's because I have a son, and if you're the mom of boys, you kinda see (if not immediately appreciate) the differences from the get-go.
Forget the blue outfits we dress boys in as babies. I got my first real taste of what was ahead when some 12 years ago I befriended Sara, whose daughter, Ashleigh, was about the same age as Trent. Shortly after I met her, she stopped by one day to visit and as we said our goodbyes on my front porch, I saw her face turn ashen as she watched Trent take his new Tonka truck and send it flying down the stairs, denting it as well as the brick steps on its way down. I gave a faint smile, shrugged an "Oh well, boys will be boys" shrug and was hopeful that the budding friendship could survive.
I saw it in his kindergarten class when the girls sat together, coloring within the lines while reciting their ABCs and counting by tens while Trent and his testosterone posse were in the corner pretending to be Mutant Ninja Turtles and doing battle with each other.
No mother of a daughter can understand Life With Boys. I say boys because, although Trent's an only child, one boy is equal to at least three kids. They travel in packs, and at anytime a friendly mind-numbing video game gathering can errupt spontaneously into a wrestling match or Three Stooges act. They don't snack; they descend on the kitchen like locusts. They don't walk, they whirlygig throughout the house, which, by the way, always reeks of something that's part dirty socks, part gym locker room, part burnt pizza crust. While Sara's house was filled with sparkly pink things and lots of ponies, mine was a wasteland of Lego pieces — including the people whose heads, arms and legs were violently ripped off — and littered with Pokemon, Magic and MLB Showdown cards and shredded candy wrappers.
Sara and I often took the kids on trips together to museums, aquariums and zoos. On the way home, Ashleigh would talk about the baby animals and the stuffed baby animals in the gift shops, while Trent remembered anything slimy, gross, half-eaten or dead.
At some point, it occured to me that mothering one daughter is not even parenting. It's like having no children at all!
But, of course, that was some years ago. Now Ashleigh and Trent are 14, and my how things have changed. Oh, there are still pink sparkly things at Sara's house — Ashleigh's makeup and midriff-baring spaghetti-strap tank tops — but there's something new, too. Drama. There are tears, door-slammings and "I hate you's" at any given moment. " It is Girl Gone Wild. "I'm the one in perimenopause," Sara yells at her, trying desperately to maintain some balance. "I'll have the hormonal outbursts around here!"
And at Kat's house? There's still the occasional wrestling match and it's still stinky. But Trent is becoming a man, meaning communication is often down to a few mumbled, pained words. It's still littered, too, but now with Thrasher, Guitar Player and Surfer magazines, muddy cleats and athletic socks so dirty they're petrified. Drama? Not unless I'm the one losing it. In other words, Boy Gone Mild.
And every once and a while, he throws his lanky body on my bed and, patting it with his hand, says to me, "Come sit and talk to me."
Talk? I am so worried about him.
"Aren't you supposed to be all pissed off at me and generally trying to separate?" I ask him, suspiciously.
"Oh, Mom. That's such a stereotype."
I'm not positive but I'll thinking that my Zenlike resignation and patience (aided by some extensive red-wine drinking) during the Tonka-throwing, Ninja Turtle phases are somehow responsible for that kind of talk. Give a boy space to be a boy, and he'll become a man.
And I am learning to not only accept, but embrace the boy that remains in the man. There's certainly something pink and sparkly somewhere in me.
So, are you in the tearful, door-slamming house or are you living in the mumbling stinky house?
And I'm so sure I never gave my mother that kind of drama. Did you?
Ah, but that's because I have a son, and if you're the mom of boys, you kinda see (if not immediately appreciate) the differences from the get-go.
Forget the blue outfits we dress boys in as babies. I got my first real taste of what was ahead when some 12 years ago I befriended Sara, whose daughter, Ashleigh, was about the same age as Trent. Shortly after I met her, she stopped by one day to visit and as we said our goodbyes on my front porch, I saw her face turn ashen as she watched Trent take his new Tonka truck and send it flying down the stairs, denting it as well as the brick steps on its way down. I gave a faint smile, shrugged an "Oh well, boys will be boys" shrug and was hopeful that the budding friendship could survive.
I saw it in his kindergarten class when the girls sat together, coloring within the lines while reciting their ABCs and counting by tens while Trent and his testosterone posse were in the corner pretending to be Mutant Ninja Turtles and doing battle with each other.
No mother of a daughter can understand Life With Boys. I say boys because, although Trent's an only child, one boy is equal to at least three kids. They travel in packs, and at anytime a friendly mind-numbing video game gathering can errupt spontaneously into a wrestling match or Three Stooges act. They don't snack; they descend on the kitchen like locusts. They don't walk, they whirlygig throughout the house, which, by the way, always reeks of something that's part dirty socks, part gym locker room, part burnt pizza crust. While Sara's house was filled with sparkly pink things and lots of ponies, mine was a wasteland of Lego pieces — including the people whose heads, arms and legs were violently ripped off — and littered with Pokemon, Magic and MLB Showdown cards and shredded candy wrappers.
Sara and I often took the kids on trips together to museums, aquariums and zoos. On the way home, Ashleigh would talk about the baby animals and the stuffed baby animals in the gift shops, while Trent remembered anything slimy, gross, half-eaten or dead.
At some point, it occured to me that mothering one daughter is not even parenting. It's like having no children at all!
But, of course, that was some years ago. Now Ashleigh and Trent are 14, and my how things have changed. Oh, there are still pink sparkly things at Sara's house — Ashleigh's makeup and midriff-baring spaghetti-strap tank tops — but there's something new, too. Drama. There are tears, door-slammings and "I hate you's" at any given moment. " It is Girl Gone Wild. "I'm the one in perimenopause," Sara yells at her, trying desperately to maintain some balance. "I'll have the hormonal outbursts around here!"
And at Kat's house? There's still the occasional wrestling match and it's still stinky. But Trent is becoming a man, meaning communication is often down to a few mumbled, pained words. It's still littered, too, but now with Thrasher, Guitar Player and Surfer magazines, muddy cleats and athletic socks so dirty they're petrified. Drama? Not unless I'm the one losing it. In other words, Boy Gone Mild.
And every once and a while, he throws his lanky body on my bed and, patting it with his hand, says to me, "Come sit and talk to me."
Talk? I am so worried about him.
"Aren't you supposed to be all pissed off at me and generally trying to separate?" I ask him, suspiciously.
"Oh, Mom. That's such a stereotype."
I'm not positive but I'll thinking that my Zenlike resignation and patience (aided by some extensive red-wine drinking) during the Tonka-throwing, Ninja Turtle phases are somehow responsible for that kind of talk. Give a boy space to be a boy, and he'll become a man.
And I am learning to not only accept, but embrace the boy that remains in the man. There's certainly something pink and sparkly somewhere in me.
So, are you in the tearful, door-slamming house or are you living in the mumbling stinky house?
And I'm so sure I never gave my mother that kind of drama. Did you?
Sunday, April 15, 2007
We're not connecting
Life can be full of surprises, but fortysomething single woman must, like Boy Scouts, always be prepared.
Like when life throws a gorgeous man your way.
In my case, it was at the gas station.
I was futzing with my gas cap at the Mill Valley Arco station when I saw out of the corner of my eye that the guy at the pump in front of me was watching me. I couldn’t tell for sure, but he looked pretty darn good.
I took a quick glance, hoping that he wouldn’t see me checking him out, but, of course, he did. Our eyes met, and he flashed me a smile, and it was a beautiful smile, complete with twinkling eyes and dimples. And he was more than darn good looking — he was hot. My pulse quickened. I smiled back and then, inexplicably feeling like the shy child I once was, tried hard to look at everything else but him as my mind raced — “say something, say something, say something!”
I’m normally a pretty talkative gal, but my mind went blank.
Suddenly, I noticed the perfect entry to conversation: He had a New Mexico license plate. I’ve been to Santa Fe! We could chat about ... New Mexico.
But, I said nothing, despite many more minutes of smiling and eye locking.
And then he was gone.
From sight, that is. His face, his smile, his dimples — those stayed with me all day. And night. And the next day.
It was at that moment that I became a craigslist addict or, more precisely, a Missed Connection addict.
Now I know many people post on craigslist to sell or buy something — I’ve unloaded faded plastic jungle gyms and a Matchbox car collection that The Kid, Trent, has long ago outgrown. Others just want to rant about Bush, their two-timing lovers or arrogant Prius drivers. But the truth is a lot of us read craigslist for the Missed Connections.
Because so much of life is being in the right place at the right time, and having the right thing to say to the drop-dead gorgeous person whose eyes locked with yours as you were both stopped at the stoplight or who flashed you a smile while checking out at Trader Joe’s — or pumping gas right in front of you. A split-second differential, a momentary cat’s-got-your-tongue thing and you’ve got yourself a missed opportunity of finding true love and happiness for ever after — or at the very least, a date. Who doesn’t want a second chance? That’s why new sites like RightPlaceRightTime.com and kizmeet.com are popping up.
So for days after the “gas station incident,” I scrolled though MC, hoping to find a posting. There never was one, but in reading so many — some funny, some poignant — I realized that we’re all searching for the same thing: connection.
But beyond that, what a lovely fantasy to think that, for a very brief period, someone noticed you as you went about your life. Not only noticed you but felt that there was some sort of a spark there, enough for him to post his feelings for the world to see.
I have to admit that there’s a part of me that wouldn’t mind being missed that way. But I never really thought it would happen.
Until it did.
Despite being a somewhat shy child, I’m not what you would call a demure woman. I often talk to strangers. It’s the flirty side of me, but I don’t just talk to men. Women, children, couples and dogs aren’t safe, either. So when Mary and I sidled up to a table with three guys and a gal at Mark Pitta and Friend’s Comedy Night at 142 Throckmorton Theatre, I started chatting with them until Pitta got onstage.
The next day while scrolling through Missed Connections, I saw a headline that struck a chord: “Funny blonde at Comedy Night.”
“Hey, I was there!” I said to myself. “I wonder who she is?”
As I read the posting, I realized he was talking about me!
“You and your friend really made me laugh, more than the comedians,” the posting said.
“I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to chat with you after the show. If you see this, lol, drop me a line.”
I wondered which of the guys felt the spark. I strained to remember if any of them were attractive.
So, of course, I wrote back, and Mr. MC and I started a flirty e-mail exchange in which we slowly started to reveal ourselves. It seemed as if we had things in common.
Then, after a few days, something pretty strange started to happen. A little spring in my step, a silly smirk on my face, a desire to incessantly check my e-mail. I imagined meeting Mr. MC and really clicking. And thus, the fantasy-building began. Or, as I like to think of it, Imagination Gone Wild!
Candlelit nights with home-cooked meals and dancing; Saturdays spent kayaking, biking and hiking; lazy Sunday mornings filled with crosswords, coffee, snuggling and, well ...
After a flurry of e-mails, it was time to meet. Mr. MC asked me to meet over coffee, it was my weekend with my kid and his soccer games. I invited him for a glass of wine, he was heading out of town for business. He asked me to go for a hike, I was helping a friend move. I asked him to join me on a bike ride, he was best man in a wedding.
Weeks went by, and we had done nothing more than e-mail and chat on the phone. How hard could it possibly be for two people to get together?
“Maybe he’s married,” Mary observed as I told her my tale of desire and frustration.
“Married?” I fumed. “That just can’t be ... or can it?”
But before I even got to ask him that, I got the e-mail I’d been waiting for — one with an actual destination, date and a time to meet that worked for both of us. I’d like to say I got excited, but this is how it read:
“Hey! Well, I think we can finally make this happen, lol! A bunch of my buddies and I are going to crowd the bar at the Silver Peso Friday 5ish and be the frat boys we really are by getting blasted and getting rowdy. Come join the party!”
Frat boys? Blasted? Rowdy? I didn’t even like frat boys in college, so I certainly didn’t want any part of them in my 40s. And being in a bar at happy hour with a bunch of drunk rowdy men means only one thing for a woman, no matter what her age: disaster.
The fantasy I’d been building left my head just as quickly as I imagined Mr. MC and his friends would be puking in the Silver Peso bathroom.
In a way, I felt cheated, even though I know it was my fault for idealizing Mr. MC — imagining something real instead of what most likely would have been an awkward date or two followed by unreturned phone calls.
Recently, Sara and I were chatting about her love life (or lack thereof), and she went on and on about an attractive man she exchanged googly eyes with at the meat counter at Whole Foods.
“There was something about him, and the weird things was, people were looking at us like they could pick up the energy between us,” she glowed. “I wonder if he lives close by?”
“Well, you could always ...” and then I stopped myself.
“What?”
“Um, nevermind.”
I was, of course, about to send Sara to Missed Connections, as if it were some cosmic dating service, as if a lost moment could be recaptured and turned into true love. Maybe it can. But from now on I’m going to be in the moment — not fantasizing about the lost ones.
Like when life throws a gorgeous man your way.
In my case, it was at the gas station.
I was futzing with my gas cap at the Mill Valley Arco station when I saw out of the corner of my eye that the guy at the pump in front of me was watching me. I couldn’t tell for sure, but he looked pretty darn good.
I took a quick glance, hoping that he wouldn’t see me checking him out, but, of course, he did. Our eyes met, and he flashed me a smile, and it was a beautiful smile, complete with twinkling eyes and dimples. And he was more than darn good looking — he was hot. My pulse quickened. I smiled back and then, inexplicably feeling like the shy child I once was, tried hard to look at everything else but him as my mind raced — “say something, say something, say something!”
I’m normally a pretty talkative gal, but my mind went blank.
Suddenly, I noticed the perfect entry to conversation: He had a New Mexico license plate. I’ve been to Santa Fe! We could chat about ... New Mexico.
But, I said nothing, despite many more minutes of smiling and eye locking.
And then he was gone.
From sight, that is. His face, his smile, his dimples — those stayed with me all day. And night. And the next day.
It was at that moment that I became a craigslist addict or, more precisely, a Missed Connection addict.
Now I know many people post on craigslist to sell or buy something — I’ve unloaded faded plastic jungle gyms and a Matchbox car collection that The Kid, Trent, has long ago outgrown. Others just want to rant about Bush, their two-timing lovers or arrogant Prius drivers. But the truth is a lot of us read craigslist for the Missed Connections.
Because so much of life is being in the right place at the right time, and having the right thing to say to the drop-dead gorgeous person whose eyes locked with yours as you were both stopped at the stoplight or who flashed you a smile while checking out at Trader Joe’s — or pumping gas right in front of you. A split-second differential, a momentary cat’s-got-your-tongue thing and you’ve got yourself a missed opportunity of finding true love and happiness for ever after — or at the very least, a date. Who doesn’t want a second chance? That’s why new sites like RightPlaceRightTime.com and kizmeet.com are popping up.
So for days after the “gas station incident,” I scrolled though MC, hoping to find a posting. There never was one, but in reading so many — some funny, some poignant — I realized that we’re all searching for the same thing: connection.
But beyond that, what a lovely fantasy to think that, for a very brief period, someone noticed you as you went about your life. Not only noticed you but felt that there was some sort of a spark there, enough for him to post his feelings for the world to see.
I have to admit that there’s a part of me that wouldn’t mind being missed that way. But I never really thought it would happen.
Until it did.
Despite being a somewhat shy child, I’m not what you would call a demure woman. I often talk to strangers. It’s the flirty side of me, but I don’t just talk to men. Women, children, couples and dogs aren’t safe, either. So when Mary and I sidled up to a table with three guys and a gal at Mark Pitta and Friend’s Comedy Night at 142 Throckmorton Theatre, I started chatting with them until Pitta got onstage.
The next day while scrolling through Missed Connections, I saw a headline that struck a chord: “Funny blonde at Comedy Night.”
“Hey, I was there!” I said to myself. “I wonder who she is?”
As I read the posting, I realized he was talking about me!
“You and your friend really made me laugh, more than the comedians,” the posting said.
“I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to chat with you after the show. If you see this, lol, drop me a line.”
I wondered which of the guys felt the spark. I strained to remember if any of them were attractive.
So, of course, I wrote back, and Mr. MC and I started a flirty e-mail exchange in which we slowly started to reveal ourselves. It seemed as if we had things in common.
Then, after a few days, something pretty strange started to happen. A little spring in my step, a silly smirk on my face, a desire to incessantly check my e-mail. I imagined meeting Mr. MC and really clicking. And thus, the fantasy-building began. Or, as I like to think of it, Imagination Gone Wild!
Candlelit nights with home-cooked meals and dancing; Saturdays spent kayaking, biking and hiking; lazy Sunday mornings filled with crosswords, coffee, snuggling and, well ...
After a flurry of e-mails, it was time to meet. Mr. MC asked me to meet over coffee, it was my weekend with my kid and his soccer games. I invited him for a glass of wine, he was heading out of town for business. He asked me to go for a hike, I was helping a friend move. I asked him to join me on a bike ride, he was best man in a wedding.
Weeks went by, and we had done nothing more than e-mail and chat on the phone. How hard could it possibly be for two people to get together?
“Maybe he’s married,” Mary observed as I told her my tale of desire and frustration.
“Married?” I fumed. “That just can’t be ... or can it?”
But before I even got to ask him that, I got the e-mail I’d been waiting for — one with an actual destination, date and a time to meet that worked for both of us. I’d like to say I got excited, but this is how it read:
“Hey! Well, I think we can finally make this happen, lol! A bunch of my buddies and I are going to crowd the bar at the Silver Peso Friday 5ish and be the frat boys we really are by getting blasted and getting rowdy. Come join the party!”
Frat boys? Blasted? Rowdy? I didn’t even like frat boys in college, so I certainly didn’t want any part of them in my 40s. And being in a bar at happy hour with a bunch of drunk rowdy men means only one thing for a woman, no matter what her age: disaster.
The fantasy I’d been building left my head just as quickly as I imagined Mr. MC and his friends would be puking in the Silver Peso bathroom.
In a way, I felt cheated, even though I know it was my fault for idealizing Mr. MC — imagining something real instead of what most likely would have been an awkward date or two followed by unreturned phone calls.
Recently, Sara and I were chatting about her love life (or lack thereof), and she went on and on about an attractive man she exchanged googly eyes with at the meat counter at Whole Foods.
“There was something about him, and the weird things was, people were looking at us like they could pick up the energy between us,” she glowed. “I wonder if he lives close by?”
“Well, you could always ...” and then I stopped myself.
“What?”
“Um, nevermind.”
I was, of course, about to send Sara to Missed Connections, as if it were some cosmic dating service, as if a lost moment could be recaptured and turned into true love. Maybe it can. But from now on I’m going to be in the moment — not fantasizing about the lost ones.
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