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 ...

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.”

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.

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?

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:

"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 ....

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.

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