there's not too much between me and...

a cookie. A really big cookie with at least 500 calories. Or a mini-spending binge. Or some fine sulkery in the library tonight for a few hours. Or staying at work for the next 4 hours even though my head is about to explode in pain from a three day migraine headache. Every time I read something that refers to the boyfriend's ex-wife and what they share I go to a most unspecial place. When I was little and something ugly happened that I did not like I used to hide in the dirty laundry hamper. The smell of my parents enveloped me, and my pain was soaked up by the t-shirts and underware. When I was around ten the volatile climate in my house sent me to my room where I spent hours or even days evaporating into my radio and books. Today it's shoe shopping, car eating, and hiding out in otherwise inconspicuous venues like the hardware store.
I hide because I feel that the sadness is oozing out of every part of my body and it makes me so unsightly....I hide because I just cannot deal with what I know: my mom and dad hated each other and the boyfriend and his ex-wife have something that the boyfriend and I don't. I hide because I am dumb enough to read the blogs that the boyfriend writes that refer to what he and his ex-wife or as he likes to write it "we" has.
Little Emma Ruddy is in my room drawing on a whiteboard that was specially made for someone of her size. She's describing her love of whiteboard markers- she is talking to me about how they can even erase with your hand. She's my friend Tom's kid. I have this urge to ask Tom if she really is everything in his life...does he love her more than he loves himself- more than he loves his wife Val? And when he is with other people does she stay in his soul, or does she just erase?

what a dish

After putting up some blinds in the apartment I decided I deserved a treat and popped on the tellie. Ah, Food Network, my calorie free substitute for historical binge eating. There's that stiff frigid one, Sandra Lee- OH MY GOD- AND her huge bouyant breasts in front of her grill and limes. Jesus fucking christ- now Sandra Lee is being primped for pimping. It's bad enough that my daily bouts of nausea are spurned on by the slap fests of my inner Betty Friedan and Hugh Hefner, but now generation boobalicious has gone banal and it makes me wanna open up a big can of intellectual whoop ass. But that never helps me make friends.
It takes me back a few months when that song "It's hard to be a pimp" was nominated for some big dumb award that I really did not care about. What I did care about though was the fact that somebody who rented out the loins of others was whining about his life. How about my song brother? How about "It's hard to have a thought", or better yet, "It's even harder to love sex, be a pervert, be a girl, and have a brain." Twenty years ago with my first boyfriend I learned that guys like naked pictures. I attempted to teach Matt how stupid looking at porn made him seem- this was his soft spot- appearing stupid. I found stashes of magazines with titles like; Young Asian Butt Holes Ready for your Schlong- Wet Naked Naked Wet Wetness, Naked Nude Naked Teens not Really Putting on Clothes. After too many shouting matches and more revenge fantasies than I could count I let Matt, and every boyfriend after that win.
Somehow, years later the other women my current boyfriend ogles doesn't affect me with enough rage to perform interpretive dance, but his need to exercise his inappropriate flirting muscle does bring on a nausea that would make Sartre jealous. He names it as an "indulgence"- something that his sexless wizoned marriage provoked-substitions of 99cent hamburgers before dinner for marital duty. What's interesting is that his flirting is in a category with clandestine donut runs. I wonder if he realizes it would be much easier for me if I had found powdered sugar on his lapel. I wonder how it is that his little ole' habit could bring on a pain in me that takes me right back to the days when my father would burst into flames and take our doorknobs off our bedroom doors, or put chains on the cabinets so I couldn't snack between meals. The last time I checked I had evolved into a confident, respectful, reasonable human being- but when I imagine the boyfriend telling another woman that she is "ferociously beautiful" I feel like I want to humiliate and then promptly pick up the nearest fire hose and kill everyone who ever hurt me.
That saying that "trust is earned " has been ringing in my ears whenever the dark and hairy "indulgence" issue rears its greasy head. So, does that mean that I am the employer and boyfriend gets a weekly paycheck? It would be really cool actually if trust worked like that- if boyfriend could do some sort of task or work that would merit direct deposits of trust with tax free respect from the employer (me). But for now it seems that we will both just have to stay with our day jobs and 100 calorie portion control cookie packs as evidence that our lives make sense and are under control.

My favorite thing about blogs right now is that nobody in the universe can be left out; the blogosphere is a fraternity that’s given a righteous voice to those nameless faces who chew gum or walk upright on pavement. If you are divorcing- there are essays, stories and clichés for the guilty, the griefstricken, and the intellectually amicable. If you are having a tough time with the summer humidity, there’s a place where you can go so you won’t feel alone anymore; your uncomfortable moisture problem should not go unnoticed- you are after all a human being with feelings and opinions.
My new boyfriend, a separated father of three helped me see the path to justice through blogging. After having my fill of quippy, web 2.0 minded people I decided to revive my own blog- hell, I can drop names and revel in my own cleverness in hopes that someone will respond too!
So I answered my own prayers and decided to write about my extraordinarily unique position of being the girlfriend of a newly separated guy who has three kids in hopes that there will be others wanting to share in my exclusivity.
The best part about being the girlfriend of a newly separated guy who has three kids a.k.a. GONSGw/3K, is that I have never had so much opportunity to self-scrutinize. During the first six months of the relationship the big temptation was to actually buy into the very part time mellow feeling about the fact that he was not divorced yet. This was powered by a fantastically dramatic dialogue with my inner Ghandi:

Anne: “What the fuck, I’m not vacationing in Martha’s fucking Vinyard with HIS GODDAMN EX-WIFE so that he can be with his kids.”
Ghandi: “If you say anything resistant he will not come to these ideas himself.”
Anne: “Why in God’s name would I go to a house that he shared for ten years to celebrate the birthday of HER child?”
Ghandi: “At the end of the day it’s only cake, ice cream, and Ethan Allen furniture.”

Ghandi took it pretty hard with a blow to the head after that, and unfortunately the episode ended with me recognizing that all the therapy and rationale in the world could not stop me from bingeing on thoughts about the only family life I had ever known- my childhood.

irony...the other white meat

I cannot even pretend to be able to create anything prosey that will express my feelings about the email below: from Big Fat Famous Writer, dated yesterday at 11 pm. If this were a radio show, this would be the time I'd ask you to call in with your thoughts. My inner Dr. Phil and inner Woody Allen are having one helluva slapfest in my head right now.

Hey, there -- sorry to have been out of touch, I've been traveling a great deal and haven't had much time to myself (at least not awake time). How have you been? I would very much like to talk to you. Is it too late to call you tonight? If not, where can I reach you? And if it is, when and where can I call you tomorrow?

Hope you're well. Take care--

--RR

the dirtiest word ever

L-O-N-E-L-I-N-E-S-S....this word is like the word "fuck" as I imagine it might have been considered in the 40's or 50's- or in places where the words "gay" or '"lesbian" are not as de rigueur as they are on mainstream TV today. People are scared of this word and all that it conotates, because like other words that have actual sexual meanings or implications, it forces a reaction that provokes one to look inside him/herself to think of values. You have to think to yourself:" Am I okay with the actual meaning of "Gay"/"Lesbian" because I feel great about my own sexual orientation, so if someone says those words they have little affect on me outside of their context in the conversation? And "fuck"- do I see that word is merely an exclamation for some whose cultural base supports profanity as a means to express big emotion? But "lonely" seems so loaded: can you even think of one character on any TV show who is OUT about being lonely? And when you think of The Lonely Character on TV or in movies- she/he is usually portrayed in this completely overdone, cheesy, characatureistic way- old, or unattractive, with way too many cats or overly obvious personality defects to bring humor to an otherwise dramatic and real predicament. Kind of like black faces in the 20's and 30's and how people who are gay were portrayed before Ellen DeGeneres hit the scene. I do think if I watched HBO more regularly I might see less offensive cliche's of this less than pretty human condition-like on Six Feet Under maybe Brenda was pretty lonely. In any case I guess my perception of how loneliness is perceived by others is actually part of my own loneliness- so if I think that I have given myself away or am outed somehow- that contributes to the general humiliation I feel in being lonely. And I am just as guilty of contributing to the derogatory objectification of the lonely by self effacing with humor when I am outed or have revealed too much about having a rather rickety support network. Now I get why that crying clown image became such a staple in visual iconography- we all know what it really means.

isn't it neat when...

There are just a few things in my life thus far that have really turned out EXACTLY as I had hoped-and I am really really grateful for them. One of them is my friend Bonnie's life. She called me this morning and talked about her daughter's teacher and how complex and emotional Kindergarten is for her daughter. After giving her the rest of the story on Big Fat Famous Writer guy ( man she is a good listener!) she told me how this teacher has been really emotionally unavailable- and just has not made a good first impression whatsoever. As I listened I started to think on why the nurturer part of my job as a teacher is the glue for me in my life and profession. There are always going to be kids that you just will never understand because they are way smarter than you are, or they just operate so differently from the way you did as a kid. But to teach all kinds of kids you have to be ready to love them- I mean REALLY love them- the way that you love a bitchy sister, crabby cat, distant father, neurotic mother. You have to not only look past what you may not understand about them, but you have to embrace it and try to provide ways for yourself to really see them as they are. Because if you can see the kids in your class exactly as they are, you will just automatically help them to be more sparkly versions of themselves, and isn't that what we want? Isn't that what a diverse and evolved culture needs- grown ups that accept themselves for all they are and are not- and groups of grownups who don't need to be the BEST at everything- but need to accept challenges and keep growing at what they can do fabulously? Yes- we have to teach skills- the basics to become eventually employable- but isn't knowing how to care for someone- knowing how to be polite and loving a REALLY important skill too? And you might think, well- that stuff should come from home, but actually they have to come from teachers and community too because we want our kids to feel safe, confident, and concerned outside of our homes right? We need to make sure in fact that kids see that emotional intelligence is a hihgly valued skill- being tuned into the world and who is in it with you is one of those skills that as a society we do need to survive- because we are interdependent. This is my life's work because my father spent most of my childhood trying to brainwash me into thinking that one must be independent...that to depend on anybody for anything is foolish and unrealistic- it is only now after years of therapy of course that I realize that was his way of dodging his own responsibility as a parent, husband and human being. Combined with his own history of being raised by a father who believed the gospel of Ayn Rand and a mother who's father starved her as punishment- he had some high quality tools to really fuck up his own kids' self esteem. So every day of my life I straddle two dichotomous things in my head: my own demons of not wanting to play with others because of a troft of fear that people will not like me because they will think I am weak or imperfect somehow- and my gynormous desire to love and be loved. And just when the voice of my dad gets too loud, I look at my class and realize that they are watching me in the lunchroom and hallway- and what they take home that day will become a critical part of the setting of their stories.

if I could do it over again

Brett Freedman called me a few weeks ago after I saw him on the Today Show. He was my closest friend from childhood, and he is now a make-up artist to the stars. Our friendship ended around eighth grade for the usual reasons: I was making up insane lies to get attention due to the fact that my parents were divorcing, my sister was beginning her drug addiction at age 10, and I was the perfect victim for Brett and his new sidekick Carol Bradley- rich girl. When Brett left his first message on my voicemail I had this bizarre fantasy that he called to apologize for all the really uncreative suburban teenage bullying he had committed against me. I imagined that he would tell me that he actually really cared for me- and that to this day he thinks of me as a brilliantly creative and funny person. I told my friend Jay these fantasies- and my sister ...she said "don't count on it", Jay said that maybe it was karma coming back around for me. And I tended to agree with Jay because the all time nausea inducing thing happened that same week that Brett Freedman called me: Richard The Big Fat Famous Writer emailed me. This brought on an onslaught of apology and acknowledgement fantasies in my brain. His email went something like this-" Hi- I know it is a terrible cliche, but I am writing to you out of the blue to not apologize or acknowledge you in any way". He wrote me this email four days after he had a hefty article published in the NY Times magazine that brought up so many feelings that I felt like I fell on a porcupine. The coincidence was so unpleasant- and not in that popular "train wreck" style of unpleasantness, but in that way that makes you need at least 200% more therapy than the 30% covered by your insurance. So it turns out that I was right about Brett Freedman anyway. I am going to call him this weekend cause he is coming to NYC soon for a shoot and wants to have dinner. As for Richard Big Fat Famous Writer in my head- he is that damned stale gum I've been chewing for way to long but just won't spit out because even that dull mint that has now numbed my tongue and flacid rubber that has slackened my jaw is satisfying because it distracts me from my lonliness.