I had been accepted at the UT-Austin graduate school of business. My friend Rebecca and I were sharing a house, but she was moving to D.C. for a job with the Department of Labor. I couldn't afford the house on my own.
I found a cute duplex in the same good zip code neighborhood. We were Oh-three-ers. Highly desirable Austin location. I looked at it, thought yes, this will work, and the landlady, Michelle, and I signed the lease.
Four hours later, she called me to say that she needed to charge more rent than we had agreed upon.
Can you say, ENORMOUS CRIMSON FLAG BEATING ME OVER THE HEAD?
But I ignored that banner. And I - this is where it gets worse - agreed to the rent increase.
How dumb was that?
I moved in. Cute cute little Tarrytown duplex. Walking distance to the shuttle bus to school, although I tried riding my bike at first, which is not the best idea when it is 112 degrees outside. For a week straight.
A few days after I moved in, I came home to find that someone had closed the blinds, removed my plants from the windowsill, and put a "for sale" sign up in the front yard.
Michelle. She left me a phone message: "Please keep the blinds closed. It looks tacky to have them open."
The "for sale" sign? I spoke to my upstairs neighbor. "This place has been for sale for months," she told me. "Michelle took the sign down before she tried to rent your place."
Because knowing if a place is for sale and that I could possibly be displaced by new owners is not information that would be useful in making the rental decision.
Deep breath. All the Drama was over. Still a cute place.
No. Michelle stopped by my neighbor's house on her way home from aerobics "just for a glass of water." As in, let herself in with the key while the neighbor was out, got a glass of water and left the dirty glass in the sink.
Realtors started bringing people by. Unannounced. When I was busy studying, something I did in grad school. A new experience for me. Who knew that studying could improve your grades so much?
In the middle of studying for finals, I was interrupted by a realtor and a client. The client was a pompous jerk who worked at Dell. I told them that they couldn't look right now; I was busy. Yes. They should have called. And yes, it would only have taken a few minutes to let them look, but I was not inclined to be charitable to someone who might displace me from my home and who was in any way in cahoots with Michelle.
The client and I got into a bit of a yelling match. (I know! I don't usually yell at people to their faces! I wait until later that night after someone has ticked me off and yell about him to an innocent person.)
He made some snotty comment about the UT business school - he had his MBA from Wharton.
"How much did you pay for your MBA?" I asked.
"$60,000," he admitted.
"Mine will cost me about $5,000 and guess what? UT is a top-20 school. Plus we're both here in Austin. Looks like I made the better investment," I snapped.
I complained to Michelle's husband. He agreed that she was pushy and talked smack about her, but wouldn't challenge her. He would call me to complain about her, which I thought was highly inappropriate. He talked to me - his tenant - about divorcing his wife. I don't know why he stayed except she was very pretty with a large chest. But she was pretty only on the outside. As soon as you spent more than a few minutes with her, you knew that if you looked it up in the dictionary, her photo was next to the phrase, "Beauty is only skin deep."
She re-landscaped the yard and would come in to use my bathroom. Without asking.
She let herself into my neighbor's place while my neighbor was - ahem - busy with her boyfriend.
That was the last straw for my neighbor. She moved out. Prospective tenants started looking. They would ask me what it was like to live here.
I warned them.
One of them told Michelle I was telling people not to move in.
She called me and screamed at me.
I went to legal services at school to see what I could do. The lawyer told me that according to the lease, Michelle did have the right to enter when appropriate, but the devil was in the definition of "appropriate." He agreed with me that her behavior was insane.
I started to have nightmares about Michelle coming after me with a knife. With legal aid's help, I wrote a letter to Michelle telling her I wanted to move out because of what she was doing.
She sent me a letter saying fine, I could break the lease but I had to be out by December 25 and forfeit the deposit.
I was not in a position to lose that money and legal aid said that she was within her legal rights.
I stayed.
The place was still for sale. Nobody wanted it as a rental property and the lot wasn't big enough for a single-family home by current zoning.
She moved onto her fourth realtor in eight months. I spoke to one of them and she told me that Michelle McMichael had a reputation with Austin realtors as being almost impossible to work with.
I got a new upstairs neighbor who moved out after three months. The place was up for rent - again. I continued to warn people.
One of the prospective tenants I warned against renting did indeed rent - not to live there but to cheat on Austin schools and have an address to get her daughter in from out of district.
I ran into the new tenant months after I moved out and she, who did not even live in the property, shook her head and said, "I should have listened to you. That woman is nuts."
"I told you so," I said.
As soon as my lease was up, I moved out.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
In which I rent a room in a group house in Washington DC with the three post-college guys who lived like post-college guys
I had to move out of the room I was renting from Crazy Carmen in D.C. I had gone to Washington D.C. after I got out of the Peace Corps in the hopes of finding a job in international development. What I discovered was that someone with my background - master's degree, one foreign language, international work experience, Fortune 50 company experience - could find employment as a secretary. A temp secretary.
The key to a good job was connections, of which I had none. Connections could be developed if one was willing to stick around town long enough, working for almost no money. The people who did this were subsidized by their parents, I suspect. Those of us who had to pay for our own health insurance, car insurance, rent and food on $11/hour from the temp agency had a harder time making ends meet.
I first rented a room from Carmen, a Peruvian woman who was a full-time secretary with benefits at the World Bank. Not a bad gig. The secretary thing, I mean. I temped at the World Bank for secretaries who were on vacation. I don't know if my workload in their absence was anything like what they did, but I had about six spare hours a day after I distributed the mail, printed the boss's emails for him and sent a few faxes. One of the secretaries for whom I subbed passed her spare time looking at internet porn, if her internet bookmarks were any indication.
Note to people who take vacation and are replaced by temps: Delete your porn bookmarks.
Note to temps: On your first day, when the head secretary is showing you around and tells you "there's the bathroom" and "there's the break room" and "here's where the mail goes," realize that the first two statements are for your information but that the last one is so you know where to put the mail when it arrives because for the first time in your life, you are a mail sorter and deliverer, which can be a humbling experience after you have had significantly more responsibility than making sure Mr Smith's mail doesn't go into Ms Carr's box but hey, it pays the bills (sort of) and you are not in a position to be choosy.
I was one of two tenants renting an upstairs bedroom and sharing the upstairs bath. Carmen was reluctant to let me use the kitchen, but acquiesced when I promised I would just make oatmeal in the morning and maybe make a sandwich in the evening. For my $400 a month, she also reluctantly agreed to let me use the washer and the dryer. I was not, however, supposed to sit in the living room. Or have overnight guests, male or female. For $400 a month. For one room. In 1995.
I was not a housemate, as I presumed. I was a renter of one room. One. Other than that, I was to stay out of her sight.
I moved out after she accused me of ruining her ceiling. The plaster on the ceiling underneath the upstairs bathroom fell off because the bathroom floor leaked. The other tenant would bathe and leave the shower door open. The water dripped off the shower door and onto the floor, where it leaked through.
When I noticed this problem, I bought a squeegee and used it on the door every time I showered. I suggested that the other tenant do the same and told Carmen about the problem, suggesting she might want to have the grout re-done.
They both ignored me and after a month, the plaster started to fall.
According to Carmen, this was my fault. That the floor was destroyed because of my one month of showering and squeegeeing and not because of the other tenant's year of not squeegeeing.
And I didn't just move out; she evicted me.
Maybe I am the "X" here. Two destroyed bathrooms and I am the common factor.
On to the group house in Arlington. A DC tradition: a bunch of people who don't know each other sharing a house.
I shared the house with three men in their 20s. Two lived downstairs and had their own bathroom; two of us were upstairs and shared the other bathroom. Knowing that I would be cleaning the bathroom anyhow, I negotiated a deal with my floormate that he would let me use his phone (I did not want to install my own phone - remember, this was in the days before cellphones) in exchange for my cleaning the bathroom.
But I had no such power over the kitchen.
Three guys in the mid-20s vs me.
They won.
Honestly, how could I expect someone to move the pizza box two feet from the counter to the trash? And to use the drain trap when rinsing dishes? If you do that, gunk gets caught in it. That's gross. Easier to let the food wash down the drain and clog the sink.
I finally got tired of the whole thing and moved away. I wasn't patient enough to wait months or years to meet the right person to get a decent job. I had done my charity work; now I wanted to make real money. And I was tired of sleeping on the floor on my blowup mattress and sharing a bathroom with strangers.
The key to a good job was connections, of which I had none. Connections could be developed if one was willing to stick around town long enough, working for almost no money. The people who did this were subsidized by their parents, I suspect. Those of us who had to pay for our own health insurance, car insurance, rent and food on $11/hour from the temp agency had a harder time making ends meet.
I first rented a room from Carmen, a Peruvian woman who was a full-time secretary with benefits at the World Bank. Not a bad gig. The secretary thing, I mean. I temped at the World Bank for secretaries who were on vacation. I don't know if my workload in their absence was anything like what they did, but I had about six spare hours a day after I distributed the mail, printed the boss's emails for him and sent a few faxes. One of the secretaries for whom I subbed passed her spare time looking at internet porn, if her internet bookmarks were any indication.
Note to people who take vacation and are replaced by temps: Delete your porn bookmarks.
Note to temps: On your first day, when the head secretary is showing you around and tells you "there's the bathroom" and "there's the break room" and "here's where the mail goes," realize that the first two statements are for your information but that the last one is so you know where to put the mail when it arrives because for the first time in your life, you are a mail sorter and deliverer, which can be a humbling experience after you have had significantly more responsibility than making sure Mr Smith's mail doesn't go into Ms Carr's box but hey, it pays the bills (sort of) and you are not in a position to be choosy.
I was one of two tenants renting an upstairs bedroom and sharing the upstairs bath. Carmen was reluctant to let me use the kitchen, but acquiesced when I promised I would just make oatmeal in the morning and maybe make a sandwich in the evening. For my $400 a month, she also reluctantly agreed to let me use the washer and the dryer. I was not, however, supposed to sit in the living room. Or have overnight guests, male or female. For $400 a month. For one room. In 1995.
I was not a housemate, as I presumed. I was a renter of one room. One. Other than that, I was to stay out of her sight.
I moved out after she accused me of ruining her ceiling. The plaster on the ceiling underneath the upstairs bathroom fell off because the bathroom floor leaked. The other tenant would bathe and leave the shower door open. The water dripped off the shower door and onto the floor, where it leaked through.
When I noticed this problem, I bought a squeegee and used it on the door every time I showered. I suggested that the other tenant do the same and told Carmen about the problem, suggesting she might want to have the grout re-done.
They both ignored me and after a month, the plaster started to fall.
According to Carmen, this was my fault. That the floor was destroyed because of my one month of showering and squeegeeing and not because of the other tenant's year of not squeegeeing.
And I didn't just move out; she evicted me.
Maybe I am the "X" here. Two destroyed bathrooms and I am the common factor.
On to the group house in Arlington. A DC tradition: a bunch of people who don't know each other sharing a house.
I shared the house with three men in their 20s. Two lived downstairs and had their own bathroom; two of us were upstairs and shared the other bathroom. Knowing that I would be cleaning the bathroom anyhow, I negotiated a deal with my floormate that he would let me use his phone (I did not want to install my own phone - remember, this was in the days before cellphones) in exchange for my cleaning the bathroom.
But I had no such power over the kitchen.
Three guys in the mid-20s vs me.
They won.
Honestly, how could I expect someone to move the pizza box two feet from the counter to the trash? And to use the drain trap when rinsing dishes? If you do that, gunk gets caught in it. That's gross. Easier to let the food wash down the drain and clog the sink.
I finally got tired of the whole thing and moved away. I wasn't patient enough to wait months or years to meet the right person to get a decent job. I had done my charity work; now I wanted to make real money. And I was tired of sleeping on the floor on my blowup mattress and sharing a bathroom with strangers.
In which I rent from Janette, who I thought was my friend but then went a little crazy
I moved from Maruja la Bruja's house (Maruja the Witch) to Janette's house. I had met Janette when I shopped at her knitting store. I knit a lot in Chile. At work, we had long meetings (on benches, not even on chairs) about important issues like, "Should our mission be to serve Mapuche women or young Mapuche women?"
These meetings would last eight hours and end without resolution. Knitting during these torture sessions made me feel like I was actually accomplishing something.
Rosa, the director of the agency (La Casa de la Mujer Mapuche, "House of the Mapuche Woman," Mapuches being an indigenous group), told me I had to stop knitting because it was "distracting." Rosa's baby was attached to her boob at that very moment. It was not uncommon to see breasts whipped out at least two or three times during meetings for children as old as four. Yet my knitting was the problem.
Note about my working conditions in Chile:
Our office was in an old two-storey house without heating. Offices upstairs, store downstairs. It would get so cold inside that I had to wear gloves while I typed. We didn't have the money for heat, but my co-workers found money in the budget to buy their lunches. Thank you, U.S. taxpayer, who funded the group via a grant from the Inter-American Foundation.
The toilet paper disappeared frequently. Stolen. I brought my own toilet paper to work and locked it in my desk.
My first week at work, there was a party. (Not on my behalf.) Two men came to the office and slaughtered a sheep in the back yard. They stabbed it in the neck with a sharp stick, let the blood drain into a pan (for later eating - mixed with lemon juice and cilantro and left until it coagulated - I avoided that delicacy), then cut a hole in the skin by the back heel and blew it up like a balloon to separate the skin from the flesh for easier skinning.
Then they butchered it and hung the meat on the stair rail of the office, where it rested for two days until it was cooked.
The barbecued meat was good, but a little odd to walk up to my office past raw mutton for a couple of days.
But my knitting was "distracting."
I went to the knitting store a lot. Janette and I became friends sort of. The kind of friend you talk to only in a certain place, like your gym friends who are your friends at the gym but not outside of the gym. Janette was my knitting store friend.
During the Maruja travails, I asked Janette if she knew of anyone with a room to rent.
She did, she told me. She had a little shed in her back yard with one room and a bathroom. I could rent the room and use her kitchen.
Win/win! Rent a room from someone I already like! But with privacy!
I looked at the place (as if there would have been anything to keep me from taking it). It was a small, sturdy building with room for a twin bed and a dresser. The bathroom, which had a shower but no tub, was tiny but it would be my own bathroom, with only my hair and toothpaste in the sink and my shower dirt and my whiskers in my razor.
I moved in.
Janette and I would chat in the evenings as she prepared supper and I made myself something to eat. I liked her two kids. I made them barbecued chicken and baked beans once, but they didn't like the idea of sweet meat and sweet beans. Nor did they like the cornbread. Corn is not for bread. It is for soup - a half a cob thrown into each soupbowl. This would be good if they used sweet corn, but they used field corn, which is only fit for livestock in my opinion.*
I did not take their criticism to heart because the main flavoring in Chilean food is salt. Fifteen years after leaving Chile, I still salt my food too much because I was forced to eat over-salted meals while I was there. (I will say, though, that the produce in Chile was fabulous. The key was to do my own cooking.)
Janette's husband was not around. He, a university professor, had left her for someone else, but they weren't divorced. Maybe divorce wasn't legal in Chile yet? Chile had one of the highest rates of bigamy in the world then, as in, I won't let the fact that I am not divorced from my first spouse keep me from marrying my second.
The door to my room did not have a lock. Janette hadn't gotten around to installing one. I was not comfortable leaving the room unsecured because I had a camera and cash.
The solution?
I removed the doorknob and carried it with me. Without the knob, the door couldn't be opened. It latched closed and stayed that way until the knob was installed and turned.
I soon tired of carrying a heavy doorknob in my bag, so hid it behind the rosebushes instead.
Hi-tech security.
Things were fine.
Then I met that embassy guy in Santiago. The one with the porn magazines hidden under the towel in his nightstand.
He wanted to visit me.
I asked Janette if it was OK if he stayed. She was not comfortable with the idea of a co-ed sleepover for her unmarried tenant.
Oh! I told her. I don't want to sleep with him that way! I was going to give him the bed and I was going to sleep on the floor. (Which was true - not only did I not want to sleep with him that way but there was not room for two people in the twin bed.)
She suggested that I sleep in the house while he was visiting. Perfect. I preferred that solution anyhow.
I thought everything had been resolved.
He came, we drove around the countryside (the joy of driving in a car and listening to the radio after you have had a year of only public transportation on crowded busses is enormous), we stopped for lunch in Pucon, a town at the base of a volcano, we bought Chilean cheese from a farm stand, which is not All That, we got stuff to make supper and cooked in Janette's kitchen.
The kitchen to which I had been granted access. I thought.
The next day, he returned to Santiago.
Janette got mad at me.
Why? I asked.
You let that man into my house! she said.
What? Yes. We cooked supper. You were already done in the kitchen. Why is this a big deal?
You let him into my house! Into my kitchen!
She was adamant that I had done something wrong. She stopped talking to me, which made cooking awkward and difficult for me. Our friendship was over.
I had to once again find a new place to live, me with the scarlet "R" for "renter" or "K" for "kitchen abuser" or "A" for "maybe adulteress."
* Remind me to tell you my fish-flavored chocolate chip cookie story some day.
These meetings would last eight hours and end without resolution. Knitting during these torture sessions made me feel like I was actually accomplishing something.
Rosa, the director of the agency (La Casa de la Mujer Mapuche, "House of the Mapuche Woman," Mapuches being an indigenous group), told me I had to stop knitting because it was "distracting." Rosa's baby was attached to her boob at that very moment. It was not uncommon to see breasts whipped out at least two or three times during meetings for children as old as four. Yet my knitting was the problem.
Note about my working conditions in Chile:
Our office was in an old two-storey house without heating. Offices upstairs, store downstairs. It would get so cold inside that I had to wear gloves while I typed. We didn't have the money for heat, but my co-workers found money in the budget to buy their lunches. Thank you, U.S. taxpayer, who funded the group via a grant from the Inter-American Foundation.
The toilet paper disappeared frequently. Stolen. I brought my own toilet paper to work and locked it in my desk.
My first week at work, there was a party. (Not on my behalf.) Two men came to the office and slaughtered a sheep in the back yard. They stabbed it in the neck with a sharp stick, let the blood drain into a pan (for later eating - mixed with lemon juice and cilantro and left until it coagulated - I avoided that delicacy), then cut a hole in the skin by the back heel and blew it up like a balloon to separate the skin from the flesh for easier skinning.
Then they butchered it and hung the meat on the stair rail of the office, where it rested for two days until it was cooked.
The barbecued meat was good, but a little odd to walk up to my office past raw mutton for a couple of days.
But my knitting was "distracting."
I went to the knitting store a lot. Janette and I became friends sort of. The kind of friend you talk to only in a certain place, like your gym friends who are your friends at the gym but not outside of the gym. Janette was my knitting store friend.
During the Maruja travails, I asked Janette if she knew of anyone with a room to rent.
She did, she told me. She had a little shed in her back yard with one room and a bathroom. I could rent the room and use her kitchen.
Win/win! Rent a room from someone I already like! But with privacy!
I looked at the place (as if there would have been anything to keep me from taking it). It was a small, sturdy building with room for a twin bed and a dresser. The bathroom, which had a shower but no tub, was tiny but it would be my own bathroom, with only my hair and toothpaste in the sink and my shower dirt and my whiskers in my razor.
I moved in.
Janette and I would chat in the evenings as she prepared supper and I made myself something to eat. I liked her two kids. I made them barbecued chicken and baked beans once, but they didn't like the idea of sweet meat and sweet beans. Nor did they like the cornbread. Corn is not for bread. It is for soup - a half a cob thrown into each soupbowl. This would be good if they used sweet corn, but they used field corn, which is only fit for livestock in my opinion.*
I did not take their criticism to heart because the main flavoring in Chilean food is salt. Fifteen years after leaving Chile, I still salt my food too much because I was forced to eat over-salted meals while I was there. (I will say, though, that the produce in Chile was fabulous. The key was to do my own cooking.)
Janette's husband was not around. He, a university professor, had left her for someone else, but they weren't divorced. Maybe divorce wasn't legal in Chile yet? Chile had one of the highest rates of bigamy in the world then, as in, I won't let the fact that I am not divorced from my first spouse keep me from marrying my second.
The door to my room did not have a lock. Janette hadn't gotten around to installing one. I was not comfortable leaving the room unsecured because I had a camera and cash.
The solution?
I removed the doorknob and carried it with me. Without the knob, the door couldn't be opened. It latched closed and stayed that way until the knob was installed and turned.
I soon tired of carrying a heavy doorknob in my bag, so hid it behind the rosebushes instead.
Hi-tech security.
Things were fine.
Then I met that embassy guy in Santiago. The one with the porn magazines hidden under the towel in his nightstand.
He wanted to visit me.
I asked Janette if it was OK if he stayed. She was not comfortable with the idea of a co-ed sleepover for her unmarried tenant.
Oh! I told her. I don't want to sleep with him that way! I was going to give him the bed and I was going to sleep on the floor. (Which was true - not only did I not want to sleep with him that way but there was not room for two people in the twin bed.)
She suggested that I sleep in the house while he was visiting. Perfect. I preferred that solution anyhow.
I thought everything had been resolved.
He came, we drove around the countryside (the joy of driving in a car and listening to the radio after you have had a year of only public transportation on crowded busses is enormous), we stopped for lunch in Pucon, a town at the base of a volcano, we bought Chilean cheese from a farm stand, which is not All That, we got stuff to make supper and cooked in Janette's kitchen.
The kitchen to which I had been granted access. I thought.
The next day, he returned to Santiago.
Janette got mad at me.
Why? I asked.
You let that man into my house! she said.
What? Yes. We cooked supper. You were already done in the kitchen. Why is this a big deal?
You let him into my house! Into my kitchen!
She was adamant that I had done something wrong. She stopped talking to me, which made cooking awkward and difficult for me. Our friendship was over.
I had to once again find a new place to live, me with the scarlet "R" for "renter" or "K" for "kitchen abuser" or "A" for "maybe adulteress."
* Remind me to tell you my fish-flavored chocolate chip cookie story some day.
In which I rent a room from Maruja la Bruja, crazy landlady #240
I will tell you all about Michelle McMichael, the worst landlady I have ever had, but first I need to tell you about other landlords* so you can have some context and understand that I am not exaggerating when I call her the Numero Uno Mas Mala.
When I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Chile, I lived in four different homes. The first was during my three-month training in Santiago. I lived with a poor family who gave me their daughters' bedroom, which had no door, so they strung a sheet across the opening. A sheet door does give one a place to undress in privacy, but does nothing to keep the noise from two little girls who did not go to bed until midnight out of the bedroom.
The house was unheated, which you would think would not be an issue, but that is only if you know nothing about geography. Santiago is in the mountains - remember, altitude more than latitude (longitude?) determines temperature, which means it does get cold.
The family also did not have a toilet seat on the toilet, something I saw over and over again in South America, which makes me wonder if the toilet was installed that way or if there is a secondary market for toilet seats and if so, what is it? How are they used?
My second living situation was when I moved to Temuco, a city of 250,000. There was a Mercedes dealership and there were ox-driven carts clogging the streets. I moved into a house with Mary, a Scottish college student spending a year abroad, and Louise, an American woman doing some kind of fellowship.
My bedroom was the tiny alcove upstairs without a door. No bed. I put a sleeping bag on the floor and both my head and my feet almost touched the walls when I was lying down.
Mary and I got along great, but Louise was a different story. The bathroom was an interior room and no matter how you positioned the shower head, the shower sprayed outside the curtain. The floor was always wet after one of us showered and there was no easy way to get the moisture out of the room. (Remember, interior room, no external windows.)
I kept a rag in the bathroom to wipe the floor after I bathed, but Louise would use her bath towel on the floor and then leave it in the bathroom instead of hanging it outside to dry.
1. It is disgusting to dry yourself with a cloth that has wiped the bathroom floor. 2. A towel left inside a damp room does not dry.
3. A dirty, wet towel starts to stink very soon.
4. Left wet, linoleum tiles will detach from the floor and Louise will try to make the tenant who has been in the house for only one month instead of the entire year previously as Louise has been split the repair cost. The one-month tenant will refuse.
Louise also had some nasty personal habits. She would sit at the dinner table and pick her toenails, then she would use her hands to eat, sometimes out of a communal bowl. It didn't take very long for me to stop eating meals with her, although really, she was an effective weight control method.
Mary and I decided we didn't want to live with Louise, so we sought another dwelling. I put a "room wanted" ad up at the grocery store. Within a day or two, a spry old lady appeared at my office. She had rooms. Come now! See them immediately! As rental property was difficult to encounter, I did as she commanded.
She had a big house not far from my office where she and her husband lived alone. Mary and I could have the upstairs all to ourselves and would use the downstairs bathroom. We could use the kitchen and put food in the refrigerator, which was stored in the dining room. It seemed like a good deal.
The Problems
The shower, #1
Every time one of us used the shower, the power went out in the house. How is this, you ask? Many showers in South America are heated by what is called a calefont, which is a small box that attaches to the wall and consists of a long pipe, doubled over on itself, passing over gas-powered flames. The water goes through the pipe and is heated as needed.
This is a fabulous system, far superior to a basment space consuming water heater that keeps 20 gallons of water hot just in case you need it. I wish I could have a calefont here. You never run out of hot water, unless you run out of gas, which usually happens while you are in the middle of your shower and have shampoo in your hair. Then you have to get out of the shower, call the gas guy, wait for him to come and replace the tank, and then re-commence your shower. But if you are careful about your gas, you do just fine and you spend less money heating water.
The other shower-heating method is an electrical heater that attaches to the shower head.
This is the kind that can kill you. Think about it: electricity and water. That is usually not a good combination.
That is the system Maruja had in her shower. Poorly installed and a drain on the house's antiquated electrical system. While Mary showered, I would stand at the fuse box. When the heater blew the fuse, I would switch it back on. She did the same for me.
We decided that we were not willing to risk death to be clean and threatened Maruja that we would move out and take our rent with us if she did not install a better heating system. She was in no hurry to do so, which meant that I took sponge baths for a few weeks. I would heat two huge kettles of water on Maruja's tiny stove and then carry them into the bathroom to complete my toilette.
I did not shave my legs.
The shower, #2
I made the mistake of thinking that because I was a renter with equal access to the bathroom that I could leave my shower things in the bathroom.
I was wrong.
I would leave my razor on the corner of the tub. It got dull very quickly. But why?
Then one day I noticed bristly white hairs in the razor.
My legs do not have bristly white hairs, nor does any other part of my body.
Using my superior detective skills, I concluded that Maruja's husband, Pablo, had been using my razor. I marched into the kitchen, brandishing the razor with the evidence. Maruja and her husband sat at the table.
"You've been using my razor," I accused Pablo.
"No, no!" he protested, holding his hands up.
"Look at this hair! It's not mine!"
Maruja stood behind Pablo, making a circle with her finger next to her temple and mouthing, "Yes, he did it, he's crazy" then smiling at him when he turned around.
"Don't use it any more, please," I snapped.
Then I made the stupid mistake of leaving the razor in the shower again only to find more white bristles in it. That's when I threw that blade away and started carrying everything back upstairs once I had bathed.
The fleas or maybe they were bedbugs
Shortly after we moved in, Mary and I noticed little red bites on our ankles. And on every other part of our bodies. We were being bitten in our sleep.
There were fleas/bedbugs in our rooms.
I went to the hardware store for poison. The clerk admonished me as he handed me the bottle that this was very dangerous! Note the skull and crossbones!
Great. I could be bitten to death or poisoned to death.
Marjua, incidentally, denied the existence of fleas in her house.
The poison did the trick, but we had poison dust floating around for several weeks. I will probably get some weird flea poison cancer in a few years.
The other tenants
When we moved in, Mary and I were the only tenants. It was our understanding that we were renting the furnished upstairs, which had three bedrooms.
One day I came home to discover a Woody Allenish-looking (that is not at all a compliment) guy in the third bedroom.
Maruja had rented the room to him.
Remember, one bathroom, Mary, Maruja, Pablo, and me.
Now another renter.
Who stayed up late at night playing music, smoking, and telling me that if ever "got lonely in the night," I could "just knock on the wall."
Mary left for six months in Brazil. Back to two renters. Yes, one of them was very strange, but only two.
Then Maruja rented out Mary's room to a married couple. Who fought all the time about his Other Woman. I know because I could hear everything through the thin walls.
I came home to find a carpenter building a wall between the dining room and the living room. Marjua rented the living room out to another married couple.
Let's do the math on this:
One bathroom.
Six tenants.
Two landlords.
The three male tenants got up before I did. They shaved. And left their whiskers in the bathroom sink. They peed. On the toilet seat. They left the shower dirty.
You guys know how I am about sharing a shower with someone I either don't know or don't like.
I would betray my country if tortured by having to use a dirty shower.
Unless the shower has been cleaned, it grosses me out to use a shower after someone else who is not
1. My husband
2. Another relative
3. A good friend
The other tenants did not meet any of these criteria, which meant that every morning, in addition to bathing myself before work, I had to clean the tub and the sink.
The toilet broke.
Maruja wouldn't call a plumber because it was too expensive.
To flush it, you had to fill a bucket from the bathtub tap and pour the water down the toilet. We all know how to do this. We've all been in that situation.
And we all know that the Polite, Civilized Thing to Do is to flush our own toilet.
Yet I would find other people's pee in the toilet.
That was when I moved out.
Unfortunately, my new situation was not much better. I'll tell you about it later.
* Think about that term: "land lord." So feudal. So obvious where all the power is. With God as my witness, I will never rent again.
When I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Chile, I lived in four different homes. The first was during my three-month training in Santiago. I lived with a poor family who gave me their daughters' bedroom, which had no door, so they strung a sheet across the opening. A sheet door does give one a place to undress in privacy, but does nothing to keep the noise from two little girls who did not go to bed until midnight out of the bedroom.
The house was unheated, which you would think would not be an issue, but that is only if you know nothing about geography. Santiago is in the mountains - remember, altitude more than latitude (longitude?) determines temperature, which means it does get cold.
The family also did not have a toilet seat on the toilet, something I saw over and over again in South America, which makes me wonder if the toilet was installed that way or if there is a secondary market for toilet seats and if so, what is it? How are they used?
My second living situation was when I moved to Temuco, a city of 250,000. There was a Mercedes dealership and there were ox-driven carts clogging the streets. I moved into a house with Mary, a Scottish college student spending a year abroad, and Louise, an American woman doing some kind of fellowship.
My bedroom was the tiny alcove upstairs without a door. No bed. I put a sleeping bag on the floor and both my head and my feet almost touched the walls when I was lying down.
Mary and I got along great, but Louise was a different story. The bathroom was an interior room and no matter how you positioned the shower head, the shower sprayed outside the curtain. The floor was always wet after one of us showered and there was no easy way to get the moisture out of the room. (Remember, interior room, no external windows.)
I kept a rag in the bathroom to wipe the floor after I bathed, but Louise would use her bath towel on the floor and then leave it in the bathroom instead of hanging it outside to dry.
1. It is disgusting to dry yourself with a cloth that has wiped the bathroom floor. 2. A towel left inside a damp room does not dry.
3. A dirty, wet towel starts to stink very soon.
4. Left wet, linoleum tiles will detach from the floor and Louise will try to make the tenant who has been in the house for only one month instead of the entire year previously as Louise has been split the repair cost. The one-month tenant will refuse.
Louise also had some nasty personal habits. She would sit at the dinner table and pick her toenails, then she would use her hands to eat, sometimes out of a communal bowl. It didn't take very long for me to stop eating meals with her, although really, she was an effective weight control method.
Mary and I decided we didn't want to live with Louise, so we sought another dwelling. I put a "room wanted" ad up at the grocery store. Within a day or two, a spry old lady appeared at my office. She had rooms. Come now! See them immediately! As rental property was difficult to encounter, I did as she commanded.
She had a big house not far from my office where she and her husband lived alone. Mary and I could have the upstairs all to ourselves and would use the downstairs bathroom. We could use the kitchen and put food in the refrigerator, which was stored in the dining room. It seemed like a good deal.
The Problems
The shower, #1
Every time one of us used the shower, the power went out in the house. How is this, you ask? Many showers in South America are heated by what is called a calefont, which is a small box that attaches to the wall and consists of a long pipe, doubled over on itself, passing over gas-powered flames. The water goes through the pipe and is heated as needed.
This is a fabulous system, far superior to a basment space consuming water heater that keeps 20 gallons of water hot just in case you need it. I wish I could have a calefont here. You never run out of hot water, unless you run out of gas, which usually happens while you are in the middle of your shower and have shampoo in your hair. Then you have to get out of the shower, call the gas guy, wait for him to come and replace the tank, and then re-commence your shower. But if you are careful about your gas, you do just fine and you spend less money heating water.
The other shower-heating method is an electrical heater that attaches to the shower head.
This is the kind that can kill you. Think about it: electricity and water. That is usually not a good combination.
That is the system Maruja had in her shower. Poorly installed and a drain on the house's antiquated electrical system. While Mary showered, I would stand at the fuse box. When the heater blew the fuse, I would switch it back on. She did the same for me.
We decided that we were not willing to risk death to be clean and threatened Maruja that we would move out and take our rent with us if she did not install a better heating system. She was in no hurry to do so, which meant that I took sponge baths for a few weeks. I would heat two huge kettles of water on Maruja's tiny stove and then carry them into the bathroom to complete my toilette.
I did not shave my legs.
The shower, #2
I made the mistake of thinking that because I was a renter with equal access to the bathroom that I could leave my shower things in the bathroom.
I was wrong.
I would leave my razor on the corner of the tub. It got dull very quickly. But why?
Then one day I noticed bristly white hairs in the razor.
My legs do not have bristly white hairs, nor does any other part of my body.
Using my superior detective skills, I concluded that Maruja's husband, Pablo, had been using my razor. I marched into the kitchen, brandishing the razor with the evidence. Maruja and her husband sat at the table.
"You've been using my razor," I accused Pablo.
"No, no!" he protested, holding his hands up.
"Look at this hair! It's not mine!"
Maruja stood behind Pablo, making a circle with her finger next to her temple and mouthing, "Yes, he did it, he's crazy" then smiling at him when he turned around.
"Don't use it any more, please," I snapped.
Then I made the stupid mistake of leaving the razor in the shower again only to find more white bristles in it. That's when I threw that blade away and started carrying everything back upstairs once I had bathed.
The fleas or maybe they were bedbugs
Shortly after we moved in, Mary and I noticed little red bites on our ankles. And on every other part of our bodies. We were being bitten in our sleep.
There were fleas/bedbugs in our rooms.
I went to the hardware store for poison. The clerk admonished me as he handed me the bottle that this was very dangerous! Note the skull and crossbones!
Great. I could be bitten to death or poisoned to death.
Marjua, incidentally, denied the existence of fleas in her house.
The poison did the trick, but we had poison dust floating around for several weeks. I will probably get some weird flea poison cancer in a few years.
The other tenants
When we moved in, Mary and I were the only tenants. It was our understanding that we were renting the furnished upstairs, which had three bedrooms.
One day I came home to discover a Woody Allenish-looking (that is not at all a compliment) guy in the third bedroom.
Maruja had rented the room to him.
Remember, one bathroom, Mary, Maruja, Pablo, and me.
Now another renter.
Who stayed up late at night playing music, smoking, and telling me that if ever "got lonely in the night," I could "just knock on the wall."
Mary left for six months in Brazil. Back to two renters. Yes, one of them was very strange, but only two.
Then Maruja rented out Mary's room to a married couple. Who fought all the time about his Other Woman. I know because I could hear everything through the thin walls.
I came home to find a carpenter building a wall between the dining room and the living room. Marjua rented the living room out to another married couple.
Let's do the math on this:
One bathroom.
Six tenants.
Two landlords.
The three male tenants got up before I did. They shaved. And left their whiskers in the bathroom sink. They peed. On the toilet seat. They left the shower dirty.
You guys know how I am about sharing a shower with someone I either don't know or don't like.
I would betray my country if tortured by having to use a dirty shower.
Unless the shower has been cleaned, it grosses me out to use a shower after someone else who is not
1. My husband
2. Another relative
3. A good friend
The other tenants did not meet any of these criteria, which meant that every morning, in addition to bathing myself before work, I had to clean the tub and the sink.
The toilet broke.
Maruja wouldn't call a plumber because it was too expensive.
To flush it, you had to fill a bucket from the bathtub tap and pour the water down the toilet. We all know how to do this. We've all been in that situation.
And we all know that the Polite, Civilized Thing to Do is to flush our own toilet.
Yet I would find other people's pee in the toilet.
That was when I moved out.
Unfortunately, my new situation was not much better. I'll tell you about it later.
* Think about that term: "land lord." So feudal. So obvious where all the power is. With God as my witness, I will never rent again.
Friday, July 9, 2010
In which I develop a crush on a guy who makes porn movies
After a year and a half of excruciating job search post Peace Corps, I finally got an offer from a large company in Miami that was really a corporate finance/mergers and acquisitions sweatshop but I didn't know that and even if I had known, I would have taken the job anyhow because I needed to be employed with dental and a pension. Beggars can't be choosers. I was tired of looking. I was tired of temp work and being told how to send a fax.
Head secretary: You need to wait for the FAX CONFIRMATION NOTICE.
Me the Temp: Yes, I know.
HS: And if the FAX CONFIRMATION NOTICE IS 'YES,' then you know it went through. Otherwise, you have to re-send.
[Repeat simple instructions like this at least twice more with me impatiently saying, "I know, I know."]
Me: You must be used to working with really stupid people. [Oh yes I said that.]
I don't know if recruiters thought I was going to come to work swinging on a vine, wearing dreadlocks and Birkenstocks and singing Kum Bay Yah, but that is not me. I took high heels and suits with me to Chile. Yes, I had to send them back to the US once I realized that I would be traipsing through the mud pretty frequently, but I was not the stereotypical Peace Corps volunteer and I have yet to meet someone who fits that stereotype, so really, it shouldn't even be a stereotype.*
Anyhow. I moved to Miami and made no friends at first. The other singletons at work were pretty much all Florida State and University of Florida grads who were still into being Florida State and U of Florida grads. Being a University of Texas grad, I had no interest in mere Florida alums. We did not have much in common.
One Friday night, I returned home after another long day working for The Man in the Sweatshop that had over 100% turnover in my year there, so it's not just me whining here. Nobody liked working from 7:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. The light on my answering was blinking. Yay! Someone had left a message for me to meet at happy hour! Finally, they wanted to be my friend!
It was a sales pitch from a septic tank company.
Fools. I rented. Why would I want to build a septic tank?
There was this guy. Mark. He had a wicked dry sense of humor and seemed fairly intelligent. And he was nice looking, in a rugged, broken nose way.
I liked him.
I tried to flirt with him.
He didn't flirt back, but he would have actual conversations with me. We would goof off for ten or 15 minutes a day, just chewing the fat.
I kept waiting for him to ask me out.
He didn't.
He did, bless his heart, express his condolences after my dad died (two months after I started the job). When I burst into tears after he told me he was sorry for my loss, he backed out of my office, apologizing that he hadn't meant to remind me of the sadness. But at least he had the guts to say something. Most people didn't, even though everyone in my group knew why I had been gone for two weeks. My VP said something in passing, asking, "Oh. Were you and your dad close?" when I got a bit emotional.
Yeah. We were close. That's why I was upset that he JUST DIED. Sheesh. Are there people who laugh off a father's death?
This was the same VP who didn't understand why I thought it was inappropriate for a manager in another group to take his team, which included two women, to Hooter's for a meeting.
"They have good wings," he shrugged.
I asked him how would like it if his seven year old daughter would someday work there.
The blood drained from his face. He got it.
Back to Mark.
We would talk. We would laugh. I silently willed him to ask me out. But no.
Then. He said, "I'm having a New Year's Eve party. Want to come?"
Omigosh. What to wear? I was so excited. Jeans and a shapeless gray sweater that flattered me in no way whatsoever! That's the ticket!
I arrived at his apartment, which was in a high rise overlooking the bay. Very nice. There was a woman - not the kind I am, but the kind with long painted fingernails and long tousled hair and long legs wearing high heels with her tight, dark blue jeans - standing next to him.
"This is Tanya. We date," he announced.
As my heart was falling to my knees, he introduced me to a man who looked like him. "This is my brother, Tom."
Oh. The brother who used to be a priest and had left the priesthood? (Mark had told me the story.) Well, that's just the kind of man I wanted to meet.
I left the party early. Mark was upset that I wasn't more interested in Tom. "I don't introduce every woman to him, you know. I wouldn't have introduced you two if I didn't think you were worthy of him."
Maybe those weren't his exact words, but that was the sense. He meant it to be a compliment, but I got the message: He was not interested in me That Way.
OK fine. I retreated. We continued our friendship in which he would say things like, "I've never been able to talk to a woman like this," to which I would silently respond, "Yeah, that's because you date empty-headed bimbos who look great on the outside but don't have any staying power. And they probably can't even cook."
One morning, my boss, Luke, who is still a friend and is one of the best bosses I have ever had, called me into his office. He knew I had a crush on someone at work because I would ask him for guy advice but I wouldn't divulge the name of the object (subject?) of my affections.
"Close the door," he said.
Uh oh. I was in trouble.
He paused, cleared his throat, then said, "I'm not sure how to tell you this and I wasn't sure I should, but I talked to my wife about it and she said I had to tell you."
Oh good grief. What was it?
"I know who your crush is on."
Well big deal.
"And I learned something about him that you need to know."
He took a deep breath. "He makes porn movies."
What?
"I was scuba diving last weekend and ran into Bill (another co-worker who was a buddy to Mark). We were talking about taking photos underwater and he started to tell me about how he makes these movies and they do casting calls and how would he shoot scenes underwater? It took me a second to figure out what he was talking about and then I couldn't believe it."
Luke was a strong family man. Three boys whom he took camping and sailing and swimming. A wife he adored. A son they had lost shortly after birth after being warned mid-pregnancy that he would not live and whose name was (and still is) included in the signature to Luke's Christmas card. Sunday school teacher.
Not a porn-movie-making kind of guy.
Bill, apparently, was unaware that Luke would not be impressed by the idea of making underwater porn movies and continued to wax enthusiastically about his Art as Luke tried to figure out how to leave the conversation gracefully.
"Mark hangs out with these guys," Luke said. "I wouldn't be telling you this if I weren't sure. I'm looking out for you like a big brother would."
I believed him.
I stopped talking to Mark. My not-talking was conspicuous enough that Mark came by my office to ask me why we didn't talk any more. "You're the only woman friend I've ever had," he said. "Why don't you come by any more?"
"Oh, just busy," I lied.
Which I was. I was busy taking the staples from the autocollator out from the left-hand side of the presentation for the board of directors and re-stapling on the right because evidently, somebody, sometime, had mentioned in passing that that was how the board of directors liked their documents stapled so that was part of the job of financial analyst. That, and to calculate what the company profits would have been if they had sold the aircraft division ten years ago, the point of which was lost to me, but then I am not a captain of industry driving a business into the ground.
But I had never let my busyness get in the way of goofing off with Mark.
I had to harden my heart. I wanted to ask him if it was true and maybe should have, but how do you ask someone if he really does help make home porn movies and then expect to get a truthful answer? I trusted Luke more.
I didn't speak to him again and then quit the job a month later. Ta, ta porn guy.
* Except for my friend Henry's roommate in Chad who got high on nutmeg all the time. Yes, nutmeg. He must have smelled like banana bread. Or just nutmeg.
Head secretary: You need to wait for the FAX CONFIRMATION NOTICE.
Me the Temp: Yes, I know.
HS: And if the FAX CONFIRMATION NOTICE IS 'YES,' then you know it went through. Otherwise, you have to re-send.
[Repeat simple instructions like this at least twice more with me impatiently saying, "I know, I know."]
Me: You must be used to working with really stupid people. [Oh yes I said that.]
I don't know if recruiters thought I was going to come to work swinging on a vine, wearing dreadlocks and Birkenstocks and singing Kum Bay Yah, but that is not me. I took high heels and suits with me to Chile. Yes, I had to send them back to the US once I realized that I would be traipsing through the mud pretty frequently, but I was not the stereotypical Peace Corps volunteer and I have yet to meet someone who fits that stereotype, so really, it shouldn't even be a stereotype.*
Anyhow. I moved to Miami and made no friends at first. The other singletons at work were pretty much all Florida State and University of Florida grads who were still into being Florida State and U of Florida grads. Being a University of Texas grad, I had no interest in mere Florida alums. We did not have much in common.
One Friday night, I returned home after another long day working for The Man in the Sweatshop that had over 100% turnover in my year there, so it's not just me whining here. Nobody liked working from 7:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. The light on my answering was blinking. Yay! Someone had left a message for me to meet at happy hour! Finally, they wanted to be my friend!
It was a sales pitch from a septic tank company.
Fools. I rented. Why would I want to build a septic tank?
There was this guy. Mark. He had a wicked dry sense of humor and seemed fairly intelligent. And he was nice looking, in a rugged, broken nose way.
I liked him.
I tried to flirt with him.
He didn't flirt back, but he would have actual conversations with me. We would goof off for ten or 15 minutes a day, just chewing the fat.
I kept waiting for him to ask me out.
He didn't.
He did, bless his heart, express his condolences after my dad died (two months after I started the job). When I burst into tears after he told me he was sorry for my loss, he backed out of my office, apologizing that he hadn't meant to remind me of the sadness. But at least he had the guts to say something. Most people didn't, even though everyone in my group knew why I had been gone for two weeks. My VP said something in passing, asking, "Oh. Were you and your dad close?" when I got a bit emotional.
Yeah. We were close. That's why I was upset that he JUST DIED. Sheesh. Are there people who laugh off a father's death?
This was the same VP who didn't understand why I thought it was inappropriate for a manager in another group to take his team, which included two women, to Hooter's for a meeting.
"They have good wings," he shrugged.
I asked him how would like it if his seven year old daughter would someday work there.
The blood drained from his face. He got it.
Back to Mark.
We would talk. We would laugh. I silently willed him to ask me out. But no.
Then. He said, "I'm having a New Year's Eve party. Want to come?"
Omigosh. What to wear? I was so excited. Jeans and a shapeless gray sweater that flattered me in no way whatsoever! That's the ticket!
I arrived at his apartment, which was in a high rise overlooking the bay. Very nice. There was a woman - not the kind I am, but the kind with long painted fingernails and long tousled hair and long legs wearing high heels with her tight, dark blue jeans - standing next to him.
"This is Tanya. We date," he announced.
As my heart was falling to my knees, he introduced me to a man who looked like him. "This is my brother, Tom."
Oh. The brother who used to be a priest and had left the priesthood? (Mark had told me the story.) Well, that's just the kind of man I wanted to meet.
I left the party early. Mark was upset that I wasn't more interested in Tom. "I don't introduce every woman to him, you know. I wouldn't have introduced you two if I didn't think you were worthy of him."
Maybe those weren't his exact words, but that was the sense. He meant it to be a compliment, but I got the message: He was not interested in me That Way.
OK fine. I retreated. We continued our friendship in which he would say things like, "I've never been able to talk to a woman like this," to which I would silently respond, "Yeah, that's because you date empty-headed bimbos who look great on the outside but don't have any staying power. And they probably can't even cook."
One morning, my boss, Luke, who is still a friend and is one of the best bosses I have ever had, called me into his office. He knew I had a crush on someone at work because I would ask him for guy advice but I wouldn't divulge the name of the object (subject?) of my affections.
"Close the door," he said.
Uh oh. I was in trouble.
He paused, cleared his throat, then said, "I'm not sure how to tell you this and I wasn't sure I should, but I talked to my wife about it and she said I had to tell you."
Oh good grief. What was it?
"I know who your crush is on."
Well big deal.
"And I learned something about him that you need to know."
He took a deep breath. "He makes porn movies."
What?
"I was scuba diving last weekend and ran into Bill (another co-worker who was a buddy to Mark). We were talking about taking photos underwater and he started to tell me about how he makes these movies and they do casting calls and how would he shoot scenes underwater? It took me a second to figure out what he was talking about and then I couldn't believe it."
Luke was a strong family man. Three boys whom he took camping and sailing and swimming. A wife he adored. A son they had lost shortly after birth after being warned mid-pregnancy that he would not live and whose name was (and still is) included in the signature to Luke's Christmas card. Sunday school teacher.
Not a porn-movie-making kind of guy.
Bill, apparently, was unaware that Luke would not be impressed by the idea of making underwater porn movies and continued to wax enthusiastically about his Art as Luke tried to figure out how to leave the conversation gracefully.
"Mark hangs out with these guys," Luke said. "I wouldn't be telling you this if I weren't sure. I'm looking out for you like a big brother would."
I believed him.
I stopped talking to Mark. My not-talking was conspicuous enough that Mark came by my office to ask me why we didn't talk any more. "You're the only woman friend I've ever had," he said. "Why don't you come by any more?"
"Oh, just busy," I lied.
Which I was. I was busy taking the staples from the autocollator out from the left-hand side of the presentation for the board of directors and re-stapling on the right because evidently, somebody, sometime, had mentioned in passing that that was how the board of directors liked their documents stapled so that was part of the job of financial analyst. That, and to calculate what the company profits would have been if they had sold the aircraft division ten years ago, the point of which was lost to me, but then I am not a captain of industry driving a business into the ground.
But I had never let my busyness get in the way of goofing off with Mark.
I had to harden my heart. I wanted to ask him if it was true and maybe should have, but how do you ask someone if he really does help make home porn movies and then expect to get a truthful answer? I trusted Luke more.
I didn't speak to him again and then quit the job a month later. Ta, ta porn guy.
* Except for my friend Henry's roommate in Chad who got high on nutmeg all the time. Yes, nutmeg. He must have smelled like banana bread. Or just nutmeg.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
In which I let myself be talked into something I didn't want to do, Part Deux
So I was telling you about Stan, the older guy who was my friends' boss who had moved from Austin to attend grad school and who had necked with me in his car or maybe it was my car in the parking garage on Sixth Street after a happy hour and then called me from Houston the next day because he wanted to see me again that week and I told him OK but he wasn't staying with me but he pushed and pushed and pushed and I gave up, which was stupid of me.
He arrived at my place. He didn't even bring me kolaches from the Bon Ton Bakery on 290 between Houston and Austin. But I guess he didn't need to, did he?
I don't remember if he took me out to dinner. I certainly hope so. So many good places to eat in Austin: Threadgill's, Chuey's, Green Mesquite. I hope he didn't get free milk.
I gave him some sheets and a pillow and showed him the couch, not that it was hard to find because this was a tiny apartment. I had gotten the couch at an estate sale in Houston and had yet to get it re-upholstered, which it badly needed, but its condition made me mind less that someone would be sleeping on it, even though it was white. When I bought that sofa, my mother sighed and said, "I'm never going to be a grandmother, am I?"
10 For I = 1 to infinity
20 He asked why he couldn't sleep in the bed with me.
30 I told him that wasn't happening.
40 Next I
After 15 or 20 or 30 minutes of arguing, I was exhausted and surrendered.
So dumb.
I wish I hadn't.
Because it's like vampires: once you invite them in, that's it.
So yeah. I consented, but is it valid consent when you have been worn to a frazzle saying no? And if you're a man, is that how you really want to get someone into bed? By exhausting her with argument?
I hope that he has a daughter now, thinks about how he acted, regrets it, and prays that nobody ever treats her that way.
Once you've slept with someone, you might as well sleep with him again, especially if he is very persuasive. Even if you realize that he is kind of icky naked as the human body needs some exercise between zero and 36.
I was 23 at the time. Thirty six seemed old. Now I know it's not old. Not at all. I suspect when I am 70, I will look back on me now and think, "Baby! I knew nothing!" But I have not changed my position on exercise. He needed it. Seriously. He did not have a weight problem, but he needed to get some muscles.
I don't want to make more personal attacks on him because that doesn't seem fair, but I will just mention in passing that I find men with a little bit of tan or some sun exposure on their bodies in the past 36 or 45 years and with chest hair also to be more to my taste. Just saying.
He stayed a night or two, then visited me again a month or two later. He got sick while he was there and I went out in the middle of the night to get him drugs and ice cream. No wonder he didn't want to break up. Who doesn't want a woman who will go to Walgreen's for Hagen-Daz chocolate chocolate chip and Nyquil at 1:00 a.m. for him? Plus I am a good cook.
He wrote letters. He called. He told me he had burned his draft card, which disgusted me. If you are sincere about being against a war, then be a conscientious objector. Back up your words with deeds. But telling someone whose father fought in the very war you protested that you burned your draft card probably will not endear you to that person.
While he was gone, I met someone I liked better: someone who did not pressure me to do what I did not want to do, who was easygoing and cooked me supper. I told Stan that I did not want to see him any more. Fair enough, right? That's the beauty of dating as opposed to being married: you have a Get Out Of Jail Free card that you can whip out of your pocket AT ANY TIME.
Stan did not agree. He wrote me a long letter (I wish I had kept it because it was so bizarre) in which he told me I "shouldn't be afraid of my passion" (I don't have the letter, but I have never forgotten that line - I wasn't afraid of my "passion," I just didn't want it with him) and that he had thought I would move to California with him. Not an offer of marriage, mind you (not that I would have accepted it), but just that I should pick up and follow him without any commitment whatsoever.
I didn't answer the letter. He called. By now, I was screening his calls with the old answering machine my friend Terri had given me because I was still too poor to buy one for myself, what with repaying student loans and all, plus my philosophy then, as it is now, was that if it was really important, they would call back. When I didn't answer and didn't answer, he left me a message that he was driving to Austin to see me and would be there in X hours.
I left the apartment. I didn't want to be there when he arrived. I was a little bit scared, actually. This was moving into stalker territory. Yeah, I know I'm a good cook and men like that about me and then the whole Hagen-Daz thing, but honestly? I cannot be the only woman in the world who can provide these services.
For the life of me, I cannot remember what happened after that. Did I talk to him at all? Or did he knock on the door and ring the bell and wait and wait?
No matter. We were done.
Stan later dated a friend of mine (the sister of the wife of my friend Nathan who worked for Stan), which I did not find out about until my friend, C, asked me why I hadn't warned her that my former boyfriend was so weird. I thought she meant my college boyfriend, who was also a good friend of Nathan's, but my college boyfriend was not weird,* so I didn't understand what she was getting at.
"You're dating M?" I gasped. I really didn't think she was his type.
"What?" she asked. "No! I mean Stan! Why didn't you warn me?"
I would have warned her had I known she was interested, but she probably wouldn't have listened. [See: My Landlady/Fairy Godmother warned me about the guy who was so mean to me but I would not listen to her, even though she had known his family since he was a little boy so she was definitely in a better position to know than I, who got sucked in by the charm. I no longer trust charm.]
Nobody ever wants to hear that kind of advice. "Oh, you really shouldn't date him. He's a lunatic."
"Really?" they think. "No, it's just Golddigger. She brings out the crazy in a guy. He's great! I can tell!"
And then, two months later, it's crying in the beer or the diet Coke, which is the first step, after which comes the frantic consumption of Dove Bars and then the dying of the hair. "Why didn't you tell me? Why why why?" is the lament.
But I tried to, you think. I tried. But would you listen? Nope.
And then you can't even say, "I told you so," even though has it ever been so well deserved?
The good part was that I now had two data points, two equations. Stan was the X. C and I were the whatever the not-X part is of an equation. Solve for X and there you go.
X + girlfriend1 = stalkerish behavior
X + girlfriend2 = weird
And then a miracle happens and you get
X = weird stalker
Don't you love math? Anyone who says they will never use algebra in real life is wrong.
It wasn't me.
It was him.
The End
* Maybe a little weird, but in a good way, bless his heart. He is an incredibly organized person, like Primo but without the clutter. Well, Primo isn't exactly organized in the traditional sense of, "Things are in order," but he usually knows where everything is in the structured chaos that is his office. To the extent that you can be organized and be cluttered at the same time, that is Primo.
My boyfriend had all the pens and pencils with their points aligned in the upper drawer of his desk. Notepads were squared against the edges. Everything was perfect. So neat and tidy. He was such a nice guy and he did not deserve the way I broke up with him.
He arrived at my place. He didn't even bring me kolaches from the Bon Ton Bakery on 290 between Houston and Austin. But I guess he didn't need to, did he?
I don't remember if he took me out to dinner. I certainly hope so. So many good places to eat in Austin: Threadgill's, Chuey's, Green Mesquite. I hope he didn't get free milk.
I gave him some sheets and a pillow and showed him the couch, not that it was hard to find because this was a tiny apartment. I had gotten the couch at an estate sale in Houston and had yet to get it re-upholstered, which it badly needed, but its condition made me mind less that someone would be sleeping on it, even though it was white. When I bought that sofa, my mother sighed and said, "I'm never going to be a grandmother, am I?"
10 For I = 1 to infinity
20 He asked why he couldn't sleep in the bed with me.
30 I told him that wasn't happening.
40 Next I
After 15 or 20 or 30 minutes of arguing, I was exhausted and surrendered.
So dumb.
I wish I hadn't.
Because it's like vampires: once you invite them in, that's it.
So yeah. I consented, but is it valid consent when you have been worn to a frazzle saying no? And if you're a man, is that how you really want to get someone into bed? By exhausting her with argument?
I hope that he has a daughter now, thinks about how he acted, regrets it, and prays that nobody ever treats her that way.
Once you've slept with someone, you might as well sleep with him again, especially if he is very persuasive. Even if you realize that he is kind of icky naked as the human body needs some exercise between zero and 36.
I was 23 at the time. Thirty six seemed old. Now I know it's not old. Not at all. I suspect when I am 70, I will look back on me now and think, "Baby! I knew nothing!" But I have not changed my position on exercise. He needed it. Seriously. He did not have a weight problem, but he needed to get some muscles.
I don't want to make more personal attacks on him because that doesn't seem fair, but I will just mention in passing that I find men with a little bit of tan or some sun exposure on their bodies in the past 36 or 45 years and with chest hair also to be more to my taste. Just saying.
He stayed a night or two, then visited me again a month or two later. He got sick while he was there and I went out in the middle of the night to get him drugs and ice cream. No wonder he didn't want to break up. Who doesn't want a woman who will go to Walgreen's for Hagen-Daz chocolate chocolate chip and Nyquil at 1:00 a.m. for him? Plus I am a good cook.
He wrote letters. He called. He told me he had burned his draft card, which disgusted me. If you are sincere about being against a war, then be a conscientious objector. Back up your words with deeds. But telling someone whose father fought in the very war you protested that you burned your draft card probably will not endear you to that person.
While he was gone, I met someone I liked better: someone who did not pressure me to do what I did not want to do, who was easygoing and cooked me supper. I told Stan that I did not want to see him any more. Fair enough, right? That's the beauty of dating as opposed to being married: you have a Get Out Of Jail Free card that you can whip out of your pocket AT ANY TIME.
Stan did not agree. He wrote me a long letter (I wish I had kept it because it was so bizarre) in which he told me I "shouldn't be afraid of my passion" (I don't have the letter, but I have never forgotten that line - I wasn't afraid of my "passion," I just didn't want it with him) and that he had thought I would move to California with him. Not an offer of marriage, mind you (not that I would have accepted it), but just that I should pick up and follow him without any commitment whatsoever.
I didn't answer the letter. He called. By now, I was screening his calls with the old answering machine my friend Terri had given me because I was still too poor to buy one for myself, what with repaying student loans and all, plus my philosophy then, as it is now, was that if it was really important, they would call back. When I didn't answer and didn't answer, he left me a message that he was driving to Austin to see me and would be there in X hours.
I left the apartment. I didn't want to be there when he arrived. I was a little bit scared, actually. This was moving into stalker territory. Yeah, I know I'm a good cook and men like that about me and then the whole Hagen-Daz thing, but honestly? I cannot be the only woman in the world who can provide these services.
For the life of me, I cannot remember what happened after that. Did I talk to him at all? Or did he knock on the door and ring the bell and wait and wait?
No matter. We were done.
Stan later dated a friend of mine (the sister of the wife of my friend Nathan who worked for Stan), which I did not find out about until my friend, C, asked me why I hadn't warned her that my former boyfriend was so weird. I thought she meant my college boyfriend, who was also a good friend of Nathan's, but my college boyfriend was not weird,* so I didn't understand what she was getting at.
"You're dating M?" I gasped. I really didn't think she was his type.
"What?" she asked. "No! I mean Stan! Why didn't you warn me?"
I would have warned her had I known she was interested, but she probably wouldn't have listened. [See: My Landlady/Fairy Godmother warned me about the guy who was so mean to me but I would not listen to her, even though she had known his family since he was a little boy so she was definitely in a better position to know than I, who got sucked in by the charm. I no longer trust charm.]
Nobody ever wants to hear that kind of advice. "Oh, you really shouldn't date him. He's a lunatic."
"Really?" they think. "No, it's just Golddigger. She brings out the crazy in a guy. He's great! I can tell!"
And then, two months later, it's crying in the beer or the diet Coke, which is the first step, after which comes the frantic consumption of Dove Bars and then the dying of the hair. "Why didn't you tell me? Why why why?" is the lament.
But I tried to, you think. I tried. But would you listen? Nope.
And then you can't even say, "I told you so," even though has it ever been so well deserved?
The good part was that I now had two data points, two equations. Stan was the X. C and I were the whatever the not-X part is of an equation. Solve for X and there you go.
X + girlfriend1 = stalkerish behavior
X + girlfriend2 = weird
And then a miracle happens and you get
X = weird stalker
Don't you love math? Anyone who says they will never use algebra in real life is wrong.
It wasn't me.
It was him.
The End
* Maybe a little weird, but in a good way, bless his heart. He is an incredibly organized person, like Primo but without the clutter. Well, Primo isn't exactly organized in the traditional sense of, "Things are in order," but he usually knows where everything is in the structured chaos that is his office. To the extent that you can be organized and be cluttered at the same time, that is Primo.
My boyfriend had all the pens and pencils with their points aligned in the upper drawer of his desk. Notepads were squared against the edges. Everything was perfect. So neat and tidy. He was such a nice guy and he did not deserve the way I broke up with him.
Monday, June 28, 2010
In which we talk about The Number
I will tell you the rest of the story about Stan, but first I want to talk about what Michelle Z said:
Okay, no more beating yourself up for what you did in your 20's and 30's. It's called the learning curve of life. Instead look back and chuckle...honey, it could have been worse. You could be our age doing the same darn stuff.
I know! Thank goodness I am not making the same mistakes I did in my 20s. And my 30s. Hmm. Maybe my early 40s. But writing about them is kind of fun, at least anonymously. I am not so sure that I would expose myself like this if my mother read this blog. My other option is to talk about my cats and they just are not that interesting to other people. Primo and I think they are fascinating, but we don't get out much.
But part of the reason I am so hard on myself is because I failed to meet my own standards over and over again, even though I knew I was making a mistake. It's one thing to screw up (ha) because you don't know better. It's another thing to dive in with your eyes open, a history behind you already, well aware of the consequences.
Then you are in the realm of pure-D eediot.
What are we talking about?
Sex.
The Number.
You know what I mean.
The Number that looks bad when it is high for a woman but not so bad when it is high for a man.
I was convinced, until the day I broke up with my college boyfriend, that my Number would be One.
It would be One because we were going to be married and that's why it was OK to you know.
I had been raised to believe that sex was for after marriage. Mostly. My mother, who married three days after she turned 20, didn't fool around before her wedding. I was born eight and a half months later. My brother took this as evidence that my parents had to get married. Shotgun.
When I told this to my mother, she laughed. She and my father had gotten engaged eight months previously, then she had not seen him again until the day before the wedding because he was at officer candidate school out of state. "Tell your brother I spent four months making my wedding dress," she said. "And that babies don't always take exactly nine (ten) months."
Then she told me that I was a honeymoon baby, conceived between "Gunsmoke" and the pizza delivery. Oh, a February honeymoon in northern Wisconsin.
My father did not value virginity so highly, though. (Actually, I'm not sure my mother did, either. It's just that the lack thereof had far worse consequences for women than for men.) At a church youth group campout, at the campfire, I challenged my dad: Is it important for a woman to be a virgin when she marries?
He thought about it, then told us that no, it was more important that she be able to bake a good loaf of bread.
I pressed him further: Was Mom a virgin when you married her?
He answered that he did not know and did not care.
A year and a half later, when my dad and I were in the garage packing the car so he and my mom could drive me 200 miles to start college the next day, he casually said, "If you're going to get laid, use protection."
I was shocked.
I mean, wouldn't you be?
"Dad!" I exclaimed, scandalized. "You know I don't believe in premarital sex."
He rolled his eyes, shook his head, and answered, "It's going to happen. Don't be stupid about it."
Oh, I was so sure. It is easy to Remain Pure when nobody has tried to separate you from your purity. I had kissed some boys, but you can't go very far when you are necking behind the chemistry building during lunch. You really don't go far when your "boyfriend" is gay, whether he knows it or not.
My dad was right.
I was wrong.
My college boyfriend and I succumbed to the availability of an empty dorm room, passion, and the justification to each other that we were going to be married when we graduated anyhow so it was OK.
We did not marry.
So. Now I had to decide. Was this status a binary condition where either you are or you are not and once you are not, it does not matter? Or can there be shades of gray from One to Infinity?
I went with the shades of gray option, thinking, "Well, I won't do this again unless I am Serious About A Man and the Relationship Is Moving Toward Marriage."
In my defense, I will say I have had several marriage proposals and an invitation to move to California to live together.
But.
I had several relationships where I let myself be talked into things. Or where I knew it wasn't going to go anywhere and would never want that man to be the father of my children, but still increased The Number.
Not all of my relationships were like that. I dated some really nice guys, which you probably won't read about here because 1. I wouldn't want to hurt them by writing about something intimate and 2. there really wasn't any drama so there's nothing to write about anyhow.
But there were some Bad Choices Made By Me. (Do you like how I become the passive acted-upon, not my fault in that sentence? That's an English major trick.)
I regret them. I wish I had never met those guys (except to the extent that they gave me material). I wish that even if I had met them, I had never gotten involved because they were not worthy of increasing The Number.
Okay, no more beating yourself up for what you did in your 20's and 30's. It's called the learning curve of life. Instead look back and chuckle...honey, it could have been worse. You could be our age doing the same darn stuff.
I know! Thank goodness I am not making the same mistakes I did in my 20s. And my 30s. Hmm. Maybe my early 40s. But writing about them is kind of fun, at least anonymously. I am not so sure that I would expose myself like this if my mother read this blog. My other option is to talk about my cats and they just are not that interesting to other people. Primo and I think they are fascinating, but we don't get out much.
But part of the reason I am so hard on myself is because I failed to meet my own standards over and over again, even though I knew I was making a mistake. It's one thing to screw up (ha) because you don't know better. It's another thing to dive in with your eyes open, a history behind you already, well aware of the consequences.
Then you are in the realm of pure-D eediot.
What are we talking about?
Sex.
The Number.
You know what I mean.
The Number that looks bad when it is high for a woman but not so bad when it is high for a man.
I was convinced, until the day I broke up with my college boyfriend, that my Number would be One.
It would be One because we were going to be married and that's why it was OK to you know.
I had been raised to believe that sex was for after marriage. Mostly. My mother, who married three days after she turned 20, didn't fool around before her wedding. I was born eight and a half months later. My brother took this as evidence that my parents had to get married. Shotgun.
When I told this to my mother, she laughed. She and my father had gotten engaged eight months previously, then she had not seen him again until the day before the wedding because he was at officer candidate school out of state. "Tell your brother I spent four months making my wedding dress," she said. "And that babies don't always take exactly nine (ten) months."
Then she told me that I was a honeymoon baby, conceived between "Gunsmoke" and the pizza delivery. Oh, a February honeymoon in northern Wisconsin.
My father did not value virginity so highly, though. (Actually, I'm not sure my mother did, either. It's just that the lack thereof had far worse consequences for women than for men.) At a church youth group campout, at the campfire, I challenged my dad: Is it important for a woman to be a virgin when she marries?
He thought about it, then told us that no, it was more important that she be able to bake a good loaf of bread.
I pressed him further: Was Mom a virgin when you married her?
He answered that he did not know and did not care.
A year and a half later, when my dad and I were in the garage packing the car so he and my mom could drive me 200 miles to start college the next day, he casually said, "If you're going to get laid, use protection."
I was shocked.
I mean, wouldn't you be?
"Dad!" I exclaimed, scandalized. "You know I don't believe in premarital sex."
He rolled his eyes, shook his head, and answered, "It's going to happen. Don't be stupid about it."
Oh, I was so sure. It is easy to Remain Pure when nobody has tried to separate you from your purity. I had kissed some boys, but you can't go very far when you are necking behind the chemistry building during lunch. You really don't go far when your "boyfriend" is gay, whether he knows it or not.
My dad was right.
I was wrong.
My college boyfriend and I succumbed to the availability of an empty dorm room, passion, and the justification to each other that we were going to be married when we graduated anyhow so it was OK.
We did not marry.
So. Now I had to decide. Was this status a binary condition where either you are or you are not and once you are not, it does not matter? Or can there be shades of gray from One to Infinity?
I went with the shades of gray option, thinking, "Well, I won't do this again unless I am Serious About A Man and the Relationship Is Moving Toward Marriage."
In my defense, I will say I have had several marriage proposals and an invitation to move to California to live together.
But.
I had several relationships where I let myself be talked into things. Or where I knew it wasn't going to go anywhere and would never want that man to be the father of my children, but still increased The Number.
Not all of my relationships were like that. I dated some really nice guys, which you probably won't read about here because 1. I wouldn't want to hurt them by writing about something intimate and 2. there really wasn't any drama so there's nothing to write about anyhow.
But there were some Bad Choices Made By Me. (Do you like how I become the passive acted-upon, not my fault in that sentence? That's an English major trick.)
I regret them. I wish I had never met those guys (except to the extent that they gave me material). I wish that even if I had met them, I had never gotten involved because they were not worthy of increasing The Number.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
In which I let myself be talked into several things I should not have let myself be talked into
As I write these stories, I am amazed at how dumb I was in my 20s. And 30s. What causes someone to act so self destructively? Was my desperation for male attention because I had not been invited to one single dance in high school except the time that Miles from chemistry asked me to the ROTC dance? I tried to think of a nice way to say no, because as much as I wanted to go to a dance, I didn't want to go with Miles. He ranked lower on the social scale than I, so it would be better not to go at all than to go with him and have my status diminished. As I was thinking, my friend Jackie, who was standing next to me when Miles asked, which, in retrospect, showed great courage on his part, laughed at him, which added insult to injury.
Or was it just the general insecurity of someone who is uncertain about her place in the world and has had her position as the Smart One yanked away as soon as she got to college with some real competition (which wouldn't have been so bad if I had 1. gone to every single class, 2. worn my glasses in class because if you can't see the teacher taking the derivative or showing how hydrogen bonds to - other things, it doesn't matter if you can hear him, and 3. asked the professor for help like my dad kept telling me to do), and then had her ego double-dog-slammed by her sister, the Pretty One who knows how to accessorize and put on makeup but who also ended up being pretty darn smart, too? It did not help at all for the Pretty One to come to the Smart One's workplace one day and have the Smart One's male coworkers drooling at the sight of the Pretty One.
"Your sister oozes sensuality," one coworker said.
"You and your sister are so different!" the other coworker said.
Yes.
I know.
Anyhow. Every time I think I am running out of Men and How I Was Stupid With Them stories (aka "My Life in Bad Decisions"), I think of another one.
This story takes place in Austin, where I lived for my mid-20s, back when it was a great place to live and the traffic hadn't gotten awful and you could drive around Highway 360 and all you saw were fields and hills. No buildings. No crowding. Chili's, Whole Foods, and the Black-Eyed Pea had not yet become national chains. They were just little Texas places just for us Texans.
My friends Nathan and Tina* worked for a guy named Stan. Stan was older. Mid 30s. So dangerous. You know me. I liked to live on the edge.
I had met Stan a couple of times at Friday happy hours with Nathan and Tina. I had always thought he was attractive, but he had a girlfriend. Then they broke up, which was probably the right thing to do. He told me that they were in couples counseling.
Honey.
If you are just dating and have to see a counselor, that is a sign to break up. That much stress in a relationship means you are not meant to be. Move on. That's why you date and evaluate many options. To find someone who doesn't push all your crazy buttons.** You'll never find someone who is perfect, but you'll eventually find the right kind of imperfect.
A friend saw a counselor with his girlfriend. She was beautiful, as all his girlfriends were. But she was a leetle bit crazy: she was in law school and taught many aerobics classes a week. That exercise probably helped her keep her lovely figure, but even more figure preserving was her refusal to eat anything good. The friend took the girlfriend out to eat with his parents. GF ordered shrimp. She did not know they were fried. When the shrimp arrived, she pitched a little fit about how she couldn't eat anything fried!
As she was pitching her fit, my friend's dad, who is a super nice, mellow guy, just like my friend, carefully took a shrimp, scraped all the breading off it and handed it to her. "Is that OK?" he asked.
I think the relationship ended shortly after that.
Stan's breaking up with his girlfriend coincided with his quitting his job to attend graduate school. He had moved away. He was back in town for his spring break and I saw him when I joined Nathan and Tina at a bar.
Somehow, we ended up necking in his car in the parking garage.
Oh yes. Nothing but the classiest of behavior from me.
He left for Houston the next morning, but called me that evening. Could he come back to Austin to see me?
Well sure. I was flattered. But where, I asked him, will you stay?
With you, of course! he told me.
I was not happy with that idea. I want to go back to my 23 year old self and slap myself silly, saying, "No! Do not let him stay with you! It's all wrong. He's being too pushy. He should respect your 'no.' This cannot end well."
But I didn't resist. I tried, but he wore me down. And no, it's not like he couldn't have found somewhere else to sleep. He'd lived in Austin fo 18 years. He had friends.
But I was an eediot.
I told him he could stay.
"But you're sleepingon the couch," I told him sternly.
He laughed.
Mas later.
* Tina later married my college boyfriend, to whom I had been engaged. She was one of my college roommates. I will have to tell you that story sometime. They are both nice people and I hope they are happy.
** You have enough of that to look forward to with your in-laws.
Or was it just the general insecurity of someone who is uncertain about her place in the world and has had her position as the Smart One yanked away as soon as she got to college with some real competition (which wouldn't have been so bad if I had 1. gone to every single class, 2. worn my glasses in class because if you can't see the teacher taking the derivative or showing how hydrogen bonds to - other things, it doesn't matter if you can hear him, and 3. asked the professor for help like my dad kept telling me to do), and then had her ego double-dog-slammed by her sister, the Pretty One who knows how to accessorize and put on makeup but who also ended up being pretty darn smart, too? It did not help at all for the Pretty One to come to the Smart One's workplace one day and have the Smart One's male coworkers drooling at the sight of the Pretty One.
"Your sister oozes sensuality," one coworker said.
"You and your sister are so different!" the other coworker said.
Yes.
I know.
Anyhow. Every time I think I am running out of Men and How I Was Stupid With Them stories (aka "My Life in Bad Decisions"), I think of another one.
This story takes place in Austin, where I lived for my mid-20s, back when it was a great place to live and the traffic hadn't gotten awful and you could drive around Highway 360 and all you saw were fields and hills. No buildings. No crowding. Chili's, Whole Foods, and the Black-Eyed Pea had not yet become national chains. They were just little Texas places just for us Texans.
My friends Nathan and Tina* worked for a guy named Stan. Stan was older. Mid 30s. So dangerous. You know me. I liked to live on the edge.
I had met Stan a couple of times at Friday happy hours with Nathan and Tina. I had always thought he was attractive, but he had a girlfriend. Then they broke up, which was probably the right thing to do. He told me that they were in couples counseling.
Honey.
If you are just dating and have to see a counselor, that is a sign to break up. That much stress in a relationship means you are not meant to be. Move on. That's why you date and evaluate many options. To find someone who doesn't push all your crazy buttons.** You'll never find someone who is perfect, but you'll eventually find the right kind of imperfect.
A friend saw a counselor with his girlfriend. She was beautiful, as all his girlfriends were. But she was a leetle bit crazy: she was in law school and taught many aerobics classes a week. That exercise probably helped her keep her lovely figure, but even more figure preserving was her refusal to eat anything good. The friend took the girlfriend out to eat with his parents. GF ordered shrimp. She did not know they were fried. When the shrimp arrived, she pitched a little fit about how she couldn't eat anything fried!
As she was pitching her fit, my friend's dad, who is a super nice, mellow guy, just like my friend, carefully took a shrimp, scraped all the breading off it and handed it to her. "Is that OK?" he asked.
I think the relationship ended shortly after that.
Stan's breaking up with his girlfriend coincided with his quitting his job to attend graduate school. He had moved away. He was back in town for his spring break and I saw him when I joined Nathan and Tina at a bar.
Somehow, we ended up necking in his car in the parking garage.
Oh yes. Nothing but the classiest of behavior from me.
He left for Houston the next morning, but called me that evening. Could he come back to Austin to see me?
Well sure. I was flattered. But where, I asked him, will you stay?
With you, of course! he told me.
I was not happy with that idea. I want to go back to my 23 year old self and slap myself silly, saying, "No! Do not let him stay with you! It's all wrong. He's being too pushy. He should respect your 'no.' This cannot end well."
But I didn't resist. I tried, but he wore me down. And no, it's not like he couldn't have found somewhere else to sleep. He'd lived in Austin fo 18 years. He had friends.
But I was an eediot.
I told him he could stay.
"But you're sleepingon the couch," I told him sternly.
He laughed.
Mas later.
* Tina later married my college boyfriend, to whom I had been engaged. She was one of my college roommates. I will have to tell you that story sometime. They are both nice people and I hope they are happy.
** You have enough of that to look forward to with your in-laws.
Monday, June 21, 2010
In which I have a chance to be Mrs Robinson but no
When I was still working for The Man, slaving away in my no-privacy cubicle in the converted warehouse in the part of town where people were carjacked at stoplights and we were supposed to call security if we had to go to the parking lot after dark, a colleague, Billy, asked me to lunch. Although I usually ate lunch at my desk* and then ran to the JCC gym for a quick workout,** I agreed to go. I had known Billy for five years - since his starting at the company right out of college. We had worked on several projects together and he was a great kid. Going out to lunch with him sounded like a lot more fun than going to the gym.
When we got to the restaurant, Billy told me this was his treat. I protested, but he insisted. I stopped arguing and accepted graciously, although I think lunch between colleagues should be dutch treat. But it’s ungracious to argue when someone makes a generous offer like that. When I offer to buy lunch for someone, I mean it, and find it insulting to have the person make more than a token protest.
We had a nice conversation. On the one big project we had worked on together, I frequently made brownies for the team. “No brownies for you!” became a mantra when I was teasing someone. Billy told me there was a guy on his team now who was always bringing elaborate desserts to work and that he – Billy – wanted to make something even better. (Men are so competitive. I would never try to outbake anyone for say, book club.) Did I give dessert-making lessons?
No, I told him, but I would send him some recipes. And, I said, he might want to consider taking some cooking classes – that would be a great way to meet girls! Then I got nosy. “Do you have a girlfriend?”
“No, not right now,” he said, blushing. He was a quiet, reserved guy – not the sort who would be out on the town all the time, I would think.
“We’ll have to figure out a way for you to meet a nice girl,” said yenta me.
Then he told me that he had gotten a cat and we compared kitten and cat stories. “You need to come over and meet my cat,” he suggested.
“OK, sure,” I said. I didn't mean it. I wasn't interested in going to his place. But what do you say to something like that? No, I don't want to come over to your place to see your cat? I spend enough time at work and spending non-work time with co-workers is just like work?
He told me about the vacation had taken to Milan. I was interested to hear about it. “I have photos,” he offered. “You can come over and see them if you want.”
“Email me some!” I said. Enough with the making me go to his place! He was a tech guy. Did he not understand the wonders of the interweb?
But then I started to wonder. No! I was THIRTEEN YEARS OLDER than he was! I was completely misreading things.
I suppressed my thoughts. Crazy, crazy, crazy. What would a 26 year old guy want with a 39 year old woman? I'm not Demi Moore, you know. It's not like I can pay for a perfect body (OK, she was starting with a decent canvas to begin with) or help his career. I was imagining things, letting my ego get in the way of reality. Who wouldn't want a man 13 years her junior to be attracted to her, even unrequitedly? I was seeing things that weren't there that I sort of wanted to see but then really didn't want to because that gets messy.
We returned to the office. I emailed a few friends and asked their opinion. I asked my brother. They all said that given the facts as I had stated them (not that I have ever been known to exaggerate), it sounded like Billy thought I was One Hot Mama, and I use the word "Mama" on purpose, although I have no children.
There was a new young woman in accounting. I called her. "I know a really nice guy," I said. "Do you want to be set up?"
Nope, she told me. She had a boyfriend.
Oh. Like she shouldn't do a capital analysis of all the available investments to see which is the best one? Serial dating is really bad for evaluating options. She should date a lot of guys at once.
But she was unconvinced.
It didn't matter, because I had emailed Billy first to ask him if I should ask Accounting Girl if she wanted to meet him.
“I’d really be more interested in getting to know you better,” he replied.
Oh.
Sheesh.
How was I supposed to respond to that, impressed as I was that he was willing to put himself out there and flattered as I was that he was attracted to me?
1. I wasn't interested in him, age or not.
2. I had to keep working with him.
Hadn't my responses to his bait about cooking, cats and photos been enough to put him off, even though I hadn't thought that he was flirting at first? Could I tell him I had to wash my hair? Why was I being forced into this awkward position? MEN! If you throw out hints inviting a woman to your place and she pushes back and she also offers to set you up WITH SOMEONE ELSE, that means she DOES NOT WANT TO DATE YOU.
Sigh. I had to deal with this.
The meanest thing to do is to string someone along.
So I lied instead.
I emailed him, telling him how very flattered I was, but that I was involved with someone else, which was sort of - OK, not really - true. The flattered part was totally true.
He must have been OK with what I said because not only did we not have a problem in our working relationship after that, but he continued to email me for a good two years after I was laid off (a few months after his proposition) to check in on me. Or maybe to see if I had changed my mind.
* Take that, the four men (and my only peers in the office) who went out to lunch without me my first day of work at this company. I had taken the train the 60 miles to work. (Don't move to Boca! they told me. We're moving the office to Miami any day now!) I did not have a car with me or any other means to get to a place where food was sold, other than my feet, and considering I was 1. wearing high heels and 2. did not know the area at all, that wasn't a good option. I had not brought lunch with me. There was a small snack bar in the office building that sold junk food. The man who hired me plus all my new colleagues walked past my office. We're going out to lunch, they said. See you in an hour or so. Yeah. I felt welcome. I ate pretzels for lunch. The next day, I brought my lunch. Jerks.
** And to watch the hot, hot, hot Israeli cop who finally asked me out - OK, he told me I could ride around in the cop car with him and asked for my contact info, but that was a request for a date as far as I was concerned - but then told me that he was married but only for a green card, which, as you know, is a deal breaker for me. I don't do immigration cheating. Why are these guys so attracted to me? Cheaters, I mean? Even if he was lying about his marriage and it was a real marriage and not a green card marriage, then he was sort of cheating on his wife with his flirting with me.
When we got to the restaurant, Billy told me this was his treat. I protested, but he insisted. I stopped arguing and accepted graciously, although I think lunch between colleagues should be dutch treat. But it’s ungracious to argue when someone makes a generous offer like that. When I offer to buy lunch for someone, I mean it, and find it insulting to have the person make more than a token protest.
We had a nice conversation. On the one big project we had worked on together, I frequently made brownies for the team. “No brownies for you!” became a mantra when I was teasing someone. Billy told me there was a guy on his team now who was always bringing elaborate desserts to work and that he – Billy – wanted to make something even better. (Men are so competitive. I would never try to outbake anyone for say, book club.) Did I give dessert-making lessons?
No, I told him, but I would send him some recipes. And, I said, he might want to consider taking some cooking classes – that would be a great way to meet girls! Then I got nosy. “Do you have a girlfriend?”
“No, not right now,” he said, blushing. He was a quiet, reserved guy – not the sort who would be out on the town all the time, I would think.
“We’ll have to figure out a way for you to meet a nice girl,” said yenta me.
Then he told me that he had gotten a cat and we compared kitten and cat stories. “You need to come over and meet my cat,” he suggested.
“OK, sure,” I said. I didn't mean it. I wasn't interested in going to his place. But what do you say to something like that? No, I don't want to come over to your place to see your cat? I spend enough time at work and spending non-work time with co-workers is just like work?
He told me about the vacation had taken to Milan. I was interested to hear about it. “I have photos,” he offered. “You can come over and see them if you want.”
“Email me some!” I said. Enough with the making me go to his place! He was a tech guy. Did he not understand the wonders of the interweb?
But then I started to wonder. No! I was THIRTEEN YEARS OLDER than he was! I was completely misreading things.
I suppressed my thoughts. Crazy, crazy, crazy. What would a 26 year old guy want with a 39 year old woman? I'm not Demi Moore, you know. It's not like I can pay for a perfect body (OK, she was starting with a decent canvas to begin with) or help his career. I was imagining things, letting my ego get in the way of reality. Who wouldn't want a man 13 years her junior to be attracted to her, even unrequitedly? I was seeing things that weren't there that I sort of wanted to see but then really didn't want to because that gets messy.
We returned to the office. I emailed a few friends and asked their opinion. I asked my brother. They all said that given the facts as I had stated them (not that I have ever been known to exaggerate), it sounded like Billy thought I was One Hot Mama, and I use the word "Mama" on purpose, although I have no children.
There was a new young woman in accounting. I called her. "I know a really nice guy," I said. "Do you want to be set up?"
Nope, she told me. She had a boyfriend.
Oh. Like she shouldn't do a capital analysis of all the available investments to see which is the best one? Serial dating is really bad for evaluating options. She should date a lot of guys at once.
But she was unconvinced.
It didn't matter, because I had emailed Billy first to ask him if I should ask Accounting Girl if she wanted to meet him.
“I’d really be more interested in getting to know you better,” he replied.
Oh.
Sheesh.
How was I supposed to respond to that, impressed as I was that he was willing to put himself out there and flattered as I was that he was attracted to me?
1. I wasn't interested in him, age or not.
2. I had to keep working with him.
Hadn't my responses to his bait about cooking, cats and photos been enough to put him off, even though I hadn't thought that he was flirting at first? Could I tell him I had to wash my hair? Why was I being forced into this awkward position? MEN! If you throw out hints inviting a woman to your place and she pushes back and she also offers to set you up WITH SOMEONE ELSE, that means she DOES NOT WANT TO DATE YOU.
Sigh. I had to deal with this.
The meanest thing to do is to string someone along.
So I lied instead.
I emailed him, telling him how very flattered I was, but that I was involved with someone else, which was sort of - OK, not really - true. The flattered part was totally true.
He must have been OK with what I said because not only did we not have a problem in our working relationship after that, but he continued to email me for a good two years after I was laid off (a few months after his proposition) to check in on me. Or maybe to see if I had changed my mind.
* Take that, the four men (and my only peers in the office) who went out to lunch without me my first day of work at this company. I had taken the train the 60 miles to work. (Don't move to Boca! they told me. We're moving the office to Miami any day now!) I did not have a car with me or any other means to get to a place where food was sold, other than my feet, and considering I was 1. wearing high heels and 2. did not know the area at all, that wasn't a good option. I had not brought lunch with me. There was a small snack bar in the office building that sold junk food. The man who hired me plus all my new colleagues walked past my office. We're going out to lunch, they said. See you in an hour or so. Yeah. I felt welcome. I ate pretzels for lunch. The next day, I brought my lunch. Jerks.
** And to watch the hot, hot, hot Israeli cop who finally asked me out - OK, he told me I could ride around in the cop car with him and asked for my contact info, but that was a request for a date as far as I was concerned - but then told me that he was married but only for a green card, which, as you know, is a deal breaker for me. I don't do immigration cheating. Why are these guys so attracted to me? Cheaters, I mean? Even if he was lying about his marriage and it was a real marriage and not a green card marriage, then he was sort of cheating on his wife with his flirting with me.
In which I break up with a guy mostly because he annoys me to death
I went out to dinner with some friends and a friend of theirs, whom we shall call Ahmet. Ahmet was not his name, but he was Turkish and he did have an MBA from the University of Texas and he did work with my friend, Skip, trading bonds.
The evening was delightful, all the more so because Ahmet thought everything I said was brilliant and hilarious* and if there is anything more intoxicating than a man laughing at your jokes, I don't know what it is. Maybe it's if he tells you you are beautiful, but mine is not a face that could launch a thousand ships, so I have learned to rely on charm and wit instead.
Although I wouldn't mind being told I was beautiful. Primo thinks I am lovely, but he would, because he loves me. Being told I am beautiful by someone who does not know me would be even better, although in the end, I care about what Primo thinks more than what anyone else thinks. Mostly. Not that I am seeking external validation or anything.
Back to Ahmet. The purpose of the dinner was to celebrate Ahmet's quitting his job so he could return to Turkey to visit his family and think about What He Was Going To Do Next, including the possibility of working on Wall Street, although why someone would choose to live in New York City when he could be in Austin, Texas, or Almost** Anywhere, Texas, I do not know. No offense, New Yorkers. New York is a fabulous place to visit and I had a wonderful time, but for everyday life, give me laid-back Texas with space, Mexican food, BBQ, easy living, low rents, and no state income tax.
He liked me. He asked me out. We went. We hit it off. He was very smart and very funny, the two most important qualities in a man as far as I am concerned. Primo is smart and sometimes funny and always handsome, so that's even better. He was nice enough looking, but I remember his wit the most.
Then he stopped working. He got bored. He would call me four or five times a day. I did not have TIME TO GOOF OFF at work. (This was before the internet and before I learned to combine goofing off and working.) I had WORK TO DO.
Plus I had never intended anything serious because hello, when I met him I knew he was leaving town in a month so hey, let's just have a little fun.
I might have maybe considered something more except 1) he was Muslim and those inter-faith marriages? Not so easy.
And 2) he told me he had married his (American) college girlfriend just for a green card. She was complicit. She knew what was going on. Married him without ever telling her family. They stayed married long enough for him to get residency or whatever he needed, then they divorced.
That's cheating.
I don't like cheaters.
Yes, most of us cheat to some degree. We make color copies of our Christmas letter on the printer at work and justify it to ourselves by thinking of all the weekends we have spent at trade shows, the lunch hours we have spent at our desks resolving crisis problems and the evenings we have spent in airports on business travel, but there is venial cheating and there is cardinal cheating. Immigration cheating is definitely cardinal cheating.
I finally had to tell him that no, the relationship was not going anywhere. I hate doing that. I hate having to state it explicitly, but it's far kinder in the long run to tell someone where he stands than to leave him with hope that will never be fulfilled.
OK, I wasn't completely explicit. I told him that because of our religious differences, there was no future. I could not see myself marrying a non-Christian.
He kept calling.
I wouldn't take his calls.
He wrote me a letter telling me he would convert.
I lost all respect for him. I would never convert. Never. I especially would not do it for someone I had known less than a month. Had he so little integrity? Or was I that hot?
Or was he at risk for being deported again?
I don't know. But I never answered his letter. It didn't deserve a response.
* I once changed doctors simply because my doctor never laughed at my jokes. When I explained the change to my roommate, Rebecca, Rebecca said that maybe I just wasn't funny. I refused to consider that as a possibility.
** Maybe not Bledsoe.
The evening was delightful, all the more so because Ahmet thought everything I said was brilliant and hilarious* and if there is anything more intoxicating than a man laughing at your jokes, I don't know what it is. Maybe it's if he tells you you are beautiful, but mine is not a face that could launch a thousand ships, so I have learned to rely on charm and wit instead.
Although I wouldn't mind being told I was beautiful. Primo thinks I am lovely, but he would, because he loves me. Being told I am beautiful by someone who does not know me would be even better, although in the end, I care about what Primo thinks more than what anyone else thinks. Mostly. Not that I am seeking external validation or anything.
Back to Ahmet. The purpose of the dinner was to celebrate Ahmet's quitting his job so he could return to Turkey to visit his family and think about What He Was Going To Do Next, including the possibility of working on Wall Street, although why someone would choose to live in New York City when he could be in Austin, Texas, or Almost** Anywhere, Texas, I do not know. No offense, New Yorkers. New York is a fabulous place to visit and I had a wonderful time, but for everyday life, give me laid-back Texas with space, Mexican food, BBQ, easy living, low rents, and no state income tax.
He liked me. He asked me out. We went. We hit it off. He was very smart and very funny, the two most important qualities in a man as far as I am concerned. Primo is smart and sometimes funny and always handsome, so that's even better. He was nice enough looking, but I remember his wit the most.
Then he stopped working. He got bored. He would call me four or five times a day. I did not have TIME TO GOOF OFF at work. (This was before the internet and before I learned to combine goofing off and working.) I had WORK TO DO.
Plus I had never intended anything serious because hello, when I met him I knew he was leaving town in a month so hey, let's just have a little fun.
I might have maybe considered something more except 1) he was Muslim and those inter-faith marriages? Not so easy.
And 2) he told me he had married his (American) college girlfriend just for a green card. She was complicit. She knew what was going on. Married him without ever telling her family. They stayed married long enough for him to get residency or whatever he needed, then they divorced.
That's cheating.
I don't like cheaters.
Yes, most of us cheat to some degree. We make color copies of our Christmas letter on the printer at work and justify it to ourselves by thinking of all the weekends we have spent at trade shows, the lunch hours we have spent at our desks resolving crisis problems and the evenings we have spent in airports on business travel, but there is venial cheating and there is cardinal cheating. Immigration cheating is definitely cardinal cheating.
I finally had to tell him that no, the relationship was not going anywhere. I hate doing that. I hate having to state it explicitly, but it's far kinder in the long run to tell someone where he stands than to leave him with hope that will never be fulfilled.
OK, I wasn't completely explicit. I told him that because of our religious differences, there was no future. I could not see myself marrying a non-Christian.
He kept calling.
I wouldn't take his calls.
He wrote me a letter telling me he would convert.
I lost all respect for him. I would never convert. Never. I especially would not do it for someone I had known less than a month. Had he so little integrity? Or was I that hot?
Or was he at risk for being deported again?
I don't know. But I never answered his letter. It didn't deserve a response.
* I once changed doctors simply because my doctor never laughed at my jokes. When I explained the change to my roommate, Rebecca, Rebecca said that maybe I just wasn't funny. I refused to consider that as a possibility.
** Maybe not Bledsoe.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
In which a pilot tries to pick me up but I tell him he's too old for me
I got a job in Houston right after college. When I was 22, my job was to travel to Arkansas, New Mexico, and around Texas to promote a product to the company's field offices. I thought it was very glamorous to travel all the time. I had my own office* in downtown Houston, but my boss was in Florida, so there was nobody keeping an eye on my comings and goings. I made all my own travel arrangements, which meant American Airlines for everything because I wanted those frequent flier miles and indeed, they eventually took me to Paris and Australia. I got to stay at hotels, which I thought was super cool.
The romance faded pretty quickly once I got tired of never sleeping in my own bed and being really bored in the evenings. Back then, the work day ended at 5:00. No voicemail. No email. Maybe some paperwork I carried with me in my fancy leather and burlap briefcase that gave me such a professional, I know what I'm doing air (along with my Jos A Banks suits and blouses with the stupid little bow ties, but what did I know? I was 22 and this was how to Dress For Success), but once I was through with it, I was D-O-N-E done. Don't you love how all the productivity advances in the past 25 years have accrued to the benefit of The Man?
I was too insecure to eat out alone, so I would go to the grocery store and buy something extravagant that I could not afford at home, like strawberries. Ah, the joy of post-college life when student loans (whose interest was not tax-deductible at that point, anyone who might be annoyed that I did not pay income tax on the $300 I earned as a cocktail waitress) ate up more than 10% of my pre-tax income. When I was in the office, I took peanut butter sandwiches for lunch. But traveling on expense account. Well. The sky was the limit. Strawberries. Cheese. Meat. Paradise.
Evenings became not so boring once I started meeting men in the other cities. In Little Rock, one of the men I worked with introduced me to a bartender friend of his who asked me out. I said yes and then let him take me back to his house even though I didn't know him from Adam's housecat. Thank goodness he was a good guy or that could have been bad. How dumb was I?
Maybe he just wasn't that interested in me after I descended the stairs of the fancy downtown Little Rock hotel wearing my horribly wrinkled Banana Republic (back when BR was a fun place to shop) chambray dress. Sure, it was great for travel but that didn't mean it didn't need to be ironed. Hmm. Maybe it wasn't great for travel after all. A prudent woman with some fashion sense would have called the front desk to ask for an iron and ironing board after not finding one in her room, but I was not a prudent woman with some fashion sense.
Then there was Brian, the room service waiter in Albuquerque who bemoaned the fact that he was 28 and still in college, but my google stalking** has advised me that he has risen fairly high in hotel management, so he did OK in the end. He took me through the back staircase at the hotel and let me help him serve the rooms, which was a lot of fun. We would go out when I was in Albuquerque. I even stayed over a weekend. He let me have his bed and he slept on the couch. Again, I lucked out because what if he'd been an ax murderer rapist?
But he wasn't. The last time I saw him, we said goodbye at the hotel. When I got to the airport, he was there waiting for me with a rose. He had sped ahead of me on his motorcycle to surprise me.
On to the pilot. I had become a little more accustomed to speaking to men, although they still scared me to death. My college boyfriend of three years and I had broken up a few months before. I called all the men older than 30 or so "Mr" Whatever at work, or at least I did until the VP took me aside one day and gently informed me that at the company, we were on a first-name basis.
What I am getting at here is that older men did not attract me as much as they intimidated me. No way I would have pursued an older man.
One day, as I was waiting for my flight home to Houston, the pilot was sitting across from me. He smiled and nodded and I smiled back. We maybe even exchanged pleasantries. I don't remember.
When I got off the plane, he was waiting at the front, as pilots do. He spoke to me, asked me about the flight, whatever. Somehow, he asked if I wanted to have a drink with him. I felt bold, so told him yes. He, not being from Houston, asked where should we go. I suggested the airport bar, but he told me that he was not allowed to be in the bar while he was in uniform. It makes the passengers nervous, he said, even if he is drinking coke.
OK, fine. We'll drive somewhere. Not like I knew any bars, even though I had lived in Houston for a few months now. My fake ID was for getting into country western dance halls, not for drinking. If I had wanted to drink (I didn't), I would have drunk a lot more cheaply on campus. We got to my car. I started driving and making small talk. "How long have you been flying?" I asked.
"I got my license in 1963," he told me.
"Oh," I said, startled. "The year I was born."
Silence. Then, "I don't suppose you're interested in going out with a man old enough to be your father."
I didn't even have to think about that one. What a disgusting idea.*** "No," I said.
I took him back to the airport. Goodbye forever.
My friend Terri, who was married to a commercial pilot, told me I was crazy. "Do you know how much money those captains make?" she asked.
But he was old. Ick.
* Not a cubicle. I had my own office for every job (except when I was in the Peace Corps and I shared an office with my counterpart and the computer) until my last position at the last company, when my SPINELESS BOSS let someone kick our entire team out of our offices in the company HQ and move us to cubicles in a converted warehouse 13 miles away. But I AM NOT BITTER.
** Of course I google my old boyfriends. Don't you?
*** Note that I overcame that hesitation later when I went out with the plane jumper. He wasn't older than my dad, but he was a year older than my mom.
The romance faded pretty quickly once I got tired of never sleeping in my own bed and being really bored in the evenings. Back then, the work day ended at 5:00. No voicemail. No email. Maybe some paperwork I carried with me in my fancy leather and burlap briefcase that gave me such a professional, I know what I'm doing air (along with my Jos A Banks suits and blouses with the stupid little bow ties, but what did I know? I was 22 and this was how to Dress For Success), but once I was through with it, I was D-O-N-E done. Don't you love how all the productivity advances in the past 25 years have accrued to the benefit of The Man?
I was too insecure to eat out alone, so I would go to the grocery store and buy something extravagant that I could not afford at home, like strawberries. Ah, the joy of post-college life when student loans (whose interest was not tax-deductible at that point, anyone who might be annoyed that I did not pay income tax on the $300 I earned as a cocktail waitress) ate up more than 10% of my pre-tax income. When I was in the office, I took peanut butter sandwiches for lunch. But traveling on expense account. Well. The sky was the limit. Strawberries. Cheese. Meat. Paradise.
Evenings became not so boring once I started meeting men in the other cities. In Little Rock, one of the men I worked with introduced me to a bartender friend of his who asked me out. I said yes and then let him take me back to his house even though I didn't know him from Adam's housecat. Thank goodness he was a good guy or that could have been bad. How dumb was I?
Maybe he just wasn't that interested in me after I descended the stairs of the fancy downtown Little Rock hotel wearing my horribly wrinkled Banana Republic (back when BR was a fun place to shop) chambray dress. Sure, it was great for travel but that didn't mean it didn't need to be ironed. Hmm. Maybe it wasn't great for travel after all. A prudent woman with some fashion sense would have called the front desk to ask for an iron and ironing board after not finding one in her room, but I was not a prudent woman with some fashion sense.
Then there was Brian, the room service waiter in Albuquerque who bemoaned the fact that he was 28 and still in college, but my google stalking** has advised me that he has risen fairly high in hotel management, so he did OK in the end. He took me through the back staircase at the hotel and let me help him serve the rooms, which was a lot of fun. We would go out when I was in Albuquerque. I even stayed over a weekend. He let me have his bed and he slept on the couch. Again, I lucked out because what if he'd been an ax murderer rapist?
But he wasn't. The last time I saw him, we said goodbye at the hotel. When I got to the airport, he was there waiting for me with a rose. He had sped ahead of me on his motorcycle to surprise me.
On to the pilot. I had become a little more accustomed to speaking to men, although they still scared me to death. My college boyfriend of three years and I had broken up a few months before. I called all the men older than 30 or so "Mr" Whatever at work, or at least I did until the VP took me aside one day and gently informed me that at the company, we were on a first-name basis.
What I am getting at here is that older men did not attract me as much as they intimidated me. No way I would have pursued an older man.
One day, as I was waiting for my flight home to Houston, the pilot was sitting across from me. He smiled and nodded and I smiled back. We maybe even exchanged pleasantries. I don't remember.
When I got off the plane, he was waiting at the front, as pilots do. He spoke to me, asked me about the flight, whatever. Somehow, he asked if I wanted to have a drink with him. I felt bold, so told him yes. He, not being from Houston, asked where should we go. I suggested the airport bar, but he told me that he was not allowed to be in the bar while he was in uniform. It makes the passengers nervous, he said, even if he is drinking coke.
OK, fine. We'll drive somewhere. Not like I knew any bars, even though I had lived in Houston for a few months now. My fake ID was for getting into country western dance halls, not for drinking. If I had wanted to drink (I didn't), I would have drunk a lot more cheaply on campus. We got to my car. I started driving and making small talk. "How long have you been flying?" I asked.
"I got my license in 1963," he told me.
"Oh," I said, startled. "The year I was born."
Silence. Then, "I don't suppose you're interested in going out with a man old enough to be your father."
I didn't even have to think about that one. What a disgusting idea.*** "No," I said.
I took him back to the airport. Goodbye forever.
My friend Terri, who was married to a commercial pilot, told me I was crazy. "Do you know how much money those captains make?" she asked.
But he was old. Ick.
* Not a cubicle. I had my own office for every job (except when I was in the Peace Corps and I shared an office with my counterpart and the computer) until my last position at the last company, when my SPINELESS BOSS let someone kick our entire team out of our offices in the company HQ and move us to cubicles in a converted warehouse 13 miles away. But I AM NOT BITTER.
** Of course I google my old boyfriends. Don't you?
*** Note that I overcame that hesitation later when I went out with the plane jumper. He wasn't older than my dad, but he was a year older than my mom.
Monday, June 7, 2010
In which I stand up for myself to the guy who grabbed my butt and he gives me a $20 tip
It's time for a post where I don't look like a total idiot. One where I am woman hear me roar.
So few of those.
So many of the other.
But then as my former boss and current friend Kurt said, "Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment."
One hopes that as I am now into my 40s, I have had enough experience and can coast on good judgment for a while.
My freshman year in college, I worked as a cocktail waitress over Christmas break. It was probably illegal. A neighbor owned the bar and wanted some extra help and I wanted the work. Was it tips only? I might even have been off the books, except at that time, tips were not taxable so it wasn't such a big deal. It must have been a tips only deal, because I don't think I was old enough to be working in a liquor establishment. I was 18 and drinking age was 19.
Well. There you go. I'm a scofflaw from way back, Miss Goody Two Shoes who has otherwise always declared all her income and gets really mad at those who don't because they are making the rest of us pay more. But even if I had been paid an hourly wage, I wouldn't have made enough to pay taxes anyhow, so there you go.*
It is easy to make money as a cocktail waitress. All you have to do is remember what people are drinking and be able to do math in your head. I also discovered it helped to card the women, who grumbled about, "Don't I look old enough to drink?" but said that just for form's sake because what woman doesn't want to be thought under 19 years old?
And I discovered that I got better tips when I wore a skirt than when I wore pants.
One evening, as I was leaning over in my short denim skirt wiping a table with club soda, for that is how you get the stickiness off the surface, a man casually grabbed my butt as he walked past me.
I stood suddenly, startled and flabbergasted.
Nobody had ever grabbed my butt before. Not even a boyfriend, of which I had had two if you count the gay swimmer. I had certainly never had an unsolicited butt grab.
What to say? What to do?
I thought about it. This man's behavior was unacceptable. My body, my butt.
I marched over to him. He was standing with some friends, laughing.
"Excuse me," I said firmly.
He looked me up and down. "What?"
"Do you have a daughter?"
He looked confused. "No."
Rats. There went my plan. Wait. Improvise, adapt, overcome.
"Well, if you did, how would you feel if someone did something like that to her?" I demanded.
He sputtered, "But it just looked so cute!"
"How would you feel?"
He said nothing as I walked away, vindicated. Ha. Showed him. He wouldn't be grabbing any more butts, would he?
Six minutes later, he was at my side. "Here," he said as he handed me $20.
I thought about the implications. Was I selling out? Letting him have forgiveness for $20? Should I reject his plea and his money?
I took the money. Twenty dollars was $20. He would think twice about grabbing if it was going to cost him that much every time.
* When I was a Peace Corps volunteer, I, and all the other volunteers I knew, got an earned income credit after filing our taxes. I was so outraged at the stupidity of this that I returned my check uncashed with a letter to the IRS. They were oblivious. Perhaps they thought it was OK to use taxpayer money to supplement the stipends of volunteers who were living just fine in Chile or 3rd world countries. I doubt that was the intention of the people who created the program.
So few of those.
So many of the other.
But then as my former boss and current friend Kurt said, "Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment."
One hopes that as I am now into my 40s, I have had enough experience and can coast on good judgment for a while.
My freshman year in college, I worked as a cocktail waitress over Christmas break. It was probably illegal. A neighbor owned the bar and wanted some extra help and I wanted the work. Was it tips only? I might even have been off the books, except at that time, tips were not taxable so it wasn't such a big deal. It must have been a tips only deal, because I don't think I was old enough to be working in a liquor establishment. I was 18 and drinking age was 19.
Well. There you go. I'm a scofflaw from way back, Miss Goody Two Shoes who has otherwise always declared all her income and gets really mad at those who don't because they are making the rest of us pay more. But even if I had been paid an hourly wage, I wouldn't have made enough to pay taxes anyhow, so there you go.*
It is easy to make money as a cocktail waitress. All you have to do is remember what people are drinking and be able to do math in your head. I also discovered it helped to card the women, who grumbled about, "Don't I look old enough to drink?" but said that just for form's sake because what woman doesn't want to be thought under 19 years old?
And I discovered that I got better tips when I wore a skirt than when I wore pants.
One evening, as I was leaning over in my short denim skirt wiping a table with club soda, for that is how you get the stickiness off the surface, a man casually grabbed my butt as he walked past me.
I stood suddenly, startled and flabbergasted.
Nobody had ever grabbed my butt before. Not even a boyfriend, of which I had had two if you count the gay swimmer. I had certainly never had an unsolicited butt grab.
What to say? What to do?
I thought about it. This man's behavior was unacceptable. My body, my butt.
I marched over to him. He was standing with some friends, laughing.
"Excuse me," I said firmly.
He looked me up and down. "What?"
"Do you have a daughter?"
He looked confused. "No."
Rats. There went my plan. Wait. Improvise, adapt, overcome.
"Well, if you did, how would you feel if someone did something like that to her?" I demanded.
He sputtered, "But it just looked so cute!"
"How would you feel?"
He said nothing as I walked away, vindicated. Ha. Showed him. He wouldn't be grabbing any more butts, would he?
Six minutes later, he was at my side. "Here," he said as he handed me $20.
I thought about the implications. Was I selling out? Letting him have forgiveness for $20? Should I reject his plea and his money?
I took the money. Twenty dollars was $20. He would think twice about grabbing if it was going to cost him that much every time.
* When I was a Peace Corps volunteer, I, and all the other volunteers I knew, got an earned income credit after filing our taxes. I was so outraged at the stupidity of this that I returned my check uncashed with a letter to the IRS. They were oblivious. Perhaps they thought it was OK to use taxpayer money to supplement the stipends of volunteers who were living just fine in Chile or 3rd world countries. I doubt that was the intention of the people who created the program.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
In which I make the mistake for the 2nd time of becoming somewhat involved with a man at work and then realize I am not interested in him
Don't get your honey where you get your money. I had learned that lesson when I was 22 and working in Houston. I dated the nicest guy for a short while. He was lovely, but it just wasn't a match. That's the purpose of dating, right? To find the right fit? But when you don't fit, life is easier if you don't have to see each other at work every day at the 10:00 a.m. donut cart. Yes. We had one of those. And the company gave us each a turkey at Christmas, which did me no good because sheesh, what did I know about cooking turkey? But they also, I think, gave cash to those employees who did not want a turkey and cash is my favorite color of present.
Anyhow. You'd think at the age of 41, which was when the second work/dating event happened, I would have known better. I did know better. But where else was I supposed to meet men? I was at work from 7:30 to 6, then I went home, cleaned the bathroom, cooked supper and went to bed so I could get up at 5:00 to go to my exercise class at 5:30 a.m., and no, except for the instructor of the class, there was nobody there who was 1. single and 2. attractive. I will tell you how I humiliated myself with the instructor later. That rule is don't get your jelly where you get rid of your jelly roll, or something like that.
I had known Dick for a few years. As co-workers, of course. I always thought he was married. It was hard to tell because most of the men did not wear wedding rings. Not because they intended to cheat on their wives, although a significant number of the senior executives were on number two aka former secretary, but because I worked for a manufacturing company and when you are in a factory, you should not wear jewelry. My dad worked on airplanes for his career and never wore a ring.
We had never flirted. I had stopped flirting at work years ago because it brought me nothing but trouble. Even when I thought I was just having fun banter, the man in question sometimes mistook my intention and then you have a headache. Easier just to be professional, cool, slightly distant. Better to be a bitch than a tease. Either way, you're not one of the guys, but it's easier to get things done as a bitch. I think.
It wasn't until I learned that Dick had been a pilot in the navy that I started talking to him about non-work issues. How had a navy pilot, the best pilots in the world, ended up at my company doing what he was doing? Why wasn't he a commercial airline pilot making three times the money with ten times the status? I asked him these questions, although far more tactfully, and he explained that when he left the navy, it was when the airlines had scaled back hiring. He needed a job, any job. But my image of him was changed. Top Gun and all that, although Tom Cruise is not fit to polish a real pilot's shoes.
Then our mutual friend Lucy told me that Dick liked me. Yes, it was second grade. I was supposed to check "yes" or "no" and send the note back.
Isn't he married? I asked.
Divorced, she told me. Recently divorced.
Happily ignoring that red flag, I embarked on a full-scale flirtation that included instant messaging (although not emailing, because I am not that stupid - but maybe I am - do company computers keep IMs?) in the afternoons.
Finally, he took me out to lunch. I insisted that we go where nobody from work would see us. He was a little nervous, but I attributed that to his probable lack of dating in the past 20 years. Or 25. He was older. Bad habit of mine.
I kept waiting for him to ask me out on a weekend date. He had to ask. I was not going to. I was D-O-N-E done with asking men out. If he wasn't interested enough, then too bad.
A few days later, he wanted to meet for breakfast. Stop! Not like that. We met at a Denny's on the way to work. In the parking lot, he grabbed me and planted a big ol' smackeroo on my lips.
Oh. My. Gosh.
Horrible, horrible kisser. I mean, awful. How could anyone make it to that age and be such a bad kisser? I tactfully pulled away, telling him that I had an early meeting and had to prepare.
I asked Lucy about him. Did he like me or not? Why wouldn't he ask me out for supper? I didn't mention that he was a bad kisser because she was good friends with him and that seemed mean. After the kiss, I wasn't that interested in seeing him again anyhow, but I wanted to know what the story was.
"He still lives with his ex-wife," she told me.
What?! I said.
It was something about the alimony and not being able to sell the house and she didn't necessarily want a divorce and drama, drama, drama.
What a mess. Now I really had no interest in getting involved. Bad kisser, drama, so much to not like.
I ended it. Over. And once again, I had to work with someone who wanted to date me.
But then the problem solved itself when I was laid off. Lovely.
Anyhow. You'd think at the age of 41, which was when the second work/dating event happened, I would have known better. I did know better. But where else was I supposed to meet men? I was at work from 7:30 to 6, then I went home, cleaned the bathroom, cooked supper and went to bed so I could get up at 5:00 to go to my exercise class at 5:30 a.m., and no, except for the instructor of the class, there was nobody there who was 1. single and 2. attractive. I will tell you how I humiliated myself with the instructor later. That rule is don't get your jelly where you get rid of your jelly roll, or something like that.
I had known Dick for a few years. As co-workers, of course. I always thought he was married. It was hard to tell because most of the men did not wear wedding rings. Not because they intended to cheat on their wives, although a significant number of the senior executives were on number two aka former secretary, but because I worked for a manufacturing company and when you are in a factory, you should not wear jewelry. My dad worked on airplanes for his career and never wore a ring.
We had never flirted. I had stopped flirting at work years ago because it brought me nothing but trouble. Even when I thought I was just having fun banter, the man in question sometimes mistook my intention and then you have a headache. Easier just to be professional, cool, slightly distant. Better to be a bitch than a tease. Either way, you're not one of the guys, but it's easier to get things done as a bitch. I think.
It wasn't until I learned that Dick had been a pilot in the navy that I started talking to him about non-work issues. How had a navy pilot, the best pilots in the world, ended up at my company doing what he was doing? Why wasn't he a commercial airline pilot making three times the money with ten times the status? I asked him these questions, although far more tactfully, and he explained that when he left the navy, it was when the airlines had scaled back hiring. He needed a job, any job. But my image of him was changed. Top Gun and all that, although Tom Cruise is not fit to polish a real pilot's shoes.
Then our mutual friend Lucy told me that Dick liked me. Yes, it was second grade. I was supposed to check "yes" or "no" and send the note back.
Isn't he married? I asked.
Divorced, she told me. Recently divorced.
Happily ignoring that red flag, I embarked on a full-scale flirtation that included instant messaging (although not emailing, because I am not that stupid - but maybe I am - do company computers keep IMs?) in the afternoons.
Finally, he took me out to lunch. I insisted that we go where nobody from work would see us. He was a little nervous, but I attributed that to his probable lack of dating in the past 20 years. Or 25. He was older. Bad habit of mine.
I kept waiting for him to ask me out on a weekend date. He had to ask. I was not going to. I was D-O-N-E done with asking men out. If he wasn't interested enough, then too bad.
A few days later, he wanted to meet for breakfast. Stop! Not like that. We met at a Denny's on the way to work. In the parking lot, he grabbed me and planted a big ol' smackeroo on my lips.
Oh. My. Gosh.
Horrible, horrible kisser. I mean, awful. How could anyone make it to that age and be such a bad kisser? I tactfully pulled away, telling him that I had an early meeting and had to prepare.
I asked Lucy about him. Did he like me or not? Why wouldn't he ask me out for supper? I didn't mention that he was a bad kisser because she was good friends with him and that seemed mean. After the kiss, I wasn't that interested in seeing him again anyhow, but I wanted to know what the story was.
"He still lives with his ex-wife," she told me.
What?! I said.
It was something about the alimony and not being able to sell the house and she didn't necessarily want a divorce and drama, drama, drama.
What a mess. Now I really had no interest in getting involved. Bad kisser, drama, so much to not like.
I ended it. Over. And once again, I had to work with someone who wanted to date me.
But then the problem solved itself when I was laid off. Lovely.
In which I go to my 20-year high school reunion against my will but then the captain of the football team flirts with me so it is a great time
I was seeing Janet the therapist in 2001, which was the year of my 20-year high school reunion. I went to two different high schools: Balboa High School in the Panama Canal Zone, which was populated by Zonians who'd lived in the Zone their entire lives, rich Panamanians, embassy brats, and military brats and then Judson Rural High School in San Antonio, whose student body consisted of kids who had been together since kindergarten, for my senior year. I was one of two new students in the senior class of 638. Good times, good times.
I did not remember high school fondly, yet Janet thought it would be a good idea for me to go to the reunion. It was being held in Florida, as it is not practical for most people to travel to Central America for a weekend. I was reluctant, but too scared to challenge the authority of my therapist, so I went.
Much to my surprise, I had fun. I realized that my dread memories of high school were more of my senior year, when Michelle W was about the only person who was nice to me, and not of my time in the Canal Zone. I had had friends at Balboa and indeed was friends with them still, although Jackie still reminds me of the time I gave her phone number to the horrible people with four kids who paid $10 for a full day of babysitting and left the house with no clean diapers but two children in diapers, no clean dishes and hungry, wild children.
The school was academically distinguished - had I stayed there for my senior year, I would have been much better prepared for college, there was no dress code, which meant shorts and flip flops to school, and we were five minutes from the beach with an open campus. What's not to like?
Almost the first thing I did once I got to the party was seek Katy, to whom Sally D and I had been mean in 9th grade after befriending her first. I knew it was wrong, but I wanted Sally's approval more than Katy's, so I went along with Sally and her scathing comments to and about Katy.
When I found Katy and apologized, she graciously denied remembering anything about our behavior. Maybe she was telling the truth, but I remember when people were mean to me. (I'm talking to you, Lisa who got mad that Sandy escorted me down the aisle for the Honor Society initiation. He and I were lab partners in physiology, OK? Yes, he was one of the hottest guys in school, but trust me he was not interested in me That Way and you were gorgeous then and gorgeous now, but pouting does not enhance your beauty and you know, you could have returned my "hello" in the ladies' room at the reunion instead of acting like you had never seen me before.)
Maybe it helped that after 9th grade, Katy didn't need Sally anyhow, because she went from scrawny pre-adolescent to a very pretty, very curvacious teenager and suddenly made it into the Cool Crowd. In 10th grade, Sally ditched me for another group and I got my just desserts.
My close friends were not at the reunion, so I was forced to mingle with the group at large, which is something I hate doing, as I am not a social person. Really. I'm not. I'm convinced nobody really wants to talk to me and that they're always looking over my shoulder for something better. It was not comfortable.
But then I saw Steve, on whom I'd had a crush all of high school. In 9th-grade science, I'd asked him to be my lab partner and he said no. He spent the next three years ignoring me while I worshipped him from afar.
He was sitting on a couch next to Helen, who was one of the smartest, nicest, most gorgeous girls in our class. She still looked great. Steve spent his entire high school years with a crush on Helen.
I sat next to Steve and Helen and we chatted. Well, I tried to get Steve's attention but he was too busy trying to get Helen's attention to pay attention to me. I don't even know why I was so interested except don't we always want what we can't have? And he was still smart with a dry wit, but he had no interest, 20+ years later, in wasting it on me.
Meanwhile, the guy sitting on my other side kept talking to me. I would answer him curtly, then turn back to Steve, who I was convinced would love me if he would just TALK TO ME.
I hate losing.
Even to Helen, who was just as nice as she ever was. Honestly, was she aware of her beauty and its corresponding power? She didn't act like it.
Finally, after I had rejected the guy on my other side several times, he tapped my knee and said in frustration, "Hey! I am trying to flirt with you!"
That got my attention.
"Who are you?" I asked of the very nicely dressed and rather handsome man.
"Alberto P.," he answered.
"Did I know you?"
"I was the captain of the football team," he told me.
"I didn't go to the games," I answered apologetically.
"I was the senior class president and voted most likely to succeed."
I shrugged. "We moved after our junior year."
Finally, in frustration, he said, "My uncle was the president of Panama!"
I shook my head. "I really didn't pay any attention to politics back then."
I might not have known who he was, but he had my attention. Good looking, nicely dressed, and, most importantly, interested in me. Fooey to Steve. I turned my attention to more fruitful endeavors.
"Let's go dance," Alberto said.
Well OK. See that, Steve? The CAPTAIN OF THE FOOTBALL TEAM WANTS ME. You had your chance and you blew it.
Tralalalala. I went off with Alberto and had a wonderful evening with the CAPTAIN OF THE FOOTBALL TEAM, who wanted to be with ME.
At the end of the evening, he walked me to my room, asked for my email address, and kissed me on the cheek.
We corresponded for a short while, but this was in August and then came September 11 and everything in everyone's life seemed to come to a screeching halt. But he made me feel wonderful for one evening and it was worth it.
I did not remember high school fondly, yet Janet thought it would be a good idea for me to go to the reunion. It was being held in Florida, as it is not practical for most people to travel to Central America for a weekend. I was reluctant, but too scared to challenge the authority of my therapist, so I went.
Much to my surprise, I had fun. I realized that my dread memories of high school were more of my senior year, when Michelle W was about the only person who was nice to me, and not of my time in the Canal Zone. I had had friends at Balboa and indeed was friends with them still, although Jackie still reminds me of the time I gave her phone number to the horrible people with four kids who paid $10 for a full day of babysitting and left the house with no clean diapers but two children in diapers, no clean dishes and hungry, wild children.
The school was academically distinguished - had I stayed there for my senior year, I would have been much better prepared for college, there was no dress code, which meant shorts and flip flops to school, and we were five minutes from the beach with an open campus. What's not to like?
Almost the first thing I did once I got to the party was seek Katy, to whom Sally D and I had been mean in 9th grade after befriending her first. I knew it was wrong, but I wanted Sally's approval more than Katy's, so I went along with Sally and her scathing comments to and about Katy.
When I found Katy and apologized, she graciously denied remembering anything about our behavior. Maybe she was telling the truth, but I remember when people were mean to me. (I'm talking to you, Lisa who got mad that Sandy escorted me down the aisle for the Honor Society initiation. He and I were lab partners in physiology, OK? Yes, he was one of the hottest guys in school, but trust me he was not interested in me That Way and you were gorgeous then and gorgeous now, but pouting does not enhance your beauty and you know, you could have returned my "hello" in the ladies' room at the reunion instead of acting like you had never seen me before.)
Maybe it helped that after 9th grade, Katy didn't need Sally anyhow, because she went from scrawny pre-adolescent to a very pretty, very curvacious teenager and suddenly made it into the Cool Crowd. In 10th grade, Sally ditched me for another group and I got my just desserts.
My close friends were not at the reunion, so I was forced to mingle with the group at large, which is something I hate doing, as I am not a social person. Really. I'm not. I'm convinced nobody really wants to talk to me and that they're always looking over my shoulder for something better. It was not comfortable.
But then I saw Steve, on whom I'd had a crush all of high school. In 9th-grade science, I'd asked him to be my lab partner and he said no. He spent the next three years ignoring me while I worshipped him from afar.
He was sitting on a couch next to Helen, who was one of the smartest, nicest, most gorgeous girls in our class. She still looked great. Steve spent his entire high school years with a crush on Helen.
I sat next to Steve and Helen and we chatted. Well, I tried to get Steve's attention but he was too busy trying to get Helen's attention to pay attention to me. I don't even know why I was so interested except don't we always want what we can't have? And he was still smart with a dry wit, but he had no interest, 20+ years later, in wasting it on me.
Meanwhile, the guy sitting on my other side kept talking to me. I would answer him curtly, then turn back to Steve, who I was convinced would love me if he would just TALK TO ME.
I hate losing.
Even to Helen, who was just as nice as she ever was. Honestly, was she aware of her beauty and its corresponding power? She didn't act like it.
Finally, after I had rejected the guy on my other side several times, he tapped my knee and said in frustration, "Hey! I am trying to flirt with you!"
That got my attention.
"Who are you?" I asked of the very nicely dressed and rather handsome man.
"Alberto P.," he answered.
"Did I know you?"
"I was the captain of the football team," he told me.
"I didn't go to the games," I answered apologetically.
"I was the senior class president and voted most likely to succeed."
I shrugged. "We moved after our junior year."
Finally, in frustration, he said, "My uncle was the president of Panama!"
I shook my head. "I really didn't pay any attention to politics back then."
I might not have known who he was, but he had my attention. Good looking, nicely dressed, and, most importantly, interested in me. Fooey to Steve. I turned my attention to more fruitful endeavors.
"Let's go dance," Alberto said.
Well OK. See that, Steve? The CAPTAIN OF THE FOOTBALL TEAM WANTS ME. You had your chance and you blew it.
Tralalalala. I went off with Alberto and had a wonderful evening with the CAPTAIN OF THE FOOTBALL TEAM, who wanted to be with ME.
At the end of the evening, he walked me to my room, asked for my email address, and kissed me on the cheek.
We corresponded for a short while, but this was in August and then came September 11 and everything in everyone's life seemed to come to a screeching halt. But he made me feel wonderful for one evening and it was worth it.
In which I go to a therapist to figure out my Man Problems and solve at least one of them
When I was 38, I went through a nasty breakup, if you can even call it a breakup when you and the other person were never even really dating according to him but he called you almost every day to talk for an hour and emailed and surprised you on your birthday with a chocolate souffle with raspberry sauce and took you to meet his parents, who said, "Oh! You're the one Andrew has been talking about!" but he had told you that he was Getting Over His Divorce so he was Not Ready for Another Relationship so you were warned, weren't you, and you shouldn't have been upset when he abruptly and cruelly cut you off after you finally consummated your non-relationship, three months after it started, hissing into his phone message that you seduced him against his will.
Diagram that sentence. I can't.
So yeah. My dad had died a few years before, I had been discarded by not one but two men (Andrew and the Plane Jumper) in the past three years, and I was doing something really, really wrong.
I needed help.
I decided to seek the advice of a professional. My friend Leigh referred me to a counselor she knew. I thought, $75 an hour - that's a lot of money. I had no intention of filing it on my insurance.* What if I wanted to run for public office some day? I wanted to optimize my time. So before my first visit, I made a spreadsheet of all the men I had dated, with our ages at the time, how long the relationship lasted, whether we'd slept together, why we'd broken up: any information I could think of that might be relevant.
I took it to Janet and gave it to her on our first and what I thought was going to be our only or one of two visits.
She laughed.
Apparently, nobody had ever presented her with a spreadsheet before.
I thought she might be able to divine a pattern that was invisible to me.
Apparently, therapy does not work that way.
What therapy does is teach you that you are mad at your mother, which was news to me. Then you learn to forgive your mother because she did the best she could and for crying out loud, she was 20 years old when she had you and then had three children under five with a husband who was away at war and it's not even like she did anything horrible, like beat, starve or ignore you, it's just that she had other children besides you who demanded her attention and then she dressed you all in matching outfits that she sewed herself.
What it also teaches you is that you are used to men who go away because your father was in the air force and had to go away every few months and isn't that what men do? But no. That's not how it is supposed to be when you are dating, but if you are not very confident about your appeal to begin with and have imprinted on such a pattern, then maybe you make some Bad Choices.
The good news is that after you realize your parents weren't perfect, you say, "Well OK, neither am I but I love them both madly and I wouldn't trade them, so let's move on with that, shall we?" instead of wallowing in it as some people do not to name names but the Past is the Past and Get Over It Already and stop using it as an excuse not to be happy. You have a damn choice.
The other good news is that you realize that you do not have to put up with crap from men and you do learn to recognize some red flags, like someone who tells you yes, yes, no, no. Sometimes, the red flags are as obvious as your landlady/real estate fairy godmother saying, "I'm not sure how to tell you this but I know Andew's family and have known them since he was a little boy and he is Bad News. His marriage ended because of an affair, but it wasn't his fault. It never is." You learn to heed those red flags instead of overlooking them in your desperate search for love and companionship.
The other good news was that Janet heard all the Andrew stories, she told me he was indeed Bad News and to stay away from him. She also said that I would hear from him again.
Which I did.
Nine months later.
He called, told me he had moved (not out of town, but to a different place), and gave me his new phone number "in case I wanted to reach [him.]"
I calmly told him that if he really wanted to talk to me, he knew where to find me and said goodbye.
When he married a few years later, I learned through the grapevine that he had been dating his wife the entire time he had been playing with me.
I dodged a bullet.
* Janet also refused to give me a diagnoses that was filable. "You're not sick," she said. "You're just sad and need someone to talk to."
Diagram that sentence. I can't.
So yeah. My dad had died a few years before, I had been discarded by not one but two men (Andrew and the Plane Jumper) in the past three years, and I was doing something really, really wrong.
I needed help.
I decided to seek the advice of a professional. My friend Leigh referred me to a counselor she knew. I thought, $75 an hour - that's a lot of money. I had no intention of filing it on my insurance.* What if I wanted to run for public office some day? I wanted to optimize my time. So before my first visit, I made a spreadsheet of all the men I had dated, with our ages at the time, how long the relationship lasted, whether we'd slept together, why we'd broken up: any information I could think of that might be relevant.
I took it to Janet and gave it to her on our first and what I thought was going to be our only or one of two visits.
She laughed.
Apparently, nobody had ever presented her with a spreadsheet before.
I thought she might be able to divine a pattern that was invisible to me.
Apparently, therapy does not work that way.
What therapy does is teach you that you are mad at your mother, which was news to me. Then you learn to forgive your mother because she did the best she could and for crying out loud, she was 20 years old when she had you and then had three children under five with a husband who was away at war and it's not even like she did anything horrible, like beat, starve or ignore you, it's just that she had other children besides you who demanded her attention and then she dressed you all in matching outfits that she sewed herself.
What it also teaches you is that you are used to men who go away because your father was in the air force and had to go away every few months and isn't that what men do? But no. That's not how it is supposed to be when you are dating, but if you are not very confident about your appeal to begin with and have imprinted on such a pattern, then maybe you make some Bad Choices.
The good news is that after you realize your parents weren't perfect, you say, "Well OK, neither am I but I love them both madly and I wouldn't trade them, so let's move on with that, shall we?" instead of wallowing in it as some people do not to name names but the Past is the Past and Get Over It Already and stop using it as an excuse not to be happy. You have a damn choice.
The other good news is that you realize that you do not have to put up with crap from men and you do learn to recognize some red flags, like someone who tells you yes, yes, no, no. Sometimes, the red flags are as obvious as your landlady/real estate fairy godmother saying, "I'm not sure how to tell you this but I know Andew's family and have known them since he was a little boy and he is Bad News. His marriage ended because of an affair, but it wasn't his fault. It never is." You learn to heed those red flags instead of overlooking them in your desperate search for love and companionship.
The other good news was that Janet heard all the Andrew stories, she told me he was indeed Bad News and to stay away from him. She also said that I would hear from him again.
Which I did.
Nine months later.
He called, told me he had moved (not out of town, but to a different place), and gave me his new phone number "in case I wanted to reach [him.]"
I calmly told him that if he really wanted to talk to me, he knew where to find me and said goodbye.
When he married a few years later, I learned through the grapevine that he had been dating his wife the entire time he had been playing with me.
I dodged a bullet.
* Janet also refused to give me a diagnoses that was filable. "You're not sick," she said. "You're just sad and need someone to talk to."
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