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.
Monday, June 28, 2010
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."
In which I get drunk for the first time in my life and neck with my boss's married boss in public
Y'all, this story is almost too embarrassing to write. This is even more mortifying than the Affaire Gomez. My consolation is that most people probably have some story that makes the blood rush to their face in shame as they think about it. Most of us do not escape our youth without at least one really stupid, humiliating, this is not how your mother raised you stunt. If you did, I commend you. You are a far better person than I.
The other consolation is that humiliating, stupid acts make great copy.
When I was 23, I lived in Austin, where I worked for a Big Insurance Company. Every year, BIC had a conference in Houston for the entire region, which included about ten field offices. Part of the non-work activity that year was a wallyball tournament. Wallyball is volleyball played in a racquetball court, if memory serves.
The four of us from Austin won the tournament. Seven games or something like that, and we missed supper to play. We were hungry, dehydrated and victorious.
We went up to the bar to celebrate. Our co-workers had a head start drinking, but we did our best to catch up. I don't know what goes on at company offsite events these days, but in the mid-80s, people drank and smoked and nobody thought this was bizarre.
I had never been drunk before.
My team started doing shots of tequila.
Tequila is nasty, but once you have two or three shots, it's not so bad.
I had seven shots of tequila. On an empty, dehydrated stomach.
Then my boss's boss, Marv, who had been flirting madly with me for the past two days, started buying me beer, a fluid suitable only for making fish batter in my view, and making a straw with a rolled-up $20 bill for me to sip it.
In my defense, let me say that Marv was 15 years older than I, should have known better, and was fired a few months later for sexual harassment. Did anyone get fired for that in the mid-80s? He must have been really bad.
Marv encourages me to drink more.
I do.
My judgment went out the window.
One of us started kissing the other. I would guess he started kissing me because even drunk, I don't think I would be stupid enough to kiss my boss's married boss in front of all my co-workers.
Yet I did it.
The only saving grace was that my co-workers were drunk as well and nobody was paying attention to me. Becky R, the VP, who was 38 and really should have known better, was throwing up in the ladies' room. She was not my friend and she might have noticed and remembered, but she had problems of her own.
I got tired of kissing Marv and turned toward Steve, an unmarried peer. "Oh, you're cute!" I said as I lurched toward him.
In an act for which I will be eternally grateful, my friend Doug, who also worked in the Austin office, grabbed me and said, "You're not going there." He then marched me back to my room, threw me inside, and left me.
Someone had vomited on the bedspread.
I am pretty sure it was not me, as my roommate for the conference was already sprawled on the other, unvomited-on bed. I tore the linens off the bed, threw them into the tub, and slept on the bare mattress. The next morning, I rinsed the linens as best I could and left a $10 tip.
That did not stop the hotel from telling BIC that their custom was no longer welcome.
During the meetings the next morning, I thought, "I don't even feel bad! People talk about how awful it is to be hung over, but they know nothing. This is easy."
Then I leaned over to get the water pitcher and almost fell to the floor. That's when I realized that the reason I did not feel hung over was because I was still drunk.
PS No, my mother does not read this blog.
The other consolation is that humiliating, stupid acts make great copy.
When I was 23, I lived in Austin, where I worked for a Big Insurance Company. Every year, BIC had a conference in Houston for the entire region, which included about ten field offices. Part of the non-work activity that year was a wallyball tournament. Wallyball is volleyball played in a racquetball court, if memory serves.
The four of us from Austin won the tournament. Seven games or something like that, and we missed supper to play. We were hungry, dehydrated and victorious.
We went up to the bar to celebrate. Our co-workers had a head start drinking, but we did our best to catch up. I don't know what goes on at company offsite events these days, but in the mid-80s, people drank and smoked and nobody thought this was bizarre.
I had never been drunk before.
My team started doing shots of tequila.
Tequila is nasty, but once you have two or three shots, it's not so bad.
I had seven shots of tequila. On an empty, dehydrated stomach.
Then my boss's boss, Marv, who had been flirting madly with me for the past two days, started buying me beer, a fluid suitable only for making fish batter in my view, and making a straw with a rolled-up $20 bill for me to sip it.
In my defense, let me say that Marv was 15 years older than I, should have known better, and was fired a few months later for sexual harassment. Did anyone get fired for that in the mid-80s? He must have been really bad.
Marv encourages me to drink more.
I do.
My judgment went out the window.
One of us started kissing the other. I would guess he started kissing me because even drunk, I don't think I would be stupid enough to kiss my boss's married boss in front of all my co-workers.
Yet I did it.
The only saving grace was that my co-workers were drunk as well and nobody was paying attention to me. Becky R, the VP, who was 38 and really should have known better, was throwing up in the ladies' room. She was not my friend and she might have noticed and remembered, but she had problems of her own.
I got tired of kissing Marv and turned toward Steve, an unmarried peer. "Oh, you're cute!" I said as I lurched toward him.
In an act for which I will be eternally grateful, my friend Doug, who also worked in the Austin office, grabbed me and said, "You're not going there." He then marched me back to my room, threw me inside, and left me.
Someone had vomited on the bedspread.
I am pretty sure it was not me, as my roommate for the conference was already sprawled on the other, unvomited-on bed. I tore the linens off the bed, threw them into the tub, and slept on the bare mattress. The next morning, I rinsed the linens as best I could and left a $10 tip.
That did not stop the hotel from telling BIC that their custom was no longer welcome.
During the meetings the next morning, I thought, "I don't even feel bad! People talk about how awful it is to be hung over, but they know nothing. This is easy."
Then I leaned over to get the water pitcher and almost fell to the floor. That's when I realized that the reason I did not feel hung over was because I was still drunk.
PS No, my mother does not read this blog.
Friday, June 4, 2010
In which I make the mistake of talking to my boss about my love life even though it's obvious he is interested in me and then he asks me out
After I finished grad school and before the Peace Corps, I did temp work.
For one assignment, I was sent to Big Computer Company, which was testing their user manuals, although you would never have known it to read one. The manager gave me a series of tasks and the manual, then observed through a two-way mirror as I worked.
One of my tasks was to add a hard drive to a computer. I looked at the appropriate instructions, discovered they were crap, literally* tossed the manual back over my shoulder, and figured out how to install the hard drive on my own.
When the manager, Mark, was debriefing me, I told him that his problem was that the people writing the manuals were techies who already understood the process so well that they didn't know how to explain it to non-techies, much like the full professors teaching freshman chemistry. They have forgotten what it's like not to know.
Techies also think the rest of us should learn the hard way because once we do, it's so much easier. That's my brother's rationale for DOS versus Windows. Really! Just go through the hassle of learning DOS because once you've committed forever to understanding it, it's a piece of cake.
No thanks. I want something that is easy and intuitive from the start. The beginning of marketing a product is appealing to the user's laziness.
I also pointed out that the writing was not good. What you need, I told him blithely, is someone like me: someone who knows nothing about your product but who knows how to write and who will include instructions such as, "Now hit 'Enter.'"
I was hired (as a temp) for $15/hour, which was not too shabby for temp work, especially in 1993.
I soon discovered that much of my job was hanging out with Mark, a sweet, slightly nerdy (which is OK), 37-year-old Mormon virgin who had taken all the classwork for a PhD in psychology but had not written a dissertation. His job was to run the testing lab at BCC. There wasn't enough work, so after I would spend a few excruciatingly dull hours alone in a conference room editing manuals and then putting the changes into the electronic file, which was on the mainframe and for which one needed to use HTML because BCC was not going to be caught dead using Microsoft products, no matter how much their own product stank in comparison, Mark would find me and we would gab.
I asked him all about Mormons and why couldn't he have caffeine. He told me that it wasn't necessarily a restriction against caffeine but against stimulating beverages, which some in the church maintained were hot beverages and others maintained were caffeinated ones. Still, this did not put the church into schism as the one cuppers and the two cuppers of the Church of Christ have seen happen, so it must not have been an essential difference. What it meant for Mark was cases of 7 Up in his office that he got at Sam's Club.
The soda worked well to wash down the ranch flavored corn nuts that he also bought by the case and had stacked precariously behind his desk.
We talked about the Jesus Jammies. He was not so eager to discuss theories of the jammies or even tell me what they looked like** but I'm sure he was intrigued and perhaps convinced at my suggestion that the man who originally came up with the idea also happened to find himself the owner of a factory that made underwear.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, my friend Laura had set me up with an acquaintance from work. I had gone out with this guy once or twice, but he wasn't as interested in me as I was in him. He went out of town one weekend and returned to tell me that he had been in San Francisco with another woman.
She is beautiful, he told me, but I can talk to you.
I took that about as well as any normal woman would.
I shared all the acquaintance drama with Mark. All the, He loves me, He loves me not baloney that insecure, low self esteem women do when A Man Is Not Calling. The proper response, of course, is To Go On With Your Life, but I was young and stupid back then and made many, many mistakes.
Mark was interested and wanted to know more. This was OK. We were just friends, right? I had sensed some interest, but he was my boss. He would never do anything unprofessional.
Like ask me out.
So I kept telling him all my romantic woes and he kept sympathizing and I didn't get a whole lot of work done, although I got done all the work Mark gave me. It was boring. Mark was not so busy either. We goofed off together and nobody saw us because BCC was housed in a building with passkey-only grim gray hallways and hidden offices. In my time there, I saw only three other employees once I was past the lobby.
Contrast this to 3M, where I had had another temp assignment. Their building was open and airy with whiteboards and markers at every hall intersection to encourage the engineers to collaborate whenever possible.
Guess which company has had more innovation?
Back to Mark.
After Acquaintance and I decided there wasn't enough room for both our egos in a relationship, I told Mark it was Over.
He promptly asked me out.
Actually, what he said was that he was kinda interested in maybe hanging out with me and did I want to go out to supper sometime?
And in one of the dumbest career moves of all time, I told him no.
Seriously. How bad would it have been to go out to eat with a 37-year-old Mormon virgin? He'd already made it clear that he was not going to marry outside his faith (we had talked about the lack of hot Mormon girls in the area) and if he'd made it to 37 intacta, he probably wasn't going to blow it now. Plus I had only two months to go and I could have pretended to be a Nice Girl who doesn't sleep with men before marriage. One dinner a week to keep a $15/hour job?
I was a fool.
He wasn't.
I got a call from the temp agency the next day. BCC no longer required my services.
* When I say "literally," I mean "I really and truly did the thing I said," not "figuratively."
** I know now because of Big Love.
For one assignment, I was sent to Big Computer Company, which was testing their user manuals, although you would never have known it to read one. The manager gave me a series of tasks and the manual, then observed through a two-way mirror as I worked.
One of my tasks was to add a hard drive to a computer. I looked at the appropriate instructions, discovered they were crap, literally* tossed the manual back over my shoulder, and figured out how to install the hard drive on my own.
When the manager, Mark, was debriefing me, I told him that his problem was that the people writing the manuals were techies who already understood the process so well that they didn't know how to explain it to non-techies, much like the full professors teaching freshman chemistry. They have forgotten what it's like not to know.
Techies also think the rest of us should learn the hard way because once we do, it's so much easier. That's my brother's rationale for DOS versus Windows. Really! Just go through the hassle of learning DOS because once you've committed forever to understanding it, it's a piece of cake.
No thanks. I want something that is easy and intuitive from the start. The beginning of marketing a product is appealing to the user's laziness.
I also pointed out that the writing was not good. What you need, I told him blithely, is someone like me: someone who knows nothing about your product but who knows how to write and who will include instructions such as, "Now hit 'Enter.'"
I was hired (as a temp) for $15/hour, which was not too shabby for temp work, especially in 1993.
I soon discovered that much of my job was hanging out with Mark, a sweet, slightly nerdy (which is OK), 37-year-old Mormon virgin who had taken all the classwork for a PhD in psychology but had not written a dissertation. His job was to run the testing lab at BCC. There wasn't enough work, so after I would spend a few excruciatingly dull hours alone in a conference room editing manuals and then putting the changes into the electronic file, which was on the mainframe and for which one needed to use HTML because BCC was not going to be caught dead using Microsoft products, no matter how much their own product stank in comparison, Mark would find me and we would gab.
I asked him all about Mormons and why couldn't he have caffeine. He told me that it wasn't necessarily a restriction against caffeine but against stimulating beverages, which some in the church maintained were hot beverages and others maintained were caffeinated ones. Still, this did not put the church into schism as the one cuppers and the two cuppers of the Church of Christ have seen happen, so it must not have been an essential difference. What it meant for Mark was cases of 7 Up in his office that he got at Sam's Club.
The soda worked well to wash down the ranch flavored corn nuts that he also bought by the case and had stacked precariously behind his desk.
We talked about the Jesus Jammies. He was not so eager to discuss theories of the jammies or even tell me what they looked like** but I'm sure he was intrigued and perhaps convinced at my suggestion that the man who originally came up with the idea also happened to find himself the owner of a factory that made underwear.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, my friend Laura had set me up with an acquaintance from work. I had gone out with this guy once or twice, but he wasn't as interested in me as I was in him. He went out of town one weekend and returned to tell me that he had been in San Francisco with another woman.
She is beautiful, he told me, but I can talk to you.
I took that about as well as any normal woman would.
I shared all the acquaintance drama with Mark. All the, He loves me, He loves me not baloney that insecure, low self esteem women do when A Man Is Not Calling. The proper response, of course, is To Go On With Your Life, but I was young and stupid back then and made many, many mistakes.
Mark was interested and wanted to know more. This was OK. We were just friends, right? I had sensed some interest, but he was my boss. He would never do anything unprofessional.
Like ask me out.
So I kept telling him all my romantic woes and he kept sympathizing and I didn't get a whole lot of work done, although I got done all the work Mark gave me. It was boring. Mark was not so busy either. We goofed off together and nobody saw us because BCC was housed in a building with passkey-only grim gray hallways and hidden offices. In my time there, I saw only three other employees once I was past the lobby.
Contrast this to 3M, where I had had another temp assignment. Their building was open and airy with whiteboards and markers at every hall intersection to encourage the engineers to collaborate whenever possible.
Guess which company has had more innovation?
Back to Mark.
After Acquaintance and I decided there wasn't enough room for both our egos in a relationship, I told Mark it was Over.
He promptly asked me out.
Actually, what he said was that he was kinda interested in maybe hanging out with me and did I want to go out to supper sometime?
And in one of the dumbest career moves of all time, I told him no.
Seriously. How bad would it have been to go out to eat with a 37-year-old Mormon virgin? He'd already made it clear that he was not going to marry outside his faith (we had talked about the lack of hot Mormon girls in the area) and if he'd made it to 37 intacta, he probably wasn't going to blow it now. Plus I had only two months to go and I could have pretended to be a Nice Girl who doesn't sleep with men before marriage. One dinner a week to keep a $15/hour job?
I was a fool.
He wasn't.
I got a call from the temp agency the next day. BCC no longer required my services.
* When I say "literally," I mean "I really and truly did the thing I said," not "figuratively."
** I know now because of Big Love.
In which I go on a date with one guy and then he won't leave so I get my knitting and then abandon him to my roommates when a better offer comes along
I dated more in college than I remembered. Problem is, I was asked out by guys who didn't interest me and who were not high status. It's thrilling to be asked out by someone everyone wants. Not so thrilling to be asked out by a somewhat loser-y guy. If a SLG asks you out and has confidence you will say yes, what does that say about you? Water seeks its own level, etc., etc. I wanted the cool, cute guys to want me. But they didn't. They wanted my roommate, Anita, who had no interest in them because she had a boyfriend at OU (whom she eventually married). Everyone wants what they can't have.
Anita's brother, Boyd, was a sophomore at Small Private School. He had a friend, Clark, who, as many other upperclassmen, saw the freshmen women as fresh meat. We (the women) realized later that the upperclassmen who wanted to date us had been rejected by the upperclass women. At the time, though, we thought we were hot stuff because we were getting so much attention.
Clark was definitely a guy whom the upperclass women had found wanting, probably because he had a big drinking problem, even at that young age. Who wants to be with someone who might throw up on her or someone else? Hence, his targeting of us. Through Boyd, he met Anita's friends. He asked each of us out. Either I was the only one dumb enough to say yes or he got to me last after the others refused to go out with him a second time. Anita, who reads this blog, might remember and provide some details.
We went out. To a play on campus, I think. Then he walked me back to my room (he was enough of a gentleman to do that). No kissing, thank goodness. I was ready for him to leave, but he didn't go. How does one, especially when one is 18 years old and very inexperienced in these things, get rid of a date who won't leave?
My roommates were watching Saturday Night Live. I joined them and Clark, uninvited, joined us. This, I thought, is a good time to get out my knitting, a hobby I have had off and on since my mom taught me to knit when I was seven. We sat in the dim light, watching TV, knitting.
The door was open: our rooms were air-conditioned to heck and the only way not to freeze was to let in the warm air from outside. Completely environmentally irresponsible and you would think that with all those engineering brains on campus, they could have come up with a better way to regulate dorm temperatures, but considering it was possible to open our locked dorm rooms with a spoon,* it was clear that not a lot of thought had gone into building design.
Some guys we knew passed the open door.
We're going to see the Rocky Horror Picture Show, they announced. Y'all want to go?
I jumped up. "Yes!"
Anita and Heather glared at me. Clark didn't budge at my news. I dropped my knitting, got my purse, and fled.
Almost 30 years later, Anita and Heather are still mad at me about that.
* Small Private School is on a main Big City road, across from the medical center that has one of the best trauma units in the country because of all the gunshot wounds they treat. In other words, an area that attracts some bad actors. There were at least two rapes and one murder on campus during my time there. And yet, our doors could be opened with a spoon?
Anita's brother, Boyd, was a sophomore at Small Private School. He had a friend, Clark, who, as many other upperclassmen, saw the freshmen women as fresh meat. We (the women) realized later that the upperclassmen who wanted to date us had been rejected by the upperclass women. At the time, though, we thought we were hot stuff because we were getting so much attention.
Clark was definitely a guy whom the upperclass women had found wanting, probably because he had a big drinking problem, even at that young age. Who wants to be with someone who might throw up on her or someone else? Hence, his targeting of us. Through Boyd, he met Anita's friends. He asked each of us out. Either I was the only one dumb enough to say yes or he got to me last after the others refused to go out with him a second time. Anita, who reads this blog, might remember and provide some details.
We went out. To a play on campus, I think. Then he walked me back to my room (he was enough of a gentleman to do that). No kissing, thank goodness. I was ready for him to leave, but he didn't go. How does one, especially when one is 18 years old and very inexperienced in these things, get rid of a date who won't leave?
My roommates were watching Saturday Night Live. I joined them and Clark, uninvited, joined us. This, I thought, is a good time to get out my knitting, a hobby I have had off and on since my mom taught me to knit when I was seven. We sat in the dim light, watching TV, knitting.
The door was open: our rooms were air-conditioned to heck and the only way not to freeze was to let in the warm air from outside. Completely environmentally irresponsible and you would think that with all those engineering brains on campus, they could have come up with a better way to regulate dorm temperatures, but considering it was possible to open our locked dorm rooms with a spoon,* it was clear that not a lot of thought had gone into building design.
Some guys we knew passed the open door.
We're going to see the Rocky Horror Picture Show, they announced. Y'all want to go?
I jumped up. "Yes!"
Anita and Heather glared at me. Clark didn't budge at my news. I dropped my knitting, got my purse, and fled.
Almost 30 years later, Anita and Heather are still mad at me about that.
* Small Private School is on a main Big City road, across from the medical center that has one of the best trauma units in the country because of all the gunshot wounds they treat. In other words, an area that attracts some bad actors. There were at least two rapes and one murder on campus during my time there. And yet, our doors could be opened with a spoon?
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
In which I take candy from a baby and karma kicks me in the butt
I love blueberries. Primo does not. (See: Primo food rules and foods ending in "erry.") You can get them fresh only a few weeks a year. I wait for blueberry season and once it arrives, I eat almost nothing but blueberries.
A few years ago, Primo and I stopped in Chicago for lunch with my friends Lenore and Rob on our way to visit Primo's high-school friend who lives in St Louis. For dessert, in addition to homemade madelines, chocolate-covered pretzels and chocolate-covered strawberries (which Primo also does not like; see "erry"), Lenore served blueberries. I tried not to be a pig about the blueberries because they are not inexpensive and it is rude to eat all of something when you are a guest – you need to share.
Primo made a big deal of saying he would try the blueberries, which he has never liked. I told him not to bother, that he would not be doing me any favors. There is only a limited supply of blueberries, I said, and I don’t want to share.
He protested that he is always trying to get me to enjoy wine so I can share the experience with him and wouldn’t blueberries be the same?
No! I said. And keep your hands off my blueberries! There aren’t enough for me!
But I did eat all the blueberries at Lenore’s.
Which was wrong.
I know that now. I am sorry I did it.
Because when we got to Primo's friend Steve's house, I paid for my transgression in a big way.
Primo and Steve took a big shopping trip to Costco, which sells blueberries by the ton. Primo bought a ton just for me. My blueberries. Mine. Mineminemine.
I was sitting at the kitchen table, snacking on my blueberries, minding my own business, not hurting anyone, when Steve's friend Trisha walked in with her baby.
Evil baby.
I smiled, got up, and casually hid my blueberries in the fridge behind the two gallons of milk so nobody else would find them.
Trisha sat with the baby, Charlie, who was about 13 months old, and started feeding him his lunch.
Charlie looked to be a healthy eater, if you know what I mean, but he didn't want his hot dog. He didn't want his green beans. He didn't want his zwieback.
“Maybe That Woman will share some of those blueberries, Charlie!” Trisha chirped.
What was I supposed to say? “No! You may not give those blueberries to your baby!” How do you deny blueberries to someone? I don't mind slapping Primo's hand if he reaches for my fruit. His desire for blueberries is insincere and I know him well enough that I don't have to worry about impressing him any more. We weren't married at this point, but he liked me enough that I knew I could be myself.*
I smiled weakly and mumbled, “OK.” But I didn’t volunteer any information as to the blueberries’ location, hoping against hope that Trisha might forget her mission in the next 15 seconds.
Didn’t work. She opened the fridge, didn’t see them, and asked me where they were, so I had to tell her.
I still didn’t think it would be so bad. This was a kid who had eaten ¼ of a hot dog and three green beans. How many blueberries would he eat?
A lot. He’d been pacing himself. Waiting for the blues. Waiting to ruin my day.
As he scarfed them down, Trisha looked at me and asked, “Were you guys saving these for dessert or something?”
I shook my head and muttered, “No. Not at all.”
Which was a lie and the truth at the same time. We weren't saving them for dessert, but I was saving them for me, to eat all by myself without having to share them with a greedy baby.
Considering Steve and his wife had an open-fridge policy that I myself had already taken considerable advantage of, I didn’t see that I could deny this hungry kid the one food he seemed to like and could actually eat with his sore gums.
Then Steve's oldest kid, Mark, who was five, came along and saw the blueberries. Sat down and started eating them. Without even asking! Rude, rude little boy. I just watched helplessly. I sure wasn't going to say anything to him -- his parents were being very generous hosts and to deny their little boy a handful of blueberries would be mean beyond belief.
And remembered that I had eaten all the blueberries at Lenore’s.
What goes around, comes around.
* My friend Susan says you should be naked or at least in a bathing suit when you open the door for a first date so you can say, "These are my thighs. If they are going to be a problem, let me know now." My friend Anita, on the other hand, maintains you should wait until he likes you enough that he won't care.
A few years ago, Primo and I stopped in Chicago for lunch with my friends Lenore and Rob on our way to visit Primo's high-school friend who lives in St Louis. For dessert, in addition to homemade madelines, chocolate-covered pretzels and chocolate-covered strawberries (which Primo also does not like; see "erry"), Lenore served blueberries. I tried not to be a pig about the blueberries because they are not inexpensive and it is rude to eat all of something when you are a guest – you need to share.
Primo made a big deal of saying he would try the blueberries, which he has never liked. I told him not to bother, that he would not be doing me any favors. There is only a limited supply of blueberries, I said, and I don’t want to share.
He protested that he is always trying to get me to enjoy wine so I can share the experience with him and wouldn’t blueberries be the same?
No! I said. And keep your hands off my blueberries! There aren’t enough for me!
But I did eat all the blueberries at Lenore’s.
Which was wrong.
I know that now. I am sorry I did it.
Because when we got to Primo's friend Steve's house, I paid for my transgression in a big way.
Primo and Steve took a big shopping trip to Costco, which sells blueberries by the ton. Primo bought a ton just for me. My blueberries. Mine. Mineminemine.
I was sitting at the kitchen table, snacking on my blueberries, minding my own business, not hurting anyone, when Steve's friend Trisha walked in with her baby.
Evil baby.
I smiled, got up, and casually hid my blueberries in the fridge behind the two gallons of milk so nobody else would find them.
Trisha sat with the baby, Charlie, who was about 13 months old, and started feeding him his lunch.
Charlie looked to be a healthy eater, if you know what I mean, but he didn't want his hot dog. He didn't want his green beans. He didn't want his zwieback.
“Maybe That Woman will share some of those blueberries, Charlie!” Trisha chirped.
What was I supposed to say? “No! You may not give those blueberries to your baby!” How do you deny blueberries to someone? I don't mind slapping Primo's hand if he reaches for my fruit. His desire for blueberries is insincere and I know him well enough that I don't have to worry about impressing him any more. We weren't married at this point, but he liked me enough that I knew I could be myself.*
I smiled weakly and mumbled, “OK.” But I didn’t volunteer any information as to the blueberries’ location, hoping against hope that Trisha might forget her mission in the next 15 seconds.
Didn’t work. She opened the fridge, didn’t see them, and asked me where they were, so I had to tell her.
I still didn’t think it would be so bad. This was a kid who had eaten ¼ of a hot dog and three green beans. How many blueberries would he eat?
A lot. He’d been pacing himself. Waiting for the blues. Waiting to ruin my day.
As he scarfed them down, Trisha looked at me and asked, “Were you guys saving these for dessert or something?”
I shook my head and muttered, “No. Not at all.”
Which was a lie and the truth at the same time. We weren't saving them for dessert, but I was saving them for me, to eat all by myself without having to share them with a greedy baby.
Considering Steve and his wife had an open-fridge policy that I myself had already taken considerable advantage of, I didn’t see that I could deny this hungry kid the one food he seemed to like and could actually eat with his sore gums.
Then Steve's oldest kid, Mark, who was five, came along and saw the blueberries. Sat down and started eating them. Without even asking! Rude, rude little boy. I just watched helplessly. I sure wasn't going to say anything to him -- his parents were being very generous hosts and to deny their little boy a handful of blueberries would be mean beyond belief.
And remembered that I had eaten all the blueberries at Lenore’s.
What goes around, comes around.
* My friend Susan says you should be naked or at least in a bathing suit when you open the door for a first date so you can say, "These are my thighs. If they are going to be a problem, let me know now." My friend Anita, on the other hand, maintains you should wait until he likes you enough that he won't care.
In which my friend Ilene makes sure my dead grandmother is made up appropriately for heaven
Those of you who read my other blog (this is the double-secret-probation blog that only certain people in my life are allowed to know about, although non-relations and blog friends old and new are very welcome) have already seen this story, but I'm lazy today.
I push through the chattering crowd to the coffin. My grandmother lies there, still, a rosary laced through her clasped hands. She has a ring on almost every finger and her long nails are perfectly painted crimson. Eyeshadow, rouge, lipstick. All tastefully done. She doesn’t look bad for a woman of 96.
But something is wrong. I stare, trying to figure it out.
Her lipstick. It is a tasteful, pale, soft, barely-there pink.
I have never seen her in tasteful, pale, soft, barely-there pink in my entire life.
Imagine soft pink lips pursed around a Virginia Slims held between red-tipped fingers. Letting loose some choice words as the owner, clad in her new fur coat, slipped and fell on the calf manure covered tailgate from Uncle Butch’s cattle truck that my dad and his cousins had dragged onto the sidewalk as a Halloween prank. Drinking a beer straight from the bottle. Praying for a safe journey as she touched the little St Christopher statue on the dashboard on our way to Shopko so I could spend the dollar she gave me. Reading The National Enquirer at the grocery checkout.
You can’t.
Those lips have to be red, red, red. And not a tasteful red.
The funeral home had obviously not known my grandmother.
I call my cousin, my sister, my mother and my aunt over.
“Look at her lipstick! It’s all wrong!”
Aunt Pat agrees. “When I cleaned out her room, I found 12 tubes of lipstick, all red. Dark red.”
We decide we have to do something.
“Does anyone have any red lipstick?” I ask.
We all dig into our purses.
My friend Ilene triumphantly yanks a tube of red from her bag.
We pause as we think about the next step. We have the lipstick, but do we have the will to put it on a dead woman? Is it appropriate to touch up the makeup of a corpse? What if we get in trouble? Could the owner touch the lipstick to her own lips again?
“Grampa Al won’t know her without her red lipstick,” my mom says.
It is essential.
“I’ll do it,” Ilene, a pediatrician, says. “I had to touch dead bodies in med school.”
When Ilene finishes, Granma looks just like herself. She can rest in peace.
I push through the chattering crowd to the coffin. My grandmother lies there, still, a rosary laced through her clasped hands. She has a ring on almost every finger and her long nails are perfectly painted crimson. Eyeshadow, rouge, lipstick. All tastefully done. She doesn’t look bad for a woman of 96.
But something is wrong. I stare, trying to figure it out.
Her lipstick. It is a tasteful, pale, soft, barely-there pink.
I have never seen her in tasteful, pale, soft, barely-there pink in my entire life.
Imagine soft pink lips pursed around a Virginia Slims held between red-tipped fingers. Letting loose some choice words as the owner, clad in her new fur coat, slipped and fell on the calf manure covered tailgate from Uncle Butch’s cattle truck that my dad and his cousins had dragged onto the sidewalk as a Halloween prank. Drinking a beer straight from the bottle. Praying for a safe journey as she touched the little St Christopher statue on the dashboard on our way to Shopko so I could spend the dollar she gave me. Reading The National Enquirer at the grocery checkout.
You can’t.
Those lips have to be red, red, red. And not a tasteful red.
The funeral home had obviously not known my grandmother.
I call my cousin, my sister, my mother and my aunt over.
“Look at her lipstick! It’s all wrong!”
Aunt Pat agrees. “When I cleaned out her room, I found 12 tubes of lipstick, all red. Dark red.”
We decide we have to do something.
“Does anyone have any red lipstick?” I ask.
We all dig into our purses.
My friend Ilene triumphantly yanks a tube of red from her bag.
We pause as we think about the next step. We have the lipstick, but do we have the will to put it on a dead woman? Is it appropriate to touch up the makeup of a corpse? What if we get in trouble? Could the owner touch the lipstick to her own lips again?
“Grampa Al won’t know her without her red lipstick,” my mom says.
It is essential.
“I’ll do it,” Ilene, a pediatrician, says. “I had to touch dead bodies in med school.”
When Ilene finishes, Granma looks just like herself. She can rest in peace.
Monday, May 31, 2010
In which I learn that "I just want to have fun" means different things to different people
I lived in Austin for most of my 20s. Austin is a great town. Well, it used to be. In the late '80s and early '90s, it was a great place to be. I would stay up late. Primo should have met me back then. Staying out until 2:00 a.m. was nothing. Nothing! My friends and I would close the Sixth Street bars down. I'm not a drinker and never have been,* but I did like hanging out with my friends and dancing. I was young enough that I didn't care that I had to pay for my nights with my days. Sleeping until noon on a Saturday or Sunday? So what. I had no responsibilities.
One night, we met two pilots from Randolph AFB in San Antonio. I got the leftover guy because I have always been the sidekick friend. You know: the chubby, not as attractive but sassy and loveable one in the movies who plays next to Julia Roberts or Meg Ryan, only I was tongue-tied and muted around men. The Greek chorus. The friend who offers wisdom that is usually ignored. The friend who is there to make the main character look good.
But whatever. My bright, flirty friends drew men to them as flames draw moths. There are always extra moths who can't make it to the fiercest glow to settle for the dim, low-burning flame.
My friend got the outgoing, fun pilot. I got the redheaded pilot who also seemed fun. We danced, we chatted, we had a good time.
The next day, I thought, I should see that guy again! Being impatient and remembering he had not asked for my number, but not letting that stop me because I was independent and liberated, I tracked him down, which was as simple as calling the base locator at Randolph and getting the guy's number.
"But I'm only here for a month," he protested.
"That's OK!" I chirped. "I just want to have a good time!"
I meant I wanted to go out and dance.
Perhaps "I just want to have a good time!" means something else to a single man in his 20s.
He came up to Austin. We went to the Oasis, a bar perched on Lake Travis, to watch the sun set. He wanted to get something to eat. I advised him that the Oasis was not known for its food. When you have a fabulous view and booze, who needs a decent chef?
"Good food, bad food, it's all the same to me," he said.
Yes. Those were his words. I still remember them after 20 years, so shocked was I. I have never been indifferent to food. I might, out of desperation, eat bad food, but I never do so deliberately or willingly.
"Do you want to go dancing?" I asked.
No. He wanted to go back to my place. He was sullen, unresponsive, not the chatty guy I had met the week before. Perhaps he needed liquor to release his personality. Sober, he ranted about "Ivan" and "the Russkies" in a way that I had never heard my dad, who had been a history major with a concentration in Russian history, who had been to war and who was a career officer, talk.
We returned to the house I shared with my friend Rebecca, who, alas, was out.
Should we watch TV? I suggested.
No. He wanted to neck.
Which I did not want to do because I was no longer attracted to him. I kissed him for a little bit because I didn't know what else to do, then stopped him from going any further, which ticked him off.
I turned on the TV.
He fell asleep.
I went into the kitchen and read the paper for an hour, then returned to the living room to wake him.
"You have to leave," I said.
He did. Uncomplaining. He understood that he and I had different ideas about what constituted a fun first date.
I never heard from him again.
When I told the story to my friend Lenore, who was a human resources director at a large food company, I mentioned that this guy said his dad was a bigwhig at the same large food company. Oh yes! She recognized the name. The dad had had sexual harassment charges pressed against him. He's a jerk, she said.
I wasn't surprised.
* I've been drunk twice in my life. Two hangovers, plus acting like an idiot during the drunk part, were enough to convince me I never wanted to repeat the experience.
One night, we met two pilots from Randolph AFB in San Antonio. I got the leftover guy because I have always been the sidekick friend. You know: the chubby, not as attractive but sassy and loveable one in the movies who plays next to Julia Roberts or Meg Ryan, only I was tongue-tied and muted around men. The Greek chorus. The friend who offers wisdom that is usually ignored. The friend who is there to make the main character look good.
But whatever. My bright, flirty friends drew men to them as flames draw moths. There are always extra moths who can't make it to the fiercest glow to settle for the dim, low-burning flame.
My friend got the outgoing, fun pilot. I got the redheaded pilot who also seemed fun. We danced, we chatted, we had a good time.
The next day, I thought, I should see that guy again! Being impatient and remembering he had not asked for my number, but not letting that stop me because I was independent and liberated, I tracked him down, which was as simple as calling the base locator at Randolph and getting the guy's number.
"But I'm only here for a month," he protested.
"That's OK!" I chirped. "I just want to have a good time!"
I meant I wanted to go out and dance.
Perhaps "I just want to have a good time!" means something else to a single man in his 20s.
He came up to Austin. We went to the Oasis, a bar perched on Lake Travis, to watch the sun set. He wanted to get something to eat. I advised him that the Oasis was not known for its food. When you have a fabulous view and booze, who needs a decent chef?
"Good food, bad food, it's all the same to me," he said.
Yes. Those were his words. I still remember them after 20 years, so shocked was I. I have never been indifferent to food. I might, out of desperation, eat bad food, but I never do so deliberately or willingly.
"Do you want to go dancing?" I asked.
No. He wanted to go back to my place. He was sullen, unresponsive, not the chatty guy I had met the week before. Perhaps he needed liquor to release his personality. Sober, he ranted about "Ivan" and "the Russkies" in a way that I had never heard my dad, who had been a history major with a concentration in Russian history, who had been to war and who was a career officer, talk.
We returned to the house I shared with my friend Rebecca, who, alas, was out.
Should we watch TV? I suggested.
No. He wanted to neck.
Which I did not want to do because I was no longer attracted to him. I kissed him for a little bit because I didn't know what else to do, then stopped him from going any further, which ticked him off.
I turned on the TV.
He fell asleep.
I went into the kitchen and read the paper for an hour, then returned to the living room to wake him.
"You have to leave," I said.
He did. Uncomplaining. He understood that he and I had different ideas about what constituted a fun first date.
I never heard from him again.
When I told the story to my friend Lenore, who was a human resources director at a large food company, I mentioned that this guy said his dad was a bigwhig at the same large food company. Oh yes! She recognized the name. The dad had had sexual harassment charges pressed against him. He's a jerk, she said.
I wasn't surprised.
* I've been drunk twice in my life. Two hangovers, plus acting like an idiot during the drunk part, were enough to convince me I never wanted to repeat the experience.
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