The way it started

We started with going to Disney World all the time, convincing his best friend to come with us once.  It was before 9/11 so I hid things in my shoes.  My black lace up shoes had a big chunky heal that popped off like a Lego piece, revealing a rather large compartment for holding things, all kinds of things to enhance our trip to the happiest place on earth.   And I would dress like his paid for whore because it drove him crazy and his attention would be on me all night, my twenty something reality of what love was.   I would revel in his angry moments when other men stared.  He would be so mad, saying some man just pushed his baby stroller into a poll because he was looking at me, and the group of mothers who quickly turned away when I walked up to the line for the Peter Pan adventure, I am so glad for lucid memories for they have taught the biggest lessons.  I would have probably continued on like that but Im glad that wasn't the case.  It takes a little time to mourn and let go of precious youth.  How important it was to travel while still in it.  Your pursuits in your twenties and thirties while on vacation will be so different than in your fifties.  No need to wait.  Make the new couch you want wait, the other material pursuits, for life is short and health isn't guatanteed for life. There were trips to Amsterdam when Disney got old until the last one had to be canceled.  I found out I was pregnant.  Now the gap of going again almost reaches a decade later and I know it won't be the same so I don't push to go.  Leave it for the memories of what was.  I don't think I can go back there with him.

So I like to needle my husband about his girl gazing when I'm drinking.  We don't go out together often, but we go out separately on a regular basis.  So when we are out together I needle him in no time at all, and I ruin the night, and it's just as bad as if he ruined the night doing what I needle him about.  But I'm so sick of what he does that I can't stomach one more memory of his girl gazing, that I will ruin it before it even happened.  He can't understand why I make such a big deal out of it.  "I don't know why you make such a big deal" he actually said.  It's like he popped the bubble, and literally the night of my fortieth birthday when he couldn't take his eyes off a cocktail waitress the entire evening.  His argument was "but I did everything else right, the surprise party, the reservations, I took care of everything!  Couldn't you just overlook this one little thing?"  I guess it's no big deal that I forgoed going to Key West with him in favor of hanging out with my mentally abusive mother for nine days when she already agreed to watch our kid so we can get away alone together.  But what fun would it be if I have to share the spotlight with women half my age?  Why does that make me jealous?   If Pinterest sayings were to be believed, then life is way to short to be stuck with mediocre love.  If I have to feel like I am with a caged animal every time we go places, if he is giving out that energy that he would rather be hanging out at the next table where some object of his affection is sitting, then does that make me insecure or perhaps choosy on the quality of my company?  And what if the quality of my company is sub par to me?  If I confront him and he says something like "I was just being nice to her"  isn't going to cut it anymore, am I allowed to move on?  Do I get to upset the entire family and break my child's heart to separate from him and destroy the "thing" that we had?  That thing where we are best friends who make each other laugh, party together, collaborate over art and projects together, have sex and get along in this domestic life together, that is not at all emotionally fullfilling?  I want to feel loved, to be adored, to have this connection where I know I can talk about anything and be understood or at least heard.  It's been a lonely eight years and the kicker is he will be completely shocked when I lower the boom and end this thing while im still young enough to have a second chance.  And I will feel guilty and wrong for doing it, because he is the responsible one who takes care of EVERYTHING.  He keeps it all going so I can only feel like the selfish one for not wanting to starve emotionally anymore.

McDonalds is not the only one

I see McDonalds is getting shamed for illegal practices.  A manager was interviewed saying she was asked by higher ups to take hours away from employees when they reach overtime, or when things didnt balance, how she was forced to have employees sign out an hour before leaving, employees working for free and knowing they are but loyal enough to stick with her, understanding it wasn't her fault.  She was with the company for ten years, quite an accomplishment under those conditions.  But McDonalds isn't the only guilty one.  Every low rung job I ever had was like this.  It was my first job like many other teenagers but  I soon had to quit because they would make me close on a school night which means I came home at 3am and then they would schedule me the next day right after school.  I came down with mono in no time.  Next I worked at Lerners at Randhurst Mall.  They too had us sign out promptly at 9pm closing but then we went back into the store and spent thirty minutes straightening racks on our dime.  When I took a job as a nail technician at Mario's Tricoci's we had mandatory meeting we had to attend.  They would suddenly wipe your day clean which meant you were losing a days pay because we were paid fifty percent of every clients service.  No clients, no money, no pocketful of tip money at the end of the day either.  These meetings would be places you would have to drive to and the nail techs and I would carpool to some other suburban location where nail techs from other Mario Tricoci salons would gather to listen to a presentation about there many products.  Once after several hours of this, there was a break were everyone stood up thinking it was time to leave and out came Mrs. Tricoci, asking us all to stay while she started her presentation on how to sell more of their products.  We wouldn't get paid for the four or five hours we took out of our day so how could it be mandatory?  I was outraged and left for the bathroom, soon the other three nail techs I came with appeared and said they had enough and we bailed out of there.  My mom would say how she sees Mrs. Tricoci all the time at the holistic doctors office my mother always went to and would drag me to for treatments insurance would never cover.  Then one day I saw her there, in her fur coat.  Till this day I'm still angry with myself for not pointing out to her that coat was earned off the backs of many employees who were forced to give her their free time.  Friends have similar stories .  I think it's common but I guess it's progress that it's becoming public.  But McDonalds is far from being the only one.

Boobs for boys

I was at a party recently and I couldn't wait to go because there would be people from my high school there.  It was close to the home I grew up in.  It was nostalgic, surreal and a bit exciting because I didn't keep in touch.  I never felt like I fit in so it was extra exciting to reconnect some thirty years later.  The last time I saw any of these people we were all super young so to find everyone acting like adults, being all accepting and kind, balding and grey, their welcoming faces making the trip down memory lane exciting.  It was a thrill also to learn that one member of the group actually had a crush on me.  Iv'e already hung out with some of the group a handful of times.  It was kind of healing for me.  I left highschool a little bitter, relieved it was over and I never looked back and after college I moved to the city while everyone else went way out to the land of cheaper houses.  Facebook brought us all back together.   Towards the end of the evening we were sitting around talking about old loves and people we secretly held a torch for when one of them piped up to exclaim his love for this one girl, saying he liked her because she had a nice rack.  This got a laugh but then he went further and said "Thats why I never looked at you,"  he pointed at me, "I would have never asked you out because you didn't have any."  It brought it all back, highschool all over again.  I was never attracted to this guy.  That wasn't the point.  I laughed it off by saying he hadn't changed since highschool.  He was at the moment seeing a friend of mine, who sat next to me, appalled.  She was anorexic in highschool and didn't have any mams either.  I knew back then why boys passed me over.   To me it was a good way to weed out the undeserving.  I mean if you really clicked with someone, but she wasn't well endowed, were you really going to choose the girl with the bigger boobs?  It brought to mind that neighbor with the playboy magazine mentioned in an earlier post.  His wife, who reminded me of the evil Alexis from Dynasty, curvy, gorgeous, and always well dressed, at some point became too old for him.  So his love was only skin deep.  My mom confided to me that he hit on her once and she gave him a piece of her mind, telling him "you would have never given me a chance based on the size of my breasts.". He admitted she was right.  The cruel taunts are like it was yesterday, but I realized it's the boys, not men who needed that.  Now my friend is trying to get rid of her middle aged.   "boy".

About ten years ago, I developed a crush on a man of German decent the same age as me.  I noticed him looking at me at his restaurant and that was it.  We were regulars but I didn't speak to him till we were going there for about eight months.  He would watch me a lot, and I would watch him back and I started to construct his personality in my mind, noticing how sad he always looked, wondering if he was beaten down by the same kind of cold verbally abusive upbringing many first generation children of German parents face.  I wanted to get to know him, this handsome kindred spirit and the moment I did, it ended my crush cold, thank God.   It happened one day when my husband and I bellied up to the bar and he spoke to us about going to his highschool reunion, proudly boasting he brought a girl that wasn't even born when he graduated.  He immediately went down several notches.  Every time after that when we came in, we would sit at the bar and talk to him like old friends.  His restaurant was a favorite haunt before we had our son.  One night, I don't know what we were talking about, but he said he considered me "too old," for someone like him.  Not that I asked, I am married anyway, but it hurt so bad. I went to the bathroom to shed a tear or two in my drunken state.  I was already considered a has been with somebody I had been eye flirting with for the past eight months.  I was 36 years old.  The bubble burst, another boy.  He was the same age as me.  Later, he married someone ten years younger and with a boob job so incredibly huge, it was painful to look at her.  She had to mutilate her body to nab him, a look that would become disgusting in a decade, clown boobs, the size of a cantaloupe stuffed into each side as if it was a Halloween costume, only it wasn't.  I couldn't help but wonder what her fate would be when she turned forty.  Would he send her in to be pulled tight or just replace her?
It made me bitter, all those messages over the years telling me in some way I wasn't good enough, that even I myself succumbed to the pressure at the age of twenty seven, boosting my cup size just a little, not the giant sizes women were going for, but enough to feel like a woman.  I charged them on my credit card, then promptly got a job as a cocktail waitress to pay them off.  It was the nineties, women were getting them done in droves.  The DJ at the bar I worked noted I was the only one who didn't have to take off work for the surgery...lol!  It was fascinating to me how men suddenly stared at my breasts instead of my face.  Was that worth it?  Suddenly I was hot, very occasionally running into boys from highschool who ignored me but suddenly they knew my name, they were so friendly so willing to be around me, staring not so nonchalantly at my perky Barbie boobs that didn't jiggle or move with me.  Oh the power.

Open letter to Mare (MCV)

To my dearest friend,
I like to bitch about the people who hurt me, under my breath.  I like to hold onto it like a bad habit, like I hold onto my own mistakes, replaying them well after the decade mark with the usual twinge of remorse.  I am the same, only older and wiser.  I should talk about what I sincerely regret because twenty three years later, it still hurts.  By the cold way I cut off our friendship, you'd never know just how sorry I am, my actions gave me a life sentence where I can never forgive myself for letting you go, sending you away, you, irreplaceable, priceless, a terrible ridiculous loss.  Born out of stubbornness, inability to cope with the new reality, I made it so irretrievable.  It's lost for life.  We are here to learn but it was a lesson that will burn me all the way to my dying day.  I couldn't handle your boyfriend's wandering eye, the way he was able to seduce girls in our very own circle and get away with it.  Yet you are still married to him, this greasy sneaky man who never deserved you, who I can't imagine has been faithful to you.  But you are so trusting, forgiving, unconditionally loving.  The night I saw you at our favorite hangout, a weekend you came to visit after your graduation, I noticed how some girl I worked with dramatically made an exit.  She was upset you were there because your man was spending a lot of time wooing her.  I guess he was successful because she was devastated.  I wanted to tell you but we were already estranged and he could explain it away like he explained it away before when I became the bad guy for telling you what was going on.  I stayed away because I couldn't mentally handle it, but that also meant losing my best friend. Thanks to Facebook, I can see your marriage is still going strong two decades later while mine is struggling.  So what did I know?  I could learn a thing or two from you, about forgiveness especially.  I thought about you during my wedding reception, standing on the dance floor while others danced around me, a moment of sorrow because you were not there, and many other occasions where I can almost imagine your smiling perky self sitting next to me, sharing in the moment.  I made myself suffer for this, wondering how badly I hurt you, when that was what I precisely wanted to do.  My suffering is indeed longer because it continues.  I never would be able to scrape together enough moxi to tell you because I fear the same rejection I gave you twenty three years ago when I was twenty three.  I wouldn't want to know that it hardly mattered to you anymore.  I hold onto the memory of what we were at the time and I am grateful you were my friend at all, and perhaps some day I can stop kicking myself for screwing that up.  I can't climb that mountain to try and grasp at what appears so out of reach.  I caused that.  I can't change that and I'm sorry.  I've made a few mistakes over the years that give me pause when I recall them.  This is one of them.  It's a gut tightening cringe.  It's instant sadness.  It's a bigger heartbreak than any breakup with past lovers or any other friends who have come and gone.  I'm sure you are a bright spot in people's lives, you are truly a special person and I will be eternally glad we were friends.

Love you Mare

Over sexualized

     A Facebook post by a friend got my attention.  It was a short video featuring ads of women being used as objects.  There was something written to the effect that if women are going to continually be portrayed as objects, society will treat them as such.   Then the next part was the same ads but reversing the roles.  It was clever, funny to watch because they used some chunky beer loving men, and everyday looking women in the position of power.  There was a man leaning over the sink in boxers and little white t-shirt riding up his big belly, the wife spanking him with a broomstick, prompting him to wash those dishes faster, and another man on his hands in knees washing the floor next to a pair of legs in stilettos.  It put a smile on my face yet made me realize that a lot of women I know sexualize themselves.  Facebook is a tool for many women to show anyone who cares just how sexy they are.  One friend my age, (mid forties) posts regular pics of herself in very sexy poses, sometimes you can see she is only wearing a black bra.  The look on her face always says lonely middle aged housewife.   She will get at least thirty likes, mostly men yes but quite a bit of women too and I keep wondering when the likes will drop off seeing she is a serial poster of these come hither pics, sometimes three in one week, but nobody has stepped up to shame her yet.
      When we went to visit my husbands college roommate last summer, he had a new girlfriend he brought with to dinner.  Sixteen years younger and super animated in her chair, she assertively answered every question of mine that was directed to my husbands old friend.  I haven't seen him in over a decade but I couldn't really talk to him because she kept interjecting.  It was a night of her talking and talking.   Later I looked her up on Facebook, she had a profile pic that featured a whole line of women's asses in miniskirts, sitting down on a bench side by side.  I believe it was her friends and herself.  Her other pics were bar scenes and good times, which is common stuff to post, but in general, I notice in the single set, the quantity of posts are super revealing, like the ads women claim to hate.
     The biggest upset for me personally are towards the moms my age posting pics of their young teen daughters.  It really bums me out.  I don't have a daughter so maybe I'm out of touch but it turns my stomach.  I don't hit the like button, and I feel animosity towards the mom who posted.  Why?  Isn't fourteen a little young for their own moms pushing them out there?  When I first joined FB, my one high school friend's thirteen year old daughter who had a profile pic of herself in a white bustier, and the next year when she turned fourteen, my friend regularly posted pics of her in tiny tight mini dresses that looked like tank tops, captioning them with "my beauty", or "I'm so proud of my girl!".   Now recently an old college roommate of mine started posting her newly turned fourteen daughter in a mini dress, leaning way forward with one strap completly falling off the shoulder, exclaiming her pride.  Pride in what exactly?  A big part of me would love to see my husbands reaction if I did this for our fictitious daughter.  I would love the payback of watching him turn livid when some forty something year old pig stares relentlessly at her.
     I shudder to think what I would have done if Facebook was around in the nineties.  Shudder.  I'm not going to claim any real emotional maturity on my part, perhaps that's why it surprises me when people cross a line I wouldn't,  and of course I'm rolling my eyes when my serial posting friend strikes again.  I wonder why she wants to appear so desperate.  I guess I'm more annoyed with her because she is older, and perhaps I'm practicing what I hate, ageism.  I'm able to blow off the young girls, even their potty mouth posts, because they are young.   But an older woman screaming that loudly for attention is so irritating sometimes I have to stop myself from posting "again?". Or "oh the one with the black bra, lovely!". It's actually all tame compared to the younger set.  So perhaps I should just give her a break.    In the end it's about attention.  Women never seem to get enough of it. And it's easy to see what gets it.

Love post shelf life

     Only in the closet am I a sucker for love, the way they play it out in movies and tv shows, the fake kind that I counted on, that steered me wrong.  And I'm still into it, this fake rendition of love, even though I know its not real.  Hollywood usually gets me to buy the fantasy.  I was weeping while Linda Gray's character Sue Ellyn spoke at JR's funeral.  Dallas came back to TV and I was hoping to see Sue Ellyn and JR together in the end.  Unfortunately Larry Hagman died and I walked around for days silently asking why?  It was like a loved one of mine passed.  So the ultimate scoundrel wrote his late wife a letter that she read at the funeral, proving he still loved her in the end.  It made my heart feel full for a few seconds while I savored the promised undying love.  I have dreamt of this reunion, and now I would have to settle for this bitter sweet closure.  Growing up watching soaps, I believed like many other young females that lovers may lose their way for years but find their way back in the end.
     We had neighbors who used to fight as crazy as they did on Dynasty, this very glamorous couple never got divorced so I assumed it was because they loved each other.  My mother had to inform me they stayed because it would be too expensive for the husband to get rid of her.  One night out with them, my parents come home suddenly saying that they were fighting so bad, throwing things etc. and they were supposed to go out for dinner to celebrate their anniversary.  I thought it all hot and romantic, surely they would be having some seriously good sex later.   All that passion! Even as an adult in my thirties I kept waiting to hear they were still together, not just married because of the money but really together.  My mom just rolled her eyes and told me she was too old for him now, the glamourous wife who dressed like Elizabeth Taylor was in her late fifties.  He was into much younger women. At thirty years old I didn't understand.  Weren't they going to eventually make up and live happily ever after?  Wasn't he going to wake up and realize he missed her and immediatley fly to their condo in Florida where she stayed for months on end and beg her to come home?  I recalled a time I came over to their house for something.  I was about twelve and the husband picked up a playboy and showed me the centerfold  She was a voluptuous blonde.  He snapped to another page to show me a picture of her sitting in her boyfriends lap who was in a wheelchair.  He was confused with her story, couldn't understand how a woman like that could love a man in a wheelchair and her claim that he was a wonderful lover was just too much for him to handle.  It annoyed him so much he had to ask a twelve year old girl who knew the answer of course.  Didn't all twelve year old girls hold a much more deeper definition of love than the rest of the world?
     Now that I'm officially off the shelf, meaning being past my prime, I understand it more profoundly.  They say you have to walk in a mans shoes to understand him.  I get that it was a gift that had to come to an end.  My power is not the same post shelf life.  If I'm upset over something he's done, big deal, no skin off his back.  He still has no problem sleeping at night, snoring away to his hearts content while I wonder just how far a knitting needle would go into his eye.  Friends of mine cheat to get what they are missing from their mates.  There are no invitations to my foolish heart.  I can see it isn't real, it's an illusion in every person's mind.  And for women, it's that need to create that fantasy for their man, or to snare a man, willing to put themselves out there and portray what she thinks he wants to see.  I really don't think its real, it doesn't last as promised and I'm spitting mad I got suckered into believing all of it to begin with.  Thanks Hollywood, now please pump out some more love stories that make me cry.  You know the kind where the man never leers at women half his age when they are together, the kind that has all the right words and believable portrays that sincerity without making my eyes roll.  I'm a seasoned veteran, I've heard them all but I'm sure there has got to be a fresh spin.  Maybe I should just write it.  How hard could it be?