Day 146: The Threesome I Blew . . . Wait, That Doesn't Sound Right

A few years back there was a female friend of my husband’s that we both found attractive, let’s call her . . . slag. Slag was smart, funny, sexy and a little crazy in a “I’m not sure she’s stable” way. For months I had been speculating on her willingness to have a threesome with the husband and I. This wasn’t a completely serious musing, just a semi-hypothetical to gauge where the husband was on the topic. I flirted with Slag more than once in an effort to discern if she liked women at all, but never got any real response from her. Until the night she decided to lay in our bed.

This happened after one of our parties. The husband and I were fond of throwing get togethers in our Manhattan apartment and this night was going quite well. A natural control freak, I prefer hosting because it allows me to focus on food prep and brief socializing without feeling awkward. I am a closet wallflower so keeping busy on my home turf is always good. The one thing it prevents me from doing, however, is drinking at the same rate as my guests. On this particular night everyone was slightly to majorly hammered, except for me. This was also the first of our parties that Slag had ever attended, so maybe there was a certain expectation in the air, but being pretty sober, I was not aware of it.

The hour grew late and as people began to filter out, Slag lingered and lingered and lingered until she was the last guest left. I remember her standing in the hallway dragging out conversation and then I went to clean up and when I came back into the hall I could see her in the bedroom lying on our bed. Oh yeah, you read this right. Slag was in our bed talking to the husband who was standing somewhat awkwardly across the room from her. I’m not sure what exactly happened in that moment, but I went from being the one trying to instigate a threesome with a hot chick to a “No you din’it” street brawler.

In hindsight, I think I was just too sober to properly appreciate the situation, but something about her boldness pissed me off. Bitch is lying in MY bed talking to MY husband in her coy, “I know you want me” way. Uh-uh, that shit don’t fly in my house. Not because I’m totally against hooking up with a hot chick (this isn’t my first ride at the cowgirl rodeo) or said hot chick flirting with my husband. I know he’s hot, he’s also brilliant and packing heat. My problem, was that she went to him first. Now maybe if I were drunk I’d have indulged this behavior, but any woman should know you don’t piss off the other chick. Slag’s big mistake was in attempting to seduce the husband and not me. Had she been smart enough to approach this situation with the proper respect, the end of the story might be very different.

The actual ending happened something along the lines of me handing her her coat and saying, thanks so much for keeping Jeff company while I cleaned up; be safe getting home. I do not remember the exact words I used, but I do remember the looks of shock on both my husband’s face and Slag’s. This was something I instigated and pursued, and maybe it would have happened in one of those Dear Penthouse Letters kinds of nights, but any self-respecting woman knows if you’re going to flirt with someone else’s man, you better get his woman’s approval first. My man is hot and I’m not the jealous type if I see him flirt with someone else, but I am vain and if you flirt with him when I want you to flirt with me, you better get your skanky ass out of my house in a hurry! That was the end of the semi-hypothetical threesomes, though now that I’ve made this public I suspect just the beginning of conversation for the husband and I. Oh well, I’m always in trouble for something or other.

Day 145: Turns Out Some Music Really is Torture

I read a an article this morning about musicians who are banding together to lobby for the close of Guantanamo prison after learning some of their music may have been used to create discomfort and to intimidate prisoners. I get this, as a liberal minded ACLU supporter I am down with being opposed to torture. Imagine the horrors of being subjected to Rage Against the Machine for 72 hours. Loud rock music is for enjoyment, not an instrument of torture. The issue at hand though isn’t the music, it is that these prisoners were being tortured. Well, not tortured, tortured. They were just sort of made uncomfortable because their religious beliefs prohibit music. Which is completely understanda . . . no, wait. You know what, this is the dumbest fucking thing I’ve heard in a while.

I am against torture; I have no problem making that clear. I am also against war, suicide bombings, hijacking planes and flying them into buildings, beheading journalists and lots of other activities these prisoners have been accused of committing. Despite the fact that we have arrested and refused to charge detainees currently in Guantanamo, which is itself a human rights violation, there is still the troubling little fact that they are possibly in league with the Taliban and therefore participants who actively planned to murder innocent civilians.

Torture is wrong, but so is murder. When the game changes, so too must the rules. The husband tells me all the time that I want to live in a dream world. A utopia where guns, militaries and wars are all outdated. I want to live in Star Trek: The Next Generation where life on Earth is peaceful, we have no poverty or need for money and no bigotry or hate crimes, but I live in a place where people keep murdering one another and where genocides aren’t all that unfamiliar. So, sometimes it takes a little more to get to the truth. I’m not advocating we go all Jack Bauer on the enemy, but when your opponent is willing to die for his or her cause, threatening jail is not going to do the trick.

Waterboarding is bad, but not as bad as ripping out fingernails or shock treatments or chopping off limbs. Yes, torture is barbaric, but does often get the job done as despicable as it is. So let’s go back and look at this musical torture again. It’s loud music. That’s it. Loud and to some people annoying music, and although it was played for long periods of time at excessive volumes, no one has suggested or proved it was played at a volume high enough to shatter an eardrum or cause permanent, painful damage. So what we’re left with is akin to listening to whatever music you hate the most at a high volume for 2-3 days at a time.

Tom Morello of the aforementioned RATC and Audioslave is quoted as saying, “The fact that music I helped create was used in crimes against humanity sickens me." Well, I suppose my Grams could make the argument that your music in itself is a crime against humanity. I know I agree if the artist in question is Britney Spears or any one of the emo bands floating about with too much makeup and greasy hair hanging in their eyes. Still, listening to Brit-Brit isn’t exactly real torture, despite how painful it is for me to listen to her. At this point, it’s a scary world and people want to do brutal and terrifying things so if some loud music is capable of gaining valid intel, then I’m not all that upset about it.

I’m more upset about genocides, forced female circumcision, hate crimes and a slew of other truly heinous crimes against humanity. If a few Pearl Jam sessions played loudly could have stopped something like the Cambodian genocide from happening then I’d have gotten out my boombox “Say Anything” style and blasted whatever it took to make them stop swinging babies against the trunks of trees. I’ll always protest torture, but let’s just make sure we’ve got our protests ranked hierarchically according to most damaging. Darfur, yeah that’s pretty bad. Loud music, um okay not nice, but not the worst thing we could do. Sometimes in our efforts to protest everything and anything that is not 100% altruistic we lose sight of the reality. Today’s reality is a war with no clear lines and no discernible rules. What’s worse, the extreme oppression and torture of the populace ruled by the Taliban or some mildly uncomfortable methods to extract intel leading to the capture of the oppressors?

Day 144: Sometimes Bad Things Happen, I Just Notice the Stuff no one Talks About

You ever read a story or hear a tale about some horrific accident or missing person and your first thought isn’t “oh that’s awful,” but instead some judgment about the victim? Well I think that way all the time and I’m fairly aware it makes me a bad person. It also makes me a rational thinker and someone who stops to ask why and consider circumstances rather than simply shake my head. Let’s be honest, half the bad shit that happens to people happens because they’re stupid or they were doing something they shouldn’t have been.

Do I think it’s awful when a car full of teenagers is killed in a traffic accident caused by their underage drinking and reckless driving? Absolutely I do. We’ve all been careless teenagers who survived things we’d never try as adults, but it doesn’t mean I do not recognize that a car full of drunken, rowdy 17 year-olds in a brand new fast car Daddy bought isn’t just asking for trouble. Or what about that English couple on vacation who left their sleeping toddler alone in their hotel room while they were drinking and playing cards with friends? The child was abducted and they caught a lot of flack for leaving their child unattended. I thought that was pretty stupid too, but I do acknowledge that it is something I might do, then again, I’m not a parent.

It’s not just that I judge the victims. Today a friend posted a local story about a woman who has not been seen or heard from since yesterday afternoon. My very first thought was that it had been less than 20 hours since she was last seen and already it was in the paper. Is that because she is a young, attractive blond woman? She’s not even considered legally missing yet and already she’s making the news, despite there not being a shred of evidence suggesting foul play. Does no one else think like this? Are you all just a bunch of head shakers? I still feel sorry for people, but I see beyond the tragedy and ask what I feel are relevant questions. Natalee Hollaway is thought to be the murder victim of three guys she drunkenly left a bar with while on Spring Break in a foreign country. Her death is horrible and the grief of her family must be unbearable, but the girl left a bar with three strange men! She certainly did not deserve to have anything bad happen to her, but can we at least agree that leaving anywhere with three strange men isn’t a good idea? How sheltered or wild was this girl that it seemed perfectly okay to her to be in that situation? I’m more upset at the apparent lack of preparation for the scary world this girl’s parents supplied her with. Hello? Calling all street smarts!

Before you judge me for my judgments I have to make clear that I am not blaming the victims or saying they deserved it. As an outsider I am simply pointing out some rational arguments that we all sweep under the rug because we don’t want to be that horrible person who points them out. I admit I am not the most positive, sunny disposition girl in the world, but I don’t think simply acknowledging some glaring errors in the judgment/logic/actions/etc., of a particular situation makes me any more evil than those of you who surely recognize the elephant in the room, but don’t point it out. What can I say, I see the whole picture, not just thumbnail.

Day 143: Just Because I Love You Doesn't Mean I'm Going to LIve With You

I have not lived with my husband in a year and I’m not planning to live with him anytime soon. This fact seems to elicit shock from most people I tell. It’s not as if I prefer not to live with him, well, most of the time anyway. I love living with Jeff. He’s interesting, cuddly and can always be counted on to clean the bathrooms. Our current living arrangements are courtesy of the Army and that’s not likely to change anytime soon. In a month he will be home and for a month he will be here with me, but then he will go back to Ft. Bragg and I will stay in Charlotte. After a year of being separated by half the globe, a two and half hour drive is as close as the next room.

Thing is, with the Army there is no end in sight. He could retire in three years and then we could stay in Charlotte or move to DC or back to our beloved NYC, but he won’t retire, not my man. Nope, he’s been in the Army since he was 17 and he’ll likely be in for another 20 years, so how do we make it work when I am unwilling to live in places like Leavenworth, KS and Fayetteville, NC? My answer is to just not go. We are both independent people capable of sustaining a long distance marriage. He has moved around his entire life, even as a kid his parents never settled anywhere for very long and that makes him distinctly gifted at making friends and adapting to new people and locations. Whereas my particular skill is in learning to be alone. I’m good at it and I don’t mind so much.

I don’t know where the future is going to take us geographically, but I do know that my home may not be in the same location as my husband’s and that is something with which we are both willing to deal. Happiness comes in many different forms, and the one thing I have learned with 100% certainty is that if I am living somewhere I hate, I won’t be happy. Jeff knows it too and as I’ve told him for years, if I’m not happy he won’t be happy, because I will make him miserable.

So we are left with separate homes, but that doesn’t have to mean separate lives. Many of us have friends or family that live in another city and we somehow stay connected, this isn’t much different except it takes a little more effort, time and money to make a commute work. Without kids and a job I really don’t have a reason to stay here, but I’m hoping that will change soon – well the job part that is. At 36 I’m getting a little tired of trying to reinvent my career every two years, so I think I’m going to put down some roots, and I don’t think that is going to hurt my marriage one damn bit. Love doesn’t just exist in the same house and it’s not going to go anywhere if we’re not in the same state.

Day 142: What Princess Ashita and Crackhead Laura Taught me About Job Searches

Today I applied for a position with a company that really excites me. This close-knit small company is not just a business that does good, it is a philanthropic cause that established a business thus allowing it to continue serving the greater good. Basically, I’d get paid to raise money for a cause. What’s better than that? Here’s the catch, I haven’t worked professionally in over a year. I have had a couple of short term jobs, but nothing of note and this lapse in the resume seems to be a huge stumbling block. I’m not a HR person so I cannot speak to what this might mean to prospective employers, but I haven’t forgotten how to work, so how do you prove this in an interview?

I know I’m qualified, capable and dedicated, but I guess when you have multiple candidates applying for the same position, you may not want to take a chance on the girl with her backside stuck to the couch. I’d like to put an addendum on my resume saying that I would have preferred to remain employed without a gap, but a major relocation and sudden recession/job crisis pretty much made that impossible. How can you reassure someone of something intangible? It’s like any relationship I guess, at some point there is always going to be a leap of faith involved.

You can meet date and marry the perfect man only to discover he’s the perfect man for a random sampling of sweet young things. Likewise, an HR manager might interview 20 candidates before settling on Ms. Perfect, only to discover that she’s impossible to get along with or sloppy in her work habits. Life is about risk and while we all attempt to minimize the potential for negative risk, we can never completely erase it. I’ve written a similar blog to this one in the past, but at that time I was generally frustrating over my fruitless job search while this time I have the perfect opportunity in sight and even an interview to reinforce that I have a shot at it. What I don’t have, is a guarantee that the other candidates are more lame than me, despite my firm belief that they must be.

Quick personal story on an unrelated topic, but same theme just because I’m in a talkative mood. When I lived in NYC, I moved into a four-bedroom apartment with my friend Carl. We set about interviewing a slew of potential roommates for the other two bedrooms. At the end, we each agreed on separate candidates and one that we both liked. Unfortunately, we opted to each pick the one we liked rather than the one we both liked, thus forcing a compromise on the other. In the end, we lost a great roomie and gained a princess who had never had roommates or lived on her own before and a young crackhead (breaking my absolutely NO drugs policy) who’s only claim to accomplishing anything in her life was doing coke with a famous actor that you all know. Just goes to show, you never know until you do.

Day 141: I'm Only Helping You if You Promise to Turn Out Well

There is a new Sandra Bullock movie coming out called “The Blind Side.” The movie tells the real life story of a well-to-do white Southern wife and mother who takes in a black street kid and magically changes his life. Every time I see the trailer I immediately want to run out and find my own secretly smart and gifted minority street kid and polish him or her up before sending the newly reborn bastion out into the world again. The story works like a practiced illusion, using misdirection to keep you focused on the points they want to make, rather than letting you realize the big picture.

What this movie tries to make you focus on is the generosity and reciprocal appreciation that develops in the relationship between the Mother and fostered teenager. It is an exceptional story involving exceptional people, but that’s just the point, the characters are exceptional and in real life sometimes people aren’t. I’m sure there are smart and gifted street kids out there that never got a chance, but I’m willing to bet that sometimes all the opportunities in the world won’t make a not bright kid smarter.

I realize it’s not politically correct to speak of the homeless or less fortunate in a negative way, let alone when it’s a kid, but there are dumb people in the world. I tried to order a salad at McDonald’s today and after that frustrating experience I can guarantee stupidity lives. In this movie, what is most exceptional to me, is the idea that a basically homeless and possibly abused teenager is so affected by having his own bedroom and a loving family that he suddenly becomes the ideal child. I know this is Hollywood and happy, fantastical endings are what it’s all about, but where is the story about an exceptional woman who takes in an unexceptional child simply because it is the right thing to do?

Everyone wants bright and shiny. We want to adopt babies, not toddlers or older children. We want to believe that if you throw enough money, love and education at a child he or she will grow up to be President or a human rights activist, but that’s not always the case. This might be an exceptional story about exceptional people, but who helps the random street kid or the homeless guy with battered and diseased feet who reeks like a toilet? Is the story more remarkable because it is a white family who takes in a black kid? Is it more valuable because the child turned out to be smart and talented?

Stories like this one make all of us stop and think. We think about who we are and if we’d be exceptional enough to act in the same way as the heroic characters on the screen. Like an illusionist’s trick, however, while we’re all marveling at these amazing people and their amazing acts, we’re missing the point. The real moral to the story isn’t if you’d take a chance on this kid in the same situation, it’s if you believe all people less fortunate than you deserve a little consideration and kindness regardless of the outcome.

Day 140: The Habit of Loss

At what point does feeling the loss of someone we love become more of a habit than having them there beside you? For almost an entire year after my Mother died I reached for the phone to call her on Sundays. Having her in my life was so normal that I had to continually remind myself that she was gone, but eventually I got used to her absence and that became my new habit. Living without Jeff these last 11 months has forced a new habit in that same vein.

Today I was at the pub watching the game and talking to the bar owner and guy who runs one of my fantasy football leagues. He asked when Jeff was coming home and after answering I mentioned that just before the game started I caught myself thinking “Come on Jeff, hurry up.” For a fleeting moment I forgot where he was and thought he was just running late. After I told him this, my friend said, “You know about my wife right?” I replied that I did not while noticing that his wedding ring that had very much been in evidence back in August was nowhere to be seen. He told me that she died a little less than a year ago and that he still catches himself turning to talk to her or thinking that he needs to tell her something about the kids before remembering that he can’t.

Her loss has not become a habit for him yet, but it will. One day soon he’ll suddenly stop instinctively expecting her to be there and instead, become accustomed to her absence. It doesn’t mean you no longer miss the person you love, but life carries on and we move with it. I forced myself to get used to Jeff being gone and truth be told, it came at a time in our relationship that both of us really needed a wake up call. Now that his return is only five weeks away, my forced habit of expecting him to be gone is suddenly being replaced with a new habit of wanting him here beside me. I’m lucky in that I got the opportunity to experience a life without him in many ways and it’s made me realize just how much we took one another for granted.

I think the acceptance of life’s necessity to form new habits is what separates those of us who are able to cope and move on, from those that live inside their grief. Perhaps it’s the fear that accepting loss will mean you never really loved that person and so we choose to keep that person so active in our minds and hearts that we do not allow ourselves to move on. Acceptance of loss is a habit, you need to practice it and go through it and eventually it becomes your reality. Still, no matter how used to loss we become, we never stop missing that person. Sometimes, we might even find ourselves wanting to share a funny story before remembering the truth. Habits only get you so far and it never takes the place of human instinct.

Day 139: Hey Guess What Society Just Found Out? Women Have Self-Esteem Issues

Recently it seems there has been more and more attention on women and our body issues. In one week I tracked the headline making story of Filippa Hamilton’s grotesquely altered photographs and subsequent firing for being fat at 120 pounds and 5’10” tall. A behind the scenes video of an average looking model being made up and then photoshopped to look way hotter than she is went viral. I also noticed there has been a seeming increase in Dove ads pushing natural beauty and drawing attention to negative female stereotypes. So what’s with the sudden ah-ha moment society is having over a condition that is not new to women in any country?

Have we suddenly grown a conscience and decided to stop teaching girls from the time they are in the womb that women need to be thin to be attractive, to be attractive to be sexy and to be sexy to be successful? Nah. That can’t be it. Why would we undo generations of systematically damaging messages we’ve sent to girls and women? These self-esteem crushing stereotypes made us who we are today: petty, competitive, narcissistic, back-stabbing and insecure. Thanks advertising execs, fashion designers, Hollywood and my first boyfriend. Your contributions to my continual and ever-evolving obsession with my own physical appearance and low self-esteem is noted.

I’m not entirely sure why this is happening now, but as a woman who has several young female cousins who are currently dealing with their own budding issues and a young niece and honorary niece, I’m glad it’s happening. Kind of sucks for me and my friends since we’re already totally screwed though. I will say there is still a slight comfort that I take when a women five inches taller than me and who weighs five pounds less than me (but that’s just now, I’m totally going to lose that weight soon) is fired for being too fat. The comfort isn’t because it is getting worldwide attention drawn to the unrealistic messages we’re sending to women, it’s because it takes some of the pressure off. If a chick that skinny is considered fat, then what the hell am I worrying about five pounds for? I’ll never be that thin, so screw it, I might as well relax and splurge on dressing for my salad.