Who Wrote Every Radio Song Ever? I’d Like A Word.

I’m at the point now where I think that all music with words in English needs to be banned from my earshot, and I’m talking to rom-coms on television trying to convince the stupid women in them to stop falling in love with the guy who can’t make up his mind.

I’m smart enough not to attempt the radio or most of my music collection. I usually have Pandora going on my laptop (the internet music service, not the band) while I’m cleaning or cooking, but I didn’t do it yesterday while I was frantically dusting and scrubbing and washing on deadline because having one neighbor over for dinner turned into a party of eight and I hadn’t cleaned in two weeks. But I had to go to the grocery store for tomatoes and mixed greens, and everything that played over the speakers high above my head was about love or breakups, or came from the standard 1990s collection of wedding songs.

So for now, I can’t go to grocery stores. Or watch Sunday afternoon television. Or see a random issue of People Magazine, because Gwyneth Paltrow is on the cover as the most beautiful woman in the world. (Which, let’s be honest, is nauseating even if Jack’s future wife didn’t look like her.) I also have to avoid everything relating to baseball (Jack’s passion), horses (long story, multiple chapters), several streets and restaurants, an entire television station (another long story with multiple chapters) and a lot of non-rom-com movies.

And certain cocktails.

And church.

Ralph Lauren Blue. Listerine Pocket Strips.

And, weirdly, zebras. He’s afraid of zebras. Not that I see zebras a lot, but when I do, I instantly think of Jack.

I’m taking to heart a lot of what friends have said – including blog friends – about Jack’s impending marriage and what it means, or doesn’t, about our relationship and about him. I just got off the phone with Joey, himself heartbroken over the breakup of his first real relationship in years. He somehow was the first one to get through to me that it doesn’t matter what I knew about Jack before, and it doesn’t matter what Jack thought about his capacity for relationships before, and it doesn’t matter what I understood before. Jack has changed. That’s all that matters.

It’s hard, though, to synthesize that with everything I know about him for the last ten years, and what he’s told me about the ten years before that. It’s hard to believe that after ten years of showing him what love is, and nearly 50 years of his own life, it only took eight months for him to completely turn around his whole understanding of himself. The only way his marriage will work is if he really did turn that around within himself.

What still hurts is that, when I asked whether I had any significance in his life, he had no answer, which meant the answer was no. I asked him that more than a year ago, and I’m still not over it. I have realized that there were lies and there was hiding and there was evasiveness and there was a fundamental lack of respect for me after all the years we were so many things for one another – but that doesn’t mean I don’t love him anymore. I don’t wish he were marrying me instead of Gwyneth –  not because I don’t love him or can’t imagine it, but because he’s hurt me too much. But I can’t understand, at bottom, why he didn’t have the respect for me that I had earned.

I’m angry with myself, too. I have been, I guess, for a long time. It’s another thing I made peace with and now it’s come back, in light of the change in conditions that makes me wonder what was true before. I’m angry that I let myself love someone who wouldn’t love me, even though I tried more than once to stop and I couldn’t. I’m angry that it wasn’t the first time. I’m angry that I considered his feelings above mine all the time, that I avoided showing him the fullness of how I felt – good or bad – because I didn’t want to scare him away, and in the end he walked away anyway. Who wouldn’t have seen that coming? I’m mad at myself for hiding the nature of that relationship from even my closest friends other than him, because I knew they wouldn’t approve, that they would warn me it was a bad sign. That’s what I would have done, too, if it were them instead of me. I’m angry that I was happy loving him and only thinking, or guessing, or hoping that he loved me.

I have learned a few things, yes. And I applied some of what I learned with Rick. I’m hoping those are lessons I won’t forget. But I worry about what effect this will have on me in the future, should I meet someone else and have the stomach for anything more than “hello.” I made a conscious decision, at more than one point, to trust Jack. I wonder now if I will be able to do that again, or if I will struggle with it so much that whoever he is will be discouraged.

And the memories that float to the surface unbidden – I’d like for them to stop. Images and impressions and senses and jokes and looks and touches and the indelible mark of his condo and the smell of the air there when I walked through the door… now when it flashes, she’s in the room, too. It knocks the wind out of me every time.

Day six. Breathe in.

Vapor

Jack is marrying Gwyneth.

It’s not a dream. It’s not some weird hallucination or some silly rumor. It’s true.

Jack is marrying Gwyneth.

Brad is the one who told me, God love him. He emailed me today while I was working and said that there was a rumor going around that I wasn’t going to want to hear, but that I would probably want to hear from him before any other way, and that he was probably going to have to tell me on the phone. I asked him if I would need vodka.

“I think you’ll probably be okay but you might plan on a glass of wine.”

Pfft. It’s like he doesn’t know me at all. ”I always plan on a glass of wine,” I replied. “That just means it’s Tuesday.”

Of all the things I couldn’t imagine it being, this was nowhere near the periphery.

Jack is marrying Gwyneth.

Brad told me the word had gotten out after Jack mentioned his “future wife” at an event the other night. Apparently then the Facebook chatter started – chatter I never saw because I’m not friends with either of them now. Apparently they’re not engaged officially, but are getting engaged officially soon. 

Apparently a lot of things.

I was in my car when Brad told me this and I had to adjust my rearview mirror to see my own face. This is not an overstatement: nothing in my life has ever shocked me as much as this. Nothing. Not even when a boyfriend got married to a woman he had barely known before me, who lived a thousand miles away, less than eight months after breaking up with me. And I literally fell over when I heard that.

Jack didn’t want to get married. Ever. To anyone. 

Jack spent years telling me I was his ideal. I thought if he would ever marry anyone, he would have to at least date me first. I thought Gwyneth was just the latest part of his pattern of almost loving someone and then walking away. I felt a little sorry for her. I thought, when he told me in September that he wasn’t capable of sustaining a substantive relationship, that he must be right.

Jack and I haven’t spoken since then, when he abandoned our friendship entirely after heartfelt and honest entreaties from me to save it for what it was – ten years of something truly extraordinary. He told me he knew he had caused me great pain and would take steps to repair it when it was no longer so painful for me. 

I knew then that I would never hear from him again. But I never, ever could have imagined this.

She’s 22 years younger than him. He’ll be 50 next January. Could that be why he’s doing this now?

What was I – his trainer?

How long had he lied to me? One morning when I woke up in his bed, in July of 2011, and saw a t-shirt lying near my feet that I hadn’t seen the night before, and asked him where it had come from… when I thought for sure she had worn it, somehow, months before I knew they had some sort of relationship, I thought it for sure, and he said it was just a shirt he sometimes wore to bed… when I smelled it to see if it smelled like a woman before he came back into the room… when I knew he never wore t-shirts to bed… had I been right, all the way back then? A year before the last time I saw him? Almost two years ago now?

How long had he been spending nights with both of us?

How could he?

Years ago… how many years ago? eight?… I remember sitting across from him at a table outside our regular hangout. We had never touched beyond a hug goodbye. I loved him already, but it was controlled. I remember thinking that if I put my hand on his chest, he would disappear. He would fade like vapor under my palm, before my eyes. 

Six years later, I knew how solid he was, how real. It seemed impossible that he could disappear for me now. Even if he changed, even if the touch went away, he could never disappear for me now.

And now it’s like he’s vanished. Like none of it was ever real at all. Like it was never more than mist, mirage, oasis. Like it was someone else’s life. Like that movie, “Midnight In Paris,” as if I’d gotten into a car at a particular time in a particular place and found myself in another dimension, not to be believed… but so very, very real, and so immensely pivotal to my life.

He has been past-tense to me for months. I don’t remember exactly when I fully accepted that I would never hear from him again, but it’s been months. I thought I might be finished crying.

I still dream of him. I feel a sting at certain times during Mass, times when I always used to give his name to God, times when I always used to think of holding his hand.

It’s terrible of me to think that this is only happening because he’s nearing 50, because she’s cute and blonde and 27 and likes to run, because her mother has cancer and his mother died of it when he was 17. It’s cruel of me to think the connection is that cheap, that it is built on something so easily found with a million other people. When what we had was so…

What? What was it? 

Was it anything?

Did I spend ten years in love with someone who wasn’t real?

It’s cruel of me to want to send him a message with three words: “Is she pregnant?” when I don’t want to know. It’s cruel of me to want to send him a message telling him nothing has ever shocked me more and no one has ever hurt me more and I have never loved anyone more, and then telling him to never reply.To want to ask him how long he lied to both of us and whether he still lies to her. To ask whether she knows about me. To ask her whether she knows about me.

None of it matters. And I know, if I were her, I might think that, after all, I‘m the one who gets him, swearing to God and all who are present, to love, to honor, to cherish. That, after all the decades of love and loss, I’m the one to whom he has promised himself.

Somehow, now, I have become the vapor under his hand.

 

What’s the Best Wine Pairing for Foot?

The second week of my new job basically involved me stuffing my foot in my mouth and seeing just how far I could shove it down my throat without vomiting all over someone’s desk, and other awkward occasions.

Don’t get me wrong – job’s still good. People are still nice. Me? I’m kind of an idiot.

My new immediate boss started Monday. It just so happens that, in the ongoing adjustment to restructuring our department, he wasn’t hired until after me. Not a big deal at all. But he has to get up to speed with how things are working so that he can then oversee how things are working. Pursuant to that, he had an informal staff meeting on Tuesday morning at which I opened my fat mouth and implied that I understood things that, being on my exact seventh day of working at the university, I, of course, did not, in fact, understand. This has long been a problem of mine. My natural air of confidence makes me seem as if I know what the hell I’m talking about, when in all actuality I’m totally making shit up half the time, and the other half I only think I know what I’m talking about, but I say it with such poise and certainty that people believe me. This is essentially how I’ve managed to convince anyone at all that I’m a grown-up.

And usually that’s harmless. But in this case, it ruffled the feathers of someone who’s been there way longer than me. Approximately 19 years, 11 months and 51 weeks longer. Because I thought she had new help with a client, and I was very wrong. She still does all the work herself. Yet I sort of came off as telling her she was wrong, instead.

On top of that, there was a covert kerfuffle over my title. Now, I can’t help what my title is. But I was hired with that title even though my associates, who do exactly the same job as mine, don’t have it. Naturally, they wondered what the difference was. They were told, before I arrived, that there was no difference. Joanne told them that. She hired me. She also told my immediate boss, Ron, that I have a leadership role over the others. Therefore, he kept coming to me for things, making me look like the new boss’s favorite. And she keeps talking me up like I’m the second coming.

Oh, please stop. It’s so nice to be valued and appreciated, but please, please lower the bar of expectation. I don’t know what I’m doing. You know that, right?

Then, last night, I went to a dinner in honor of some prominent graduates. Seated at my table were one such graduate and his family, along with two men I’ve met in the last two weeks – both clients I work with. The man to my immediate left was someone I hadn’t yet met. I asked him what he does within the university.

He’s the vice-provost.

Which is awesome, since the Office of the Provost is another one of my clients.

This was after I met the president of the university and couldn’t help but wonder if my v-neck was cut a little too low. Which I had been wondering all day. Which means the answer is probably yes.

In other news: Rick brought something up to my officle while I was in a meeting. I saw it briefly when I ran back to my desk to get something we were talking about. Then I wound up coming back to get what he’d brought, because we’d started talking about that. He’d stuck a Post-It note on it: “Sending you gifts (with a purpose). Enjoy.-Rick.”

I controlled the heart flutter, I think. Because it was just information on a construction project the university is doing. And a pen pimping said construction project. It wasn’t, like, roses. I did need the info.

But… I mean… the pen…

Anyway. I emailed him later to let him know his timing was perfect because we were discussing the very thing he’d brought to my officle while I was in the meeting. Then I asked for some quick information on the event he was attending. Except the event was the next night. “That’s tomorrow,” he replied, as I had known two hours before, but had forgotten. “Right now I’m stuck in traffic heading into the city for a dinner. If it keeps up like this, I might just bypass the dinner altogether.”

At first I thought nothing of it. Then I did some geographical calculation and realized that the city is south of the university, and the town where he’d been staying with his parents is north of the university. “Bypassing” in this case means continuing southward without stopping. And the town where he had lived with his girlfriend is south of the city.

So now I’m pretty sure he’s back with her. Which, by the way, is exactly what I have been telling myself all along, for the sake of my peace of mind. Supposedly. But I think he mentioned the “bypass” on purpose. Which I willfully ignored. Because this is a professional relationship. I will not wind up in the Friend Zone. And I will not ask questions.

After all the Foot I’ve tasted this week, I need to keep my mouth shut, anyway.

The First Week

You guys. I finished my first week of my new job.

First of all, did you know that you can work somewhere where people are all really nice and nobody is snarky? It’s true. I mean obviously it’s only been a week and everyone is probably on their best behavior and also really excited because wow, do I have a lot of responsibilities to take off their hands. I’m not complaining. I like being busy and I am going to know soooo many people. But no fewer than three officemates have told me I have entirely too many clients within the university. Like, triple what I should have, apparently? So that’s exciting. I’m looking forward to failing them all miserably.

I spent the week doing important things like having meetings with major players in university administration and also figuring out how the hell to work the phone. I couldn’t even log into a computer until Wednesday, so I was re-learning what it was like to write things out longhand and not be able to send email. I could place and receive calls, so that wasn’t a problem… I just didn’t have voicemail until Thursday.

I had to make a copy once. That was embarrassing. Here’s me, college-educated, working at a university, 16 years as a professional, and I couldn’t figure out how to make the copier go.

You need a code.

Aha.

But now? Except for not understanding why the printer that’s directly under my desk doesn’t print, and not knowing where anything I print actually goes, everything is up and running! I even figured out how to find someone else’s scheduling calendar in Outlook. In my previous career, there was nothing like this. I didn’t know computers had made it possible for me to see the scheduling calendar for literally every blessed person on staff at a university.

I find it a little creepy, to be honest.

On Tuesday, I asked the administrative assistant if we had any of those big desk calendars – you know, the ones with the big squares for each day so you can write a bunch of stuff in there? I was teased for not just doing it all in my phone, but my phone is always dinging and buzzing about something and I start ignoring it, so that’s not really the best way to go. Anyway, the AA told me she’d order me one.

Next morning. On my desk. “It’s not very pretty, but there wasn’t much of a selection,” she said apologetically. As if I need a pretty desk calendar. I’m still in shock I got something I asked for immediately and without question. I come from a place where they line-item veto $0.26 worth of staples on a supply request.

I did not make that up.

Oh! And I have an officle. That’s what I call  it. Hard C, like “cat.” It’s not quite an office because it doesn’t have a door, so it’s more like a cubicle, but bigger, and there’s a window! Remember how I used to work in a basement? Now I’m on the fourth floor with a window. Right there! Big ol’ view! Blinds I’m allowed to adjust whenever I choose!

And you know what else? I can be away from my desk for hours and nobody questions whether I’m doing my job. In fact, they assume I’m doing it, by being out, having meetings and getting familiar with campus. Which is exactly what I have been doing when I’ve been away from my desk, except for the four hours of my life that HR owes me for the timesuck that was orientation. Three people in this session, including myself, and it took four freaking hours. I’ve never seen so much PowerPoint in my life. And soooo much paperwork. Just to exist. Just to get on the payroll. At a state university, you have to fill out 427 forms and they can’t put you on payroll until they get allll  of them back. Including your retirement selection, your health insurance selection and your fingerprints. Yes, you have to be fingerprinted. Which should be reassuring since it is a place that shapes young minds.

Oh, but you can get into buildings and work and stuff before they find out whether you’re an ax murderer. You just can’t get paid until they’re sure you’re not.

On Tuesday, there was a breakfast meeting that featured actual hot food. Eggs, home fries, sausage, bacon… plus pastry, fruit salad, yogurt, coffee, water, juices… and the whole meeting was called solely so that the boss could thank everyone for working so hard. Apparently she does this every couple months.

What?

Previous career: there might be an email from the boss once every three clusterfucks saying how glad he is to work with such smart people, but that email would be lost in a shuffle of 4,281 other emails about how we suck. And on Fridays there might be a rumpled brown bag of bagels and schmears of cream cheese all over a table in the breakroom. Tops.

People kept coming by all week and asking how I was, how things were going, telling me how happy they were to have me there, and offering help all over the place while I get acclimated. One guy, the guy I share a wall with (he has an office-office) left me a donut while I was at a meeting, and then came back and confessed he thought he’d gotten me a croissant because I seem more like a croissant person and donuts are too pedestrian. (He’s right about my preference in pastry.)  I learned he had not gotten donuts and/or croissants for everyone. Just some people. He also threw a Ferraro Roche candy on my desk. Clearly he’s trying to butter me up.

Now, those of you who have been playing the home version of my particular game of life might be wondering, “But, thesinglecell… what of that man you dated, Rick?” Well, I had decided, on my first day, that I would go say hello. His office is one floor below mine and he did help a lot and encourage me a lot when I was up for the job. But he wasn’t around that day. I saw him Tuesday instead. We sat in his office and chatted for at least half an hour, mostly about university- and legislation-related stuff. The next day, he came up to my officle with a newspaper in his hand, to show me (rather triumphantly) an article about a national effort to accomplish something we had worked on together on the state level for victims’ rights. We had nothing to do with the national thing, but it did piggyback off of our thing, which was pretty cool, and he was totally excited about it.

And then on Thursday, one of his big projects landed on my desk. It falls under the purview of two of my clients. I needed to get more info, so I emailed him, told him I was now on the project and asked him for whatever pertinent facts he could provide.

“I”ll stop up in 30 minutes,” he replied.

Ten minutes later, he was in my officle. He could have just emailed me, but he came up. And now guess who’s going to the site visit and the groundbreaking for the project? Me. Also him.

We looked at each other.

“Who would have thought,” I said.

“I know,” he said.

See, I really was hoping to minimize the number of times I have to see him all dressed up in a suit looking incredibly hot and stuff. But noooo. Right from jump, we’re pushed together again, after two years of strange pushings-together that seem (to those of us who are hopeless romantics slash terribly cursed in relationships) fated to lead to more, despite inner turmoil that has already pulled us begrudgingly apart.

Oh, universe. You are just hilarious.

 

 

Epicness

You guys, this day was so I don’t even know what that I can’t come up with a first sentence.

So I gave you that one.

It started with me having to run interference on Facebook posts. My sister, who often gets caught up in what she thinks is a good idea without realizing it could, um, totally hijack someone else’s day, posted on Facebook about how I was getting these governor’s awards at this luncheon. She posted my name. She posted a weblink to the Thing.

Nooo. What are you doing?!

And then one of my best friends, who is also Facebook friends with her, reposted it.

Oh, come on, no!

And then my aunt.

No no no no no!

Yelling that. Aloud in my kitchen.

So then I had to text all of them and tell them that I really appreciated their support but that I had deliberately not advertised this and could they please take down the Facebook posts? Because now literally 2,000 people know and I’m going to get questions I don’t want to answer. There are a lot of implications – strangers knowing too much, family and friends with whom I didn’t share the information asking too much, work possibly seeing it and questioning whether it was okay for me to lobby for a law while being professionally involved with my company.

Take it down, please. Now.

They did, fortunately, but I wound up crying. It was 9am and I was already on emotional overload. I was getting two governor’s awards for my victims’ advocacy work. I was giving a speech. Once it was a five-minute speech. Then I was told three minutes. Then I was told between three and five minutes, so I sort of merged the two, made it a Best Of and had Sam edit it. Which meant switching some things around a little and recalibrating. Fine. I can do those things. But the message of the speech… the impact of a stalker, the need for victim notification of prisoner release in cases of misdemeanor offense, the long-term effects of being a crime victim, the need for people who dedicate themselves to helping… it was heavy. My parents were coming. They would hear this speech and likely be set on edge and maybe even upset by it. Rick would be there. Or not, depending on his meeting.

An hour before the event began, my parents called to tell me they were stuck in bad traffic from an accident exactly nowhere near where they needed to be. I wasn’t sure they would make it in time to hear my speech, which would, of course, upset them. Then, sitting in my car in the parking lot outside the luncheon site, I drizzled a not insignificant amount of red nail polish on my blue spring coat.

So things were off to a great start.

My parents did make it in time. Somehow. So did Rick. He slipped in a little late and sat in the back, instead of at the table with us, the group of people receiving an award for the work we did. He did that work, really. But he came over after my speech, tapped me on the shoulder and said he was sitting elsewhere so he could slip out to tend to other professional obligations when he had to.

Seeing him felt sad. And good. And made me miss him. And made me hope. And felt awkward.

But I was glad he made it to get his award. And to hear my speech and see me in my really nice dress and heels with my hair up. He likes that look, and I’m a big believer in the lingering image.

I think my speech went well, but to be honest, I’ve blocked out parts of it. I wondered afterward if I had really said everything. I had written it all out, then rehearsed it so I would know it well enough not to have to read it word for word. But a whole section is missing from my memory.

The other speakers had lived through experiences so much worse than my own. I try not to qualify it that way. I try not to invalidate my experience vis-a-vis someone else’s, but when you’re speaking after a woman whose husband was killed and before a woman whose husband beat her and then murdered her two young children, you do feel like you’re unfairly spotlighted.

When the time came to give me my individual award, I looked toward the back of the room and saw Rick standing there in the doorway with the senator. He was backlit from the windows and surrounded by white marble. It was like he was glowing. I felt a pang. A few minutes later, when they announced our group award, I avoided looking at him but couldn’t help noticing the grin on his face. He deserved this, and he deserved to be proud. I was proud of him, too.

After that, he and the senator came and sat at our table, where my parents had joined us because our group was so scattered throughout the room. He wound up talking to my parents for a while. I have no idea what they talked about; several people had come up to me and I was justifiably distracted. And somewhat willfully ingoring his presence. Not because I didn’t want him there, but because I didn’t trust myself to act like there had never been anything between us.

After we left and I led my parents back to my house, I checked my phone and saw I’d missed a call. From the university. I returned it.

They offered me the job. Maximum salary allowed, title I wanted. I start May 1.

As promised, I texted Rick to let him know. His response: “Awesome! Awesome! Awesome! CONGRATS! You’ve had a very big day, if I do say so myself.”

It was a big day. A big, difficult, surreal, emotional on every level day. So much so that I don’t think it’s registered.

My mother wanted to frame my awards and hang them. In my bedroom.

No no no no no.

 

Stop! In the Name of Love

I have gone back and forth about doing this post because I mean really, does this need to be belabored?

Oh, wait. Yeah. It kinda does.

The Supremes have spent the last two days hearing oral arguments (which sounds dirty, but isn’t) about California’s Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in the state, and the Defense of Marriage Act, which President Bill Clinton signed into law in 1996, defining marriage as being between one man and one woman. The issue, as it almost always is with the Supremes because they’re obsessed, is the laws’ constitutionality.

The thing is, this is one of those issues for which it seems a lot of Americans don’t care at all about the constitutionality. Which is what makes it pretty unusual, since we’re always harping on that particular document, and usually with good reason.

I’m interested to see how this comes out (haha, I said “comes out.” Like gay people.) because this is a situation in which I personally find that a strict originalist view of the Constitution will bear out the fact that the document says… um… nothing about who can get married and who can’t.

Ruh-roh Rustice Scalia.

I mean, it does say that black people are only 3/5 human… but I don’t think the strict originalists are really keeping to that definition. The 13th Amendment took care of that. And then the 14th Amendment says:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

And Article IV, Section 1 says:

Full faith and credit shall be given in each state to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state. And the Congress may by general laws prescribe the manner in which such acts, records, and proceedings shall be proved, and the effect thereof.

Which means if I, a straight person, were to get married in New York, it would have to be recognized as a valid marriage everywhere else. But Congress can establish whether the marriage was legit in the first state.

Now, I’m not a Constitutional scholar. I’m not even a lawyer. Not one single credit hour of law in college. I worked at a law firm part time for a little while and I dated a guy with his JD, but I don’t think that qualifies. But I am a citizen… considered unequal until 1920 and sometimes even now, since I’m a woman, but we’ll forego that particular argument at the moment, I’ll stick my thumbs in my ears and wiggle my fingers because I own property, and we’ll just settle on I’m a citizen. So the Constitution is important to me. And I don’t see an argument against same-sex marriage in it. So I guess it’s good that the Supremes have been contracted to figure it out.

I find that almost every argument against same-sex marriage is based on religion. As I have said many, many times in this blog, I fully respect a person’s faith, regardless of what it is, because I expect the same respect for my faith. I certainly don’t expect to change anyone’s minds. Instead, what I’d like to do is to point out something I think is a simple but pivotal aspect of this discussion:

The law is not about religion.

A friend of mine on Facebook unwittingly started a conversation about this the other day. One of his friends, who appears to be a fundamentalist Christian, pointed out three passages in the Bible that he felt supported his belief that same-sex marriage should not be allowed. I read the passages, one of which was in Leviticus (the third book of the Old Testament/Torah) and reflects a pre-Christ view of a harsh and punishing God… and two more, which were from Romans, a book in the New Testament attributed to Paul. My friend’s friend was gentle and respectful in his points, but based his entire argument against same-sex marriage on religion and these passages.

A minimally scholarly understanding of the Bible demonstrates the difference between the Old and New Testament tones in Christian belief, as well as the fact that Paul was not an apostle of Jesus and never knew Jesus when He was teaching, but came to his conversion after Jesus’s ascension. So technically, his writings were inspired by his faith, but not directly taken from Jesus’s words.

It’s easy to get caught up in the understandings of faith and forget the fundamental truth of this same-sex marriage question: that it is about whether same-sex couples should be afforded equal rights and protections under the law. And, more broadly, but no less significantly, it’s about whether the federal government should control marriage in any way… a question that, to some degree, is answered by the federal benefits extended to married heterosexual couples.

It’s not about religion. No matter how much someone believes that same-sex relationships are against God’s laws, or will, or word, or design, the questions of Prop 8 and DOMA are not about religion. They are about law, and the Constutition, and citizenship.

There are varied interpretations of those, too, of course. That’s why we have the Supremes. But on Tuesday, I found a passage I had forgotten existed despite the fact that it’s inscribed on a wall.

I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

Those words are inscribed on the wall of the Jefferson Memorial. Because he wrote them.

He also was one of nine men who wrote the Constitution.

I think, understanding that religion does not govern the rule of law and the outrage of some does not mitigate the rights of others, Thomas Jefferson would agree…

…It’s time.

 

 

 

Fourth Round Upset

If any of you had me losing to the universe in the March Madness relationship tournament… congratulations. You’ve won. Allow me to play “One Shitty Moment” while you snip away the tattered remains of my love life.

Oh, it’s not really that dramatic, don’t worry. I can be around sharps. 

Yes, you finally get to hear the end of the Rick Saga, because it has reached its end. Yesterday I messaged him asking for a conversation and he called me five minutes after he read it. Much was said, but the upshot is that he thought he was ready to date, but he isn’t, and he’s so overwhelmed emotionally that he hasn’t been able to deal with his life beyond work. He’s thrown himself into the job to distract himself from everything else. Duh. And he’s so uncertain about what he wants for his personal life that he’s even wondered whether leaving The Ex was the right decision. He doesn’t know whether to move into a new place or move back in with her. 

So, yeah.

That was really the only part of the conversation that surprised me, or any of you, probably, if you’ve been playing our game at home. Of course, that doesn’t mean that I slept well or that I don’t have sort of epically puffed-up eyes from crying myself to sleep. I really hate that particular feature of crying myself to sleep, by the way. Like insult really needs to be added to injury at that point. My eyes are assholes.

It was a long and honest conversation during which we agreed that there will be no hard feelings or awkwardness if the university ever fucking calls me and offers me the goddamned job. He says he’s truly excited about me getting it (allegedly) and looks forward to having a friendly face around that he can vent to sometimes. At which point I fell silent, because after approximately seven eons of dating and two years-long, particularly cruel bouts of unrequited love, I have finally realized I can’t be “friends” with someone I’ve been interested in. But I didn’t need to say that out loud at this point. 

I’m still waiting for my Cinderella story. But I’m seriously, seriously considering quitting the game and taking up competitive eating instead.

Roller Derby. So That Happened.

I’ve just had one of the more surreal experiences of my life.

Have you ever been to a roller derby? Are you familiar with this? I don’t know if men do it, but the women’s version of roller derby is apparently all the rage right now. When I got the Facebook invitation from my former neighbor, Cammie, I was pretty surprised. Cammie isn’t really the roller derby type. Whatever that means. She’s an archivist at a university library. She’s not prim or dowdy or anything – the first time I met her was when her friends left her drunk ass in my care while they went to search for her apartment keys in her car, which had been left at whatever bar had over-served her. Cammie, who is maybe 95 pounds soaking wet, sat slumped on my floor with her back against my couch, eyes closed, occasionally muttering that she hoped she wouldn’t get sick on my stuff.

But the next day, she wrote me a thank you note.

Anyway, so I went to the roller derby. You guys, this is some serious roughhousing. I don’t really know how it works except one of the girls on each team has a star on her helmet, and she’s like Head Bitch In Charge for however long she has the star, and she’s the one who has to power through the crowd and lap them. And however many times she laps them or something, she gets points for the team. The stars are removable, so the Head Bitch changes up every so often, though I have no idea what the guidelines are for that. And the rest of the team is trying to block their opponents from getting to the Head Bitch, while also trying to block for her. This sometimes resembles a really aggressive game of Red Rover. There are maybe, I dunno, eight chicks on a team at a time, but they rotate and they seem to have another eight on the bench at any given time. There are some other rules and there are at least three referees in actual referee clothing. One of them was also wearing a kilt. They skate around and two of them are responsible for holding a hand up and pointing continually at whichever HBIC is in the lead at any given time. And then there was this other guy in skinny stonewashed black jeans who kept frantically writing things on a white dry erase board and showing it to people in some sort of official capacity, but I could never see what he’d written or figure out what he might possibly be keeping track of.

There might be fouls, but I’m not sure. There was a lot of what I found to be errant whistling from the refs. If your job is to knock a bitch down, it’s hard to know when you’ve crossed a line.

Oh, and the derby girls have names! Names like Cramp Crusher and Ima Psycho and Anita Bandage.

It was a back-to-back bout (they’re called bouts), so it was kind of long, but by halftime (they have halftime!) of the second bout, I was actually getting into it. Still, I was trying to ignore the three annoying announcers (three), one of whom was wearing a gold sequined jacket and top hat. I make it a policy to ignore anyone who wears sequins unless it’s a prom or a bride. That goes double for men. 

It took me over an hour to realize that these teams actually have coaches. How does one coach a roller derby team? I couldn’t figure it out. But sure enough, the guy in the skinny stonewashed black jeans would run over (he wasn’t on skates) and hold up the white dry erase board to the coaches. Who were wearing – are you ready for this? – lavender suits. Not deep lavender… it was pale, so that I thought it might be a dove gray color. But no. Lavender. One of Cammie’s friends did some recon to find out for sure.

After the first bout, one of the members of the team came up to the bleachers, where about 300 serious roller derby fans of all walks of life, young and old, goth and average, punk and non-punk, were seated. She personally shook hands with most of us and thanked us for coming. Up close, I realized… she was at least 45 years old.

Which made me feel like such a bum, because this is some physical stuff and I’m sitting on the bleachers all, “Oh, that would kill my back!”

The second bout was much rowdier. As a woman from the first bout sold beer in the stands with one of those carriers you see at baseball and football games, the action on the floor was intense. I was chatting with Cammie’s friend Deb when I suddenly realized the entire arena had fallen silent. I mean silent. 

I looked up.

One of the roller girls was splayed out on the floor, face-down. Possibly dead.

Everyone else had taken a knee. You know how they do in football, when someone gets hit really hard and appears unconscious, and everybody gets down on a knee and prays or whatnot? That’s what was happening. And me, talking to Deb about knishes, all insensitive-like. And now I was all, “Aw, man… somebody got killed at the roller derby and I missed it.”

There were medical personnel surrounding her, and though I couldn’t quite tell what they were doing, I kept looking for blood and/or teeth. Finding none, I waited along with the rest of the crowd.

She was alright. She came back later.

About an hour after I’d arrived, I saw a girl sit down three bleachers in front of me who looked like a former coworker. Sometime after the woman didn’t die on the floor, I saw her and her friends get up to leave. Turns out, it was the former coworker, sans about 30 pounds since the last time I saw her. And you know who she was with?

Gwyneth.

Yes, Gwyneth. The woman who stole the affections and attention of my non-boyfriend, Jack.

I had exactly these thoughts:

Oh my God. Is he here? (No.)

Seriously, she is really young.

And skinny.

When did she get glasses?

I probably stared at her the whole time she was arranging herself to leave, saying goodbye to her friends and heading up the bleachers toward the exit. I had strangely few feelings. I briefly fantasized about a whirl around the derby floor, pulling her hair and smacking at her with open fists, but it’s pretty obvious based on any reality whatsoever that I would come up the loser in that bout. She’s a marathon runner. I haven’t gone to a gym in nine months. Really, I never blamed her for anything – it was completely Jack’s fault – she probably had no idea how devastated I was. But still… what are the odds? To run into her at the roller derby?! Really? Three hundred people out of an entire metro area population, and we’re both there?

Gwyneth goes to the roller derby?

I go to the roller derby?

Sometimes I wonder if I just dreamed the whole thing. But there are pictures of the derby on my phone. So I guess not.

And I didn’t even get a beer.

Your Life Is Important To Us. Please Continue To Hold.

As Josh Lyman once said in an episode of The West Wing called “The War At Home:” I’m on hold. I’m on hold. I’m in some kind of hellish hold world of holding.

Super episode, by the way.

So. I’m still waiting to hear from the university about the job. I’m not going to hear about it until at least next Monday, when Joanne gets back from vacation. She did email me yesterday, the first day of her vacation, to ask me for three references. I had already provided a list of three, two of whom are either recently retired from her department or currently working one floor below her in the president’s office. So I guess she wanted three more.

I could go for days, boss. Refer away. Or whatever.

But seriously? Make the call. You’ve told me you want to hire me, you’ve told me you don’t know why I didn’t get the last job I interviewed for there, you asked me for free advice, some of which you actually took, you sang my praises to Rick twice the next day… HIRE ME ALREADY. Or I’m totally billing you for that shit.

Meanwhile, I had to schedule the interview I don’t want, for the job I don’t really want. That’s because I had put my old and potentially new again boss on hold, because I was on hold with the university. And then when I learned I wasn’t going to hear from the university until at least the 25th, I couldn’t keep David on hold anymore. So that interview is Friday.

Which is Rick’s birthday. I had foolishly taken it as a vacation day, thinking maybe I’d make him a nice dinner. That was more than a month ago, when we were swimming along nicely. Cut to now, at which point I haven’t seen him in almost a month and didn’t hear from him between Friday afternoon and this morning. And all he can say to me anymore is, “Did you hear anything about the job yet?” Even though I have told him I won’t hear until next week. It’s like that’s the only way he can think of to continue some sort of contact.

I almost gave the vacation day back, but then I realized it would be the best way to go to the interview I don’t want for the job I don’t really want.

Since I turned my blog into an interactive forum on dating, I’ve been doing what it seemed most of you recommended: responding when contacted, but not reaching out. Which is really no different from what I’d been doing all along. So no behavior modification was necessary. Psyche modification – different story.

Therefore, I am grumpy as hell. Which, I’m told, hath no fury like a woman wondering what the eff is the deal with the seemingly endless procession of men in her life who can’t get their shit together with super glue, compounded by the nearly four-year search for a way out of a basement that didn’t include a spoon and a Raquel Welch poster, which is presently taunting her because it’s like she can smell the fresh air but she can’t get to it.

Or something like that.

Even Sam isn’t getting back to me. Days have gone by and nothing. I think he might be dead. I emailed him yesterday to ask. No reply. So it’s possible I’m right.

I’ve heard it said that God has three answers: Yes, No and Wait. I suppose it’s possible that I’m getting a bunch of Waits lately. But still, I would think God would have a better way to communicate. Burn a bush or something.

But tell me what the burning bush means first, so I’m not all, “It’s a sign! Wait… what?”

Yeah, I Take It Back. This Is NOT What It’s Supposed To Be Like.

I am typing really hard. Just so you know. 

The university where I’m trying to get a job is in the middle of a kind of public relations clusterfuck right now. (I had censored that word a little, but then I remembered we all know I swear in this blog. Much more than I do out loud in actual life. See? You get extras!) I’m not in PR at the moment, but I do have some level of knowledge about it, so the woman who would be my immediate supervisor called me at 10:00 last night looking for some free advice.

It’s possible I didn’t really let her ask me the question she wanted to ask because we just sort of got into the conversation, but suffice it to say we talked for 30 minutes about how to staunch the bleeding. And I don’t love giving free advice (apart from “hire me”), but if it’s going to help nudge them in the correct direction vis-a-vis my employment, I’ll throw them a bone. She had told me, without prodding, that she was sorry the process was taking so long, that everyone really liked me and wanted me on the team, but that they weren’t sure which position to slot me in. Not a great sign, since if it’s not the one for which I interviewed, it would be the one below that… $2,500 below that, and a rather significant $2,500, at that. And if you’re calling me to help save your ass from the mess you’re currently in, then maybe you should hire me for something indicative of the fact that you need me to save your ass. 

I had talked with her on the phone on my way home from work. Pulling into my parking spot at 11pm, I had not yet heard from Rick. The night before, I had heard from him rather late, but the exchange had been fine. I was still pissed, though, about being blown off on Friday. But, since I had an update on the employment situation, and only because of that update, I decided to reach out. 

“Just finished a 30 minute conversation with Joanne. She called asking for help with this fiasco. Apparently I’m a consultant now.”

His response was…

…wait for it…

“Congrats! Tell me about it tomorrow. I’m out of it right now. “

Are you freaking KIDDING me. Period. Not question mark.

By “out of it,” do you mean “high?” Or “drunk beyond conversational ability?” Because, um, the possibility of my getting hired at this university is kind of a major point of interest between us, and you’ve been lobbying for it for weeks, and just yesterday you asked if I had heard from Joanne. And now you want to tell me you’re too “out of it” to move your fingers around on a keyboard?

If I hadn’t laughed out loud at his douchenuggetry I would have been furious. I might still be. I reserve that right. And I will, in fact, NOT be telling him about it today. Because I will not be speaking to him today. Not really sure when I’ll resume that, actually.

So, let’s review:

First six weeks of dating: everything is great. Everything is so different from my previous experiences that I think I might have found a truly good guy now. But I don’t want to get ahead of myself.

Seventh week: slight intensification followed by perfectly acceptable conversation about taking things slowly. We are in complete agreement.

Eighth week: Still pretty decent, but definitely less great. One plan to see each other cancelled.

Ninth week: Haven’t seen him in three weeks. Substantially less great vibe. Actually verging on sucky. One possibly attempted blow-off that I thwarted because it didn’t even make sense, followed 24 hours later by an actual blow-off. Four days later,a huge blow-off. 

You know what? I think we’re done here.

So here, dear readers, is where you come in. I’d like to ask for your opinion on how I handle this. I’d love to set up one of those poll thingies, but I don’t know how and I don’t feel like figuring it out right now. Instead, I’ll give you numbers by the options I’d like you to choose from, and you can just comment with the number of your choice. Plus, of course, anything else you might like to say. Mmkay?

1. Ignore him. Don’t answer any communiques from here forward. 
2. Option 1 with the caveat that he can be answered if he realizes on his own that he owes me a huge apology and actually provides it. 
3. Call him tonight and suggest that we end this attempt at dating, since it seems he is not truly interested at this point.
4. Call him tonight and tell him off. Who cares if we might wind up working together? Who cares that we have to be at a governor’s award luncheon together in three weeks? He made his bed.
5. Set fire to his car. Leave a note: “Tell me about this tomorrow. I’m out of it right now.”

Aaand… GO!