Smart people doing goofy things is funny. It's heartening, in some ways. They can't be smart all the time can they? When these things are innocuous and done in good faith with even better cheer, they make me smile. My two lovely friends - one gay, the other a single woman with no kids - decided to embark on baby making. They didn't tell me until they were 6 months in. It's worth noting that in college, I was the connector for these two folks. She was my roommate my junior and senior year. He was my first (maybe second) true love. We dated. That didn't work (see, smart people do dumb things) and so we became lifelong friends. He was in my wedding. My family took him in as their own when coming out to his didn't go so well (things were tossed out windows and burned, gay rehab therapists were called and the inevitable teary reunion ensued, albeit many years later).
These two were friends but once removed. Gay Best Friend (GBF) and I spent our early years in SF trolling the gay bars in the Castro and raving South of Market with hordes of shirtless men. I felt I owed him. I'd made him fool around with me for many years. Besides the gays are more fun. And I was a fag hag without the baby bangs and lunch box purse. My former roommate went on to become one of my most accomplished friends. Early internet mogul, book writer, super glamorous intellectual connected to the foremost smarty pants' of our day (Al Gore, Phillip Zimbardo, Elizabeth Gilbert, just to name a few across a range of disciplines).
Well, fancy pants decides she wants to have a baby. Go for it, I say. This is an independent woman who can handle it. If some of my girlfriends were to tell me this, I might say, are you sure? You have your independence (all the while thinking, she can't handle that!) Not this gal. She's got bigger balls than any dude I know. A baby... no problem.
Six months later, I've heard nothing, but gone through enough heartache of my own to be disconnected and self centered enough not to have asked. And then, I see her. And I say, what's up with the baby making? Well, she says, I've been meaning to tell you. Me and your GBF, we're trying to have a baby. We didn't tell you because you've been going through shit of your own. I've been meaning to tell you.
Trying to have a baby?! You're having sex. (I'm trying to picture this as he and I had tried that without much success many years earlier). No! Of course not.
I don't know where to start with the questions. I'm giddy with the news of it all. And the fact that two of my closest friends (even though we don't maintain the day to day conversations that we did in our 20s) are galavanting around engaged in near-sex activity without my knowledge is somewhat mind-blowing. Especially since he and I had made a pact many years ago, amidst the thumping of techno and mind-altering substances, that we would have a baby if we both ended up alone. (Well, I'm alone, but the babies were had without his intervention... but back to the real story.)
She goes on to tell me of their baby making travails, not aided by the help of a trained professional. It amounts to this: they meet in some random city where they might both have business. He does his thing into a cup and hands it off (Isn't there something about air hitting the suckers that kills 'em?) He leaves to do his real work. She lies back, entertains herself, and with the help of some sort of of turkey baster / eye dropper type of contraption, inserts.
No it hasn't worked. Of course it hasn't. But they've done it 4 times. The thought of this is so funny and outrageous I just can't help but smile at the pure faith of it all. I think it's time for some professional intervention, I suggest. I know, she says. So they have a new plan that involves doctors and a more air tight solution. Whew.
It must also involve the admission of true commitment. Not to mention the forking over of real dollars. And the possibility of devastating disappointment. You can't be disappointed if the eye dropper doesn't work. How could it? And there are always, more formal options in store. But if those fail, then what? Reality ensues.
My GBF told me he's had his share of worries over this. But everything good in his life has come from saying YES rather than no. And she deserves this, he says. So he's going to do it. This is a rom com of the year 2011. It's got Jennifer Aniston and Rupert Everett (he might be too old?) written all over it.
Bless that man. Say YES. Let it work. My fingers, toes, legs and eyes are crossed with the sheer desperate hope and love of it all.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Dinner with Friends
As part of my Summer of Adventure, I dined with a few very old friends this week while I was in New York. I know it doesn't sound that adventurous. And it's not. But I tend to stick with the friends I have. I don't like explaining myself to new people, even if they are old friends. And while the impetus may strike to reach out to some old friend or other on Facebook, I generally don't ask them to hang out. Well, I did this time.
My old friend Porter... the roomie of my gay best friend from college. He had a brief stint of liking me. But I liked the gay. Open ended love triangle ensued. Porter was (and still is) funny in a unique and endearing way. Dry. Droll. Strange and deadpan. We spent a lot of time together back in the day over 20 years ago. As Freshmen in Western Civ, he encouraged me to leave class one day. It was boring. He said: Lets go. I said: Ok. We exited through the side door, somewhere kind of near the front of the auditorium. I should say, he exited. As soon as he got his body out the door, he shut it and held it shut, with my body mostly still in the auditorium, an arm on his side in the hall. He held it tight. I squirmed, laughed and begged him to let me out while being eyed by the Professor and the Humanities class. He let me out after a few minutes of humiliation.
He asked a few other mutual friends to join for dinner, Chip and Aden. I asked June, an old friend that is a consistent presence in my life still. We all lived in the same Freshman dorm. Donner. We were a proud crew. There weren't that many all Freshman dorms on Stanford campus so we were uniquely tight-knit in our shared all-Frosh experience.
Here's the low down. Chip - cute. Looks the same. Exactly. I thought he'd be bald and fat because he was cute back then. And isn't that always the way? The popular football player gets gross? Not Chip. Fucking adorable. Family guy - 2 little girls, wife. Lives in New Jersey on a horse farm. Owns music stores. (Do people go to stores for music anymore?) Charmingly sweet and good natured. Aden - also looks pretty much the same. Tall, thin (thinner?), Jewish in look and demeanor. He's a lawyer for the ACLU and lives in New York but doesn't seem to want to. Porter - graying, unmarried, distinguished. Has lived in China for the last decade or so. Seems to have maybe gotten rich at Alibaba, the Chinese Google, and is traveling around the world with his much younger Japanese girlfriend. Still funny if not a tad elusive.
It was an early night. Not big drinkers, this bunch. I drank the most at 2 beers and I would have gone the distance. Hmmm. What does this say about me? I had to sheepishly acknowledge that I was in the throes of a divorce. I received the "Aww, I'm sorry" commentary with aplomb. And no tears. And then changed the subject. Sitting amongst two happily married family men and one about-to-propose well-to-do bachelor, it's not the most fun thing to talk about. You kind of feel like the failure at the table.
All in all, nice night. Did we recapture the bond and energy of our youth? No. Did we have fun reminiscing? Yes absolutely. Did I want to know more about Doug, the crush and hook-up of my Sophomore year that these fellas seem to still be in touch with? Yes. Did I ask? No. Seemed pathetic for the nearly divorced lady to pine over a lost love (like?) who is married with kids.
On to more adventures...
My old friend Porter... the roomie of my gay best friend from college. He had a brief stint of liking me. But I liked the gay. Open ended love triangle ensued. Porter was (and still is) funny in a unique and endearing way. Dry. Droll. Strange and deadpan. We spent a lot of time together back in the day over 20 years ago. As Freshmen in Western Civ, he encouraged me to leave class one day. It was boring. He said: Lets go. I said: Ok. We exited through the side door, somewhere kind of near the front of the auditorium. I should say, he exited. As soon as he got his body out the door, he shut it and held it shut, with my body mostly still in the auditorium, an arm on his side in the hall. He held it tight. I squirmed, laughed and begged him to let me out while being eyed by the Professor and the Humanities class. He let me out after a few minutes of humiliation.
He asked a few other mutual friends to join for dinner, Chip and Aden. I asked June, an old friend that is a consistent presence in my life still. We all lived in the same Freshman dorm. Donner. We were a proud crew. There weren't that many all Freshman dorms on Stanford campus so we were uniquely tight-knit in our shared all-Frosh experience.
Here's the low down. Chip - cute. Looks the same. Exactly. I thought he'd be bald and fat because he was cute back then. And isn't that always the way? The popular football player gets gross? Not Chip. Fucking adorable. Family guy - 2 little girls, wife. Lives in New Jersey on a horse farm. Owns music stores. (Do people go to stores for music anymore?) Charmingly sweet and good natured. Aden - also looks pretty much the same. Tall, thin (thinner?), Jewish in look and demeanor. He's a lawyer for the ACLU and lives in New York but doesn't seem to want to. Porter - graying, unmarried, distinguished. Has lived in China for the last decade or so. Seems to have maybe gotten rich at Alibaba, the Chinese Google, and is traveling around the world with his much younger Japanese girlfriend. Still funny if not a tad elusive.
It was an early night. Not big drinkers, this bunch. I drank the most at 2 beers and I would have gone the distance. Hmmm. What does this say about me? I had to sheepishly acknowledge that I was in the throes of a divorce. I received the "Aww, I'm sorry" commentary with aplomb. And no tears. And then changed the subject. Sitting amongst two happily married family men and one about-to-propose well-to-do bachelor, it's not the most fun thing to talk about. You kind of feel like the failure at the table.
All in all, nice night. Did we recapture the bond and energy of our youth? No. Did we have fun reminiscing? Yes absolutely. Did I want to know more about Doug, the crush and hook-up of my Sophomore year that these fellas seem to still be in touch with? Yes. Did I ask? No. Seemed pathetic for the nearly divorced lady to pine over a lost love (like?) who is married with kids.
On to more adventures...
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Summer of Adventure
I told the kids we were going to have our Summer Of Adventure in 2011. It doesn't take much to create an adventure with two boys. Here's what we've done so far:
Next up we've got Lake Tahoe and Atlantic City. The Jersey Shore will prove to be the culmination of summer fun replete with fishing, water skiing, salt water taffy and surf lessons with the cousins, uncles and aunties not to mention grandparents. The best part of all the shenanigans besides all the fun is that the fun, for me, is guilt free.
For years I let the fact that my soon to be ex-husband didn't like a lot of activity constrain our adventurousness. His desire to stay close to home and keep the hustle and bustle to a minimum, set the tone for the family. He was passive aggressively controlling in his need to keep things low key. And while I believe it to have been driven (primarily) by a simple lack of motivation, and general low energy level, as well as a straightforward preference for being at home, it came out as the morally superior mode of behavior (that's the passive aggressive part). In short, it came out as judgment. Doing stuff was spoiling the kids, wasting money, wasting gas, killing the environment. I was bad. He was good. Period.
I bought it. I stayed home. I invented things to do in the house and in the neighborhood. We baked cookies, we played catch, we saw movies. All fun things, for sure. On occasion we strayed further from home, dragging dad along, but he became sullen in the process.
I wanted to explore, to go, to keep going, to be in the world doing stuff. However small. I'm a go-go kind of girl. I am aware that my go-go may be restlessness masquerading as energy and enterprise, but it is who I am and my go-go went idle for far too long.
A ferry ride is an adventure! Fried clams are a Howard Johnson's sentimental blast from the past. We bused, we boated, we ate, we conquered. And at the end of the day, we had sun on our faces, candy stuck in our teeth and pictures of cockatoos resting on shoulders with curly haired, wild-eyed boys beaming with giddy delight.
I am learning to revel in the freedom from judgment. I am liberated from the whispered digs and disapproving glances. From the scrutiny that inevitably positioned me as morally, ethically and emotionally inferior because I prefer action over languor. I am enjoying my kids. After an outing, I am not anxious and awaiting the assessment that I was bad. That I had fun with my kids just to make him look boring and lazy. Nor am I hoping for the bestowal of goodness. For the grant that I am nice and worthy and a good mom. I waited for that for a very long time. I didn't get it, no matter how I tried. And now I just have to believe it for myself.
Atlantic City...here we come.
- We went to a Giants game with fireworks (and box seats!)
- We went swimming in the suburbs of Terra Linda (with a bouncy house on top of the pool)
- Rode a ferry to Sausalito
- Got stalked by evil seagulls at Baker Beach
- Swam in the city of San Francisco at my friend's swanky condo, under the glare of tenants who apparently prefer silence at their pool
- Walked barefoot to get ice cream sundaes on a hot summer night (ok, not cold - it's San Francisco after all)
- Let a cockatoo sit on each of their bony little boy right shoulders
- Jump off a diving board
- Actually SEE fireworks (we're always too lazy to fight the city crowds at the Embarcadero in San Francisco so they'd never seen fireworks from a vantage point where they could actually ... well, see them)
- Eat fried clams
- Attempt to outrun birds
- Take pictures of Alcatraz while being sprayed with mist off the Bay
Next up we've got Lake Tahoe and Atlantic City. The Jersey Shore will prove to be the culmination of summer fun replete with fishing, water skiing, salt water taffy and surf lessons with the cousins, uncles and aunties not to mention grandparents. The best part of all the shenanigans besides all the fun is that the fun, for me, is guilt free.
For years I let the fact that my soon to be ex-husband didn't like a lot of activity constrain our adventurousness. His desire to stay close to home and keep the hustle and bustle to a minimum, set the tone for the family. He was passive aggressively controlling in his need to keep things low key. And while I believe it to have been driven (primarily) by a simple lack of motivation, and general low energy level, as well as a straightforward preference for being at home, it came out as the morally superior mode of behavior (that's the passive aggressive part). In short, it came out as judgment. Doing stuff was spoiling the kids, wasting money, wasting gas, killing the environment. I was bad. He was good. Period.
I bought it. I stayed home. I invented things to do in the house and in the neighborhood. We baked cookies, we played catch, we saw movies. All fun things, for sure. On occasion we strayed further from home, dragging dad along, but he became sullen in the process.
I wanted to explore, to go, to keep going, to be in the world doing stuff. However small. I'm a go-go kind of girl. I am aware that my go-go may be restlessness masquerading as energy and enterprise, but it is who I am and my go-go went idle for far too long.
A ferry ride is an adventure! Fried clams are a Howard Johnson's sentimental blast from the past. We bused, we boated, we ate, we conquered. And at the end of the day, we had sun on our faces, candy stuck in our teeth and pictures of cockatoos resting on shoulders with curly haired, wild-eyed boys beaming with giddy delight.
I am learning to revel in the freedom from judgment. I am liberated from the whispered digs and disapproving glances. From the scrutiny that inevitably positioned me as morally, ethically and emotionally inferior because I prefer action over languor. I am enjoying my kids. After an outing, I am not anxious and awaiting the assessment that I was bad. That I had fun with my kids just to make him look boring and lazy. Nor am I hoping for the bestowal of goodness. For the grant that I am nice and worthy and a good mom. I waited for that for a very long time. I didn't get it, no matter how I tried. And now I just have to believe it for myself.
Atlantic City...here we come.
Monday, June 13, 2011
Waiting, waiting, waiting...
I can't read, I can't write, what's wrong with me? My gal Rae, my BFF, my port in the storm, my cheerleader and biggest fan for over 20 years (yikes, I'm old!) has her third book out. "Mother's & Daughters". Each of her first two I read in manuscript form. This one sits on my nightstand, 2 chapters in. Pages unturned for the last few weeks (and by the way it took me a few months just to read the first two chapters! And I liked them! And still, I don't continue! Eek.)
Friday Night Lights was a distraction, sure. But I suppose I was looking for one. I actually sat on a plane for 40 hours - to Cadiz, Spain and back - last week, and didn't even crack the book. I watched FNL episodes downloaded from iTunes. I read the NYT front to back from the prior Sunday. I watched several bad movies not the least bad of which was "Hall Pass" about two lame guys released from their marital obligations for a week. While eagerly anticipating sex with hot strangers, they find themselves at Applebees, feckless and wandering, full on ribs, and unable to pick up chicks. Alas, the plight of the modern, maritally castrated man. (It's her fault he's so incompetent, of course.) I digress...
I can't even find the mojo to write these blogospheric inanities. Words elude me. My brain is vapor. My focus is shit. I am on point at work. But beyond commerce, my ideas evaporate.
I have a book idea in mind. A novel that begins with a husband going down on his wife only to extract a condom that she doesn't know is there. Left there by her boyfriend, unbeknownst to her (the condom is unbeknownst, not the boyfriend). And the games begin... it seems like kind of a funny scene. Woody Allen-esque. But I can't figure out where it goes. Maybe because it's stupid.
I am trying my damnedest to trust in Anne Lamott. In "Bird by Bird" she writes that embarking upon a novel is like driving down a windy road with no headlights. You can only see just so far in front of your face. You need to go slowly, watch carefully and trust that if you follow the road, you will get where you are going. It's akin to putting one foot in front of the other. And I am paraphrasing so I may be getting it kinda wrong. Regardless, this is how I remember it and I like this analogy. I am doing it in my life at present. I wake up, I get myself together, I go to work, I answer the questions, I eat my lunch, I laugh a little. See my kids. Go on a date. Some good, some not good. I smile. Seek moments of grace and laughter. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Maybe you can only apply this windy road/no headlights thing to one area of your life at a time. I'm in it deep in my life, following the road, so I can't write a book. Maybe...
I think there is salvation, for me, in writing another book though. In proving to myself that I wasn't some angry 40 year old post-adolescent gymnast with an axe to grind. In proving that I might actually have the presence of mind to string together a few paragraphs, again. In a way that makes people want to read them. In a way that gives me a touch of enlightenment and joy and pride.
But for now, I'm going to embark on yesterday's Sunday NYT, ponder what next Friday's "Friday Night Lights" might bring, hug my kids and hope for some degree of divine intervention that prompts a good long sit at the keyboard at some point in the not too distant future.
Friday Night Lights was a distraction, sure. But I suppose I was looking for one. I actually sat on a plane for 40 hours - to Cadiz, Spain and back - last week, and didn't even crack the book. I watched FNL episodes downloaded from iTunes. I read the NYT front to back from the prior Sunday. I watched several bad movies not the least bad of which was "Hall Pass" about two lame guys released from their marital obligations for a week. While eagerly anticipating sex with hot strangers, they find themselves at Applebees, feckless and wandering, full on ribs, and unable to pick up chicks. Alas, the plight of the modern, maritally castrated man. (It's her fault he's so incompetent, of course.) I digress...
I can't even find the mojo to write these blogospheric inanities. Words elude me. My brain is vapor. My focus is shit. I am on point at work. But beyond commerce, my ideas evaporate.
I have a book idea in mind. A novel that begins with a husband going down on his wife only to extract a condom that she doesn't know is there. Left there by her boyfriend, unbeknownst to her (the condom is unbeknownst, not the boyfriend). And the games begin... it seems like kind of a funny scene. Woody Allen-esque. But I can't figure out where it goes. Maybe because it's stupid.
I am trying my damnedest to trust in Anne Lamott. In "Bird by Bird" she writes that embarking upon a novel is like driving down a windy road with no headlights. You can only see just so far in front of your face. You need to go slowly, watch carefully and trust that if you follow the road, you will get where you are going. It's akin to putting one foot in front of the other. And I am paraphrasing so I may be getting it kinda wrong. Regardless, this is how I remember it and I like this analogy. I am doing it in my life at present. I wake up, I get myself together, I go to work, I answer the questions, I eat my lunch, I laugh a little. See my kids. Go on a date. Some good, some not good. I smile. Seek moments of grace and laughter. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Maybe you can only apply this windy road/no headlights thing to one area of your life at a time. I'm in it deep in my life, following the road, so I can't write a book. Maybe...
I think there is salvation, for me, in writing another book though. In proving to myself that I wasn't some angry 40 year old post-adolescent gymnast with an axe to grind. In proving that I might actually have the presence of mind to string together a few paragraphs, again. In a way that makes people want to read them. In a way that gives me a touch of enlightenment and joy and pride.
But for now, I'm going to embark on yesterday's Sunday NYT, ponder what next Friday's "Friday Night Lights" might bring, hug my kids and hope for some degree of divine intervention that prompts a good long sit at the keyboard at some point in the not too distant future.
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