Just one, please.

When I was with The Finn, for the first half of my third decade, we both planned on getting married. We “knew” we wanted to be together, have kids together, the whole nine yards. But over time I began to see that the life he had in mind was not the life I wanted. And I saw traits in him that I didn’t want in a partner. Since we broke up I’ve never once wanted to be married. But as thirty approaches, it seems I’ve missed the Commandment that dictates, “Thou Shalt Seek To Entrap A Man In Matrimony.”

When TB moved and that relationship ended, missing him was made worse by people behaving as though I’d just lost a horse race. What initially appeared to be polite sympathy that our relationship had ended was eventually revealed as pity that I had lost a race to the alter. A race I didn’t know I was supposed to be in.

The worst part of the “You Lost” attitude is the unspoken judgment that there must be something wrong with me if I couldn’t entrap my boyfriend into marriage. This attitude was exemplified by my mother who told me, “If he loved you, he’d stay.” I can always rely on my mother to twist the knife after she’s plunged it in.

Many of my single friends relate to the predicament of being pressured into the suspect institution of marriage. JNC has been in marathon wedding attendance and is ready to disembowel the next person who says, “Don’t worry, it will be your turn soon.” Or my personal favorite, “You’ll find someone, too.” The irony that JNC and I have shared is that as we look at the grooms in question, we’re usually thinking, “I’m gonna have to take a pass.” The wide-eyed men staring in horror as their jumbo bride stumbles down the aisle is no prize himself. At one wedding where JNC was given the “your day will come,” treatment, the bride had been asking her for advice on the groom’s outstanding warrant. Yeah, there’s a keeper.

Of course, there are some couples who I'm pleased to see go down the aisle because they seem very committed to each other, and to genuinely want to be married. I admire them for undertaking a huge commitment to each other. I'm sufficiently aware of the seriousness of that commitment that for now, I think it's best that I avoid it.

A recent MSN article, cites a study that 44% percent of husbands have had an extramarital affair and this – wait a minute. Did I read that correctly? FORTY-FOUR PERCENT? Why would anyone get married with these kind of failure rates? Dr. Ruth to makes some sense of the numbers, surmising that the high rate cheating has more to do with the high rate of bad relationships, “My suspicion is that in the vast majority of cases where cheating takes place, there is something inherently amiss in the relationship. So I am quick to dismiss the idea that it’s simply that men are inherently unfaithful.” Dr. Ruth’s optimism not withstanding, that doesn’t really hold out for most of the marriages I’ve seen. Every time a man leaves a woman, it’s been for another woman. Men don’t leave unless they have another woman’s bed to go to.

Growing up, I got to see not one but two marriages break up. The marriages of three women I know well were wrecked by infidelity. Not only did their lives implode, the effect on their self-esteem will last for decades. After all this… marriage just doesn’t sound that fun to me. I don’t want to spend every day looking over my shoulder at every woman who eyes my husband a little too long, or eyeing my thighs for the first suspicion of cellulite that will send him hurtling into the arms of someone younger and firmer.

So if I haven’t made that run to alter just yet, stayed tuned. I may have made the wisest commitment of all – to myself.

At Target last Sunday afternoon.

Young man examines drop-leaf wood table and chairs. A blonde woman stands behind him, arms crossed. He has a scanner in her hand, the kind that the stores use when you are creating a registry.

Man: “This table would work.”
Silence from the scowling blonde.
Man: “We could get the chairs, too. It would fit right in the dining area.”
Woman: “Eh.”
Man: “I’m registering for it.”
Woman: “Go ahead. I’ll just return it.”
Man: “You say that about everything I want.”
Woman (walking towards the coffeemakers): “And I’ll return everything you want, too.”

After hearing this exchange, I was suddenly filled with warm relief that I didn’t have to compromise on anything I put in my cart. Lavendar scented laundry detergent. Grapefruit-infused dishwashing liquid. A red kitchen timer. Glamour magazine. Bliss.

A perfectly nice run ruined by large-scale international atrocities.

Well, I got to the race, had the usual crowd insanity that kept me from running it competitively. Felt like a bad ass running back while people were still finishing. Some of the people who cheer from the side were still there as I came back. As I passed a family putting away their lawn chairs, a girl yelled, "Hey! How far have you run?" I smiled at her and said, "About 9 miles." I could tell the distance didn't mean much to her but she went to the trouble of raising her eyebrows: "Cool." she said. I know how much effort it takes to get a "cool" out of a pre-teen, and it was at that moment that I decided I was officially a badass. I was tempted to revoke my title later when I was clocked by three lithe sprinters doing about an eight-minute-mile pace just as I was contemplating a walk break.

Came home, read about Lebanon, wanted to throw up. The UN High Commissioner of Human Rights was interviewed on NPR last week and brought up the possibility of investigating war crimes because of the high rate of civilian casualties. All this while Bush chews on a roll while Tony Blair tries to get his attention. Bush's answer: "Yeah, I think ahm gonna send Condi over there pretty soon." Is this The Decider we've heard so much about? Wow. You're blowing me away with the Decidin' while innocent people are being shelled by weapons my country sold to Israel.

The Wharf to Wharf race is in less than 12 hours... and I can't find my bib. I took extra care to be sure to be one of the people from work to sign up for my free registration, and even packed the bib in a "safe place" during the move so I could find it quickly when I unpacked. I have a really bad feeling the "safe place" is at work. Now, I have enough W2W shirts to cloth a large family - what I'm interested in is the refreshments at the end. I'm walking from my house to the start and then running back home after the race - about 12 miles. I was really hoping not to have to bring water and gu for the run since I could just get some kind sports drink at the end of the race to give me enough juice to get back home. I think I'm going to just head out in the morning and hope for the best. Doesn't that sound like a good idea?

This is quite possibly the most fabulous bag ever. And I am its proud owner. I think the straps might dig a little when I have my laptop in it, but it's worth it for the fabulosity.

If all goes well, my high-speed internet will be connected (that's wireless, baby) tonight or tomorrow. Depending on what time I get home tonight. Hopefully, I'll be doing a different kind of "hooking up" tonight and the internet will have to wait until Friday. Then I will be able to post on meaningful topics and actually use this site to practice writing and not just making vague references to my love life.

No More Kitty Litter Box!

I came home last night around 7pm to find my apartment full of shirtless, sweaty, tattooed men. Well, "full of" may be a bit of an overstatement since there were really only two of them but it seemed like it was full. I didn't mind them being there becuase they were almost done with my carpet. It makes a huge difference, it looks so new and smells great. The sweaty men apparently do not vacuum the carpet after they are done, so there were lots of little carpet bits for me to clean up. They swept the carpet, though. Men. Sigh.

Before the sweaty carpet guys came, I had been asked to put all the boxes that had not been unpacked (because the carpet still had to go in) into the kitchen and bathroom because those have a linoleum floor and, I assumed, the sweaty carpet guys would not need to get in there. Apparently I was wrong...

I noticed last night as I was unpacking that the boxes had been moved around. There was also a glass that had been used for water on the kitchen counter. When I left in the morning there was NO WAY anyone could have gotten to the sink, much less to the kitchen cabinet for a glass. So I'm not sure what occurred that the sweaty carpet guys had to get into the bathroom and the kitchen. At first I was a little nervous that my boxes had been moved around. Then when I went into the bedroom I realized they had to remove the drawers from my dresser to move it, which means they saw the World's Largest Bra Collection. I know this because they reversed the order of the drawers and put the bras at the bottom and the pajamas at the top (see "men," "sigh," above).

Lazy Blogger's Busy At Work: McSweeny's

WARNINGS I'VE TRIED TO SNEAK INTO THE FINE PRINT AT THE BOTTOM OF YOUR TV SCREEN.

BY DAN KENNEDY

- - - -

Professional stunt person. Do not attempt on your own. Always wear proper safety gear when riding any motorcycle. Getting back to the so-called professional stunt person at hand: He's good, but he's not that good. Fact is, he had been out of work for a while and was willing to come down a bit in his fee, which worked for us because we had to adhere to a very small, very restrictive budget to shoot and produce this advertisement. But seriously, I'm telling you, he showed up on the set smelling of Irish coffee and cigarettes and was clearly dealing with recent heartbreak. But damned if he didn't nail this on the first take. Which, I guess, if you think about it, is the definition of the consummate professional.

- - - -

Results may vary from market to market. All investments carry some degree of risk and should be discussed with a qualified financial professional. For instance: I, the copywriter for this commercial, was a multimillionaire for all of about nine months before finding out venture capitalists were running scared from tech companies, the market was tanking, and I was in the hole to the tune of eight hundred grand. I drank alone for a month before even thinking about taking a shower, and that's all I have to say about the year 2000.

- - - -

Professional driver on closed course. Which, yes, is to say that you should not attempt this on your own, but I'll tell you what: If I were you, and I were behind the wheel of a BMW 745 with even three car lengths of open road ahead of me, I'd push it a little bit, you know what I mean? What's the sense of having this thing if you're not going to feel it? Now, you put me in that same car on Highway 1 between Stinson Beach and Point Reyes, like this stuff we're showing you here? And I've got a goddamn helicopter tracking me, some director hanging out the side door with a movie camera stuffed with 35-millimeter film catching every turn at a dramatic, overcranked, heart-wrenching 48 frames a second, and the color's going to get saturated to the point of ecstasy in postproduction? Hell yes, I'm going to attempt something. Count on it, man. A professional driver I am not. But you will see some driving, my friend.

So I'm all moved into my new apartment and although there are some issues with it, I can definitely say that I will die there. That's because I'm Never Moving Again. The entire process lasted eight hours, cost almost a thousand dollars, and used up every last ounce of my mental and physical energy.

The movers were supposed to arrive around 8:30 but didn't show up until 11:10, for reasons that were never entirely clear to me. Since it took damn near four hours to load the truck (caveat: this is entirely my fault for having too much stuff) it was about 3:00 by the time we were ready to leave Campbell for Santa Cruz. This means peak traffic on Highway 17, so it took almost 2 hours for the truck to get to my new place. And of course since you get billed for double drive time, this meant I was billed over 3 hours of drive time alone. What does this add up to? A severe crisis in the financial budget. I'll have to go on a shoe-buying diet.

When the movers eventually showed up in the morning I almost had a heart attack. I expected a couple of burly guys, and these kids looked like they weren't even out of high school. My mother has a bit of a soft spot for young people she perceives to have grown up without the opportunity for education that she thinks they should have had. She believes that a thorough exposure to Victorian literature will turn the most taciturn gangsta into an erudite intellectual. She did her best to be Annie Sullivan to their Helen Keller and questioned them closely about when they would go back to school and what their favorite subjects were ("Uh, lunch, I guess..."). If they had been black, I think she would have tried to take them home with her. She wanted to mentor, I wanted to move.

Mummy dearest was terrified that the movers were working too hard and tried to keep up by bringing down at least as many heavy boxes as they did. As her face got redder, and she got sweatier and out of breath, I tried to convince her to slow down. She's 65, has dangerously high cholesterol which she refuses to take any medication for, and an extremely stressful job. Take all these factors, add a move from a third-floor apartment on a hot day, and you're looking at a heart attack waiting to happen. I kept telling her to take a break, sit down, stay cool, but she kept pleading with me, "They're working so hard!" she'd say, gesturing to her proteges. "Yes," I'd point out, "They're supposed to be. I'm paying them." Later, I discovered that they were making $8 and $11 per hour, although I was paying the moving company $90 per hour for their labor alone. After that, even I was willing to cut them a little slack. I brought some lunch back to the apartment with me and kept them well hydrated. I guess the fact that they didn't have the foresight to bring water with them can be chalked up to a lack of Dickens.

Moving also reminded me about why I miss having a boyfriend. When you are moving all your belongings it's really good to be able to have someone to help you through it, who can tell you everything going to be ok, and hold your hair when you throw up from the sheer anxiety of it all.

What really blew my mind was thinking about CLA and her partner having their entire house remodeled while they had a 4 year old and another on the way. The thing about being pregnant while doing home repairs is you can't take Valium. At least I could rely on pharmaceuticals to get me through the stress.

Hey, someone who had a worse weekend than me!

The Big Move is tomorrow and my insides are in a tizzy. what if my color-coded labesl fall off? What if a glass breaks? What if my mother opens the wrong box and finds sex toys?

Bacon is pure poetry

As promised, JNC's Bacon Haiku:

Bacon is yummy
I like it with eggs and toast
My arteries clog

Every time I read The Sartorialist, I am ashamed of how I dress and that I don’t live in Manhattan. But if I lived in Manhattan I wouldn’t be able to reach even the lowest level of style glory. At least here in the Bay Area the bar is set nice and low.

Super, thanks for asking!

A good time was had by all, gay and straight, in SF this weekend.

The Pride Parade was much enhanced by the appearance of SF Mayor Gavin Newsom, who looked fabulous in a block t-shirt, jeans and sunglasses. And the hair? His unfortunate hair gel addiction can be broken with the love and support of a good woman. A good redhead lawyer, for example.



Thanks to the strong Bloody Mary I was served at JNC’s friends’ house, I don’t recall too much else of the parade. I was too busy eating my body weight in bacon. Hopefully we offset the effects somewhat by walking from the BART station at 24th and Mission all the way up past Castro to Fountain street. Less than one and a half miles, but it was all uphill, which has got to mean we get some bacon credit. JNC promised a bacon haiku but I haven't seen it yet.

After devouring most of the brunch spread, we tromped back down the hill to meet FML at the Civic Center. JNC was contemplating a temporary tattoo but I made her abandon her place in line so we could go meet FML. I was in severe FML deprivation, and he needed to be liberated a wanna-be fag hag who was just not up to snuff.

The Redhead's Big Gay Weekend

It's off to the races this weekend. The gay races, that is. Spending the last three summers in school meant I was always too busy to spend a day at SF Pride. Now that I'm done there's no way I'm missing SF's best party of the year.

I'll be JNC's "plus one" at brunch at her friend's place near the Castro where we'll watch the Pride Parade on tv. It's best to have cute girls like us locked up when the Dykes on Bikes kick off the parade. Once the parade is over we'll be off to flout the open container laws and generally cause havoc. Hopefully we'll meet up with FML for hijinks. FML is my favorite daytime drinking buddy, and the way he says "cocktail" send shivers up my spine, even if he is a Republican.

I like going to gay events with JNC because it avoids any awkardness if hit on by another woman. God forbid I should actually have to explain, "You gays throw a great party, but I actually like boys..." It's a lot easier to travel with JNC and since we grump at each other like an old couple and don't really observe personal space restrictions, we easily pass as bi-racial Sapphic twins.

Emotional Barometer

My state of mind is easy to guage based on what's on my current playlist. I realized earlier this week that there was an alarming presence of Kelly Clarkson and Nickelback in the rotation. Taking the "cheese" factor to the redline made me accept that I'm still recovering from TB's departure in April. I thought by the end of June I'd be back to my usual self, more chipper than bitter, but it's taking longer than I expected. I still feel like my heart has been in a barfight. A real barfight - like a Texas motorcycle gang barfight, not a couple of San Francisco metrosexuals shoving each other outside a vodka infusion lounge.

I'm not sure how you speed up the "moving on" process. I think guys do this by having lots of cheap, meaningless sex, which sounds about as unappealing to me as taking a Southern Baptist to the SF Pride Festival. My poor little broken heart just needs more time to heal. And a lot more Mary J Blige.

Good news from Oodles, who was accepted into the Teaching Credential program at SF State. Oodles likes to play her cards close to her chest, so there have been many occasions when I haven't seen her in a few months and she's made huge, life-altering decisions that leave me and the rest to the Ya Ya's reeling. I'm glad she has a blog or I'd be even more out of the loop!

Thanks to budget cuts, she is losing her job in public health, but she has chosen to turn this into an opportunity to follow a dream into reality. If only we could all be so brave!

After watching (yes, I admit it!) Anderson Cooper's super-special Angelina Jolie interview, I want to quit my job and go work in African refugee camps. Preferably with Angelina. Well, ok I want to BE Angelina... alright, fine, I want to be Lara Croft. Anyway, aside from my loosening grip on reality and her fabulous legs, celebrities taking on "causes" always seems kind of ridiculous to me. The Jessica Simpson in Africa debacle was so cringe-worthy I couldn't un-hunch my shoulders for a week. But I have to give Angelina some props for using her celebrity to try to make a difference. I don't think the average People reader was quite prepared for the horrific stories and footage. She's using her celebrity to try to make a difference, and I have to say I admire her for trying to make a difference.

Now, if she was going to be a teach an elementary bilingual class, I'd be really impressed. But not everyone can be as cool as Oodles. Not even Angelina Jolie!

When older means more competitive...

When I first started running, I was surprised that the fastest age groups are not the youngest. For most of the recreational runs that I do, the results are far more competitive in the 30-39 and 40-49 age groups than in the 29-and under groups. Theory swapping has led to a couple explanations:

When you're in your twenties, you are more likely to be spending Saturday morning in bed with a pounding hangover than pounding the pavement.

The competitive runners in the under-20 group are competing in high school and college competitions, and not blowing all their energy on small-town road races.

Most runners didn’t get the bug until they were already in their late twenties. I chalk this up to the fact that graduate from college and you start sitting on your butt for eight hours a day right around same time that your metabolism goes to shit. By the time you really learn to love it, you’re pushing 30.

I’m making the most of it while I’m still in the relatively slower group. Next year I’ll have to move into the big leagues – women 30-39!

"It's fucking fantastic to be a woman..."

by Opinionistas

"I’m at a table crowded with frozen margaritas and half-devoured fish tacos, and I’m relishing the perfect weather plus the company of two amazing women. We’re perched on stools, dangling our sandals from our toes as we toast new jobs, accomplishments, boundless futures. After a few minutes, we fall into the smooth banter of those who know they can speak openly, liberated from the confines of peer judgment.

Suddenly it hits me: in this moment, this place, this pinprick in the human timeline, it is fucking fantastic to be a woman. The three of us discuss switching careers, moving to new continents and constructing our lives in concrete terms, never considering that we might not have the freedom or abilities to consummate our plans. The notion of being excluded from schools, organizations or companies because we’re female doesn’t enter our consciousness. Our choices for an autonomous future are just that: our choices. We romped freely through adolescence and our early twenties, and now sit back and laugh at past pitfalls and mistakes with no fear of scarring reputations or curbing options. We harbor aspirations and goals with no concept of limits or walls, carving out identities without heed to convention or social mores. Our personalities run rampant, never crammed into boxes or forced to embody male fantasies or antiquated visions of “femininity.” Without trying, we convey the poise that accompanies self-assurance gained from life experience. We can laugh at the world’s puerile assholes knowing they’ll squirm through life as barely a blip on the cosmic radar. We love men as companions and equals, not saviors, tormentors or patriarchal substitutes. We sob, scream, cackle, grin and giggle on the street with abandon, achieving full self-expression whenever and however we choose.

Sipping my margarita, I realize that here, now, we have everything we need to create extraordinary lives brimming with possibility, all handed to us wrapped in silver ribbon. To the women who endured the past and fought limitless inequity, dedicating entire generations to social transformation so that women my age could step into a world of immeasurable opportunities: Thank you."

Father’s Day

Father's Day is always kind of a strange day for me. Growing up, my dad was not really in the picture. He'd call on my birthday, and on Christmas I'd get a card with a hundred-dollar bill in it. Apart from that he was more like a benevolent uncle who occasionally and unexpectedly drops by and takes you out for ice cream.

My mother expected to be feted on both Mother's Day and Father's Day. She was doing twice the work, so she thought it was only fair that she got twice the recognition. The Friday before Father's Day, I'd bring whatever home cards and misshapen ashtrays (the last generation of kids who made ashtrays) that we'd made in school. She'd sniff at them and ask if I'd made anything for her. She didn't want me to hate my father, she was just desperate for recognition of how hard it was. I'm not unsympathetic to her struggle to raise a child alone, but there really is no replacement for a father. No matter how good a parent you are, you can never fill that gap. I now recognize how my own behavior reflects my efforts to try to fill it myself; with older boyfriends, with my need for security.

Of course, my experience was hardly isolated. There are almost ten million households with single mothers, a statistic which has remained pretty much constant for the past ten years (Press Release cb98-228.html, U.S. Census Bureau, www.census.gov, April 29, 1999). Many of my friends were in similar positions, and we all had a sense of awkward loss, almost shame, about our fathers.

I spoke to a friend of mine Sunday morning as he was on his way to go fishing with his dad. He was reluctant, he felt a lot of pressure around his father and there were other things he'd rather be doing. My first instinct was to chastise him, to tell him he was lucky to have his father to spend the day with, an oblique and self-serving reference to my dead father. But I paused, and realized how unfair that would be. It's unreasonable to undermine the difficulties that he's had with his father by saying, "At least you have one." The absence of a father is no less difficult than a painful relationship with one who was around. I can't imagine the tortured experiences that someone who was abused by a parent would go through. It is a lot easier to damage your kids by being a bad parent when they are growing up than the damage done by mere absence. My friend's dad isn't a cruel man, but they have a troubled realtionship. Father's Day isn't easy for him, either.

When my dad died, the absence of a parent was suddenly legitimized. I no longer had the lingering shame of awkwardly trying to explain where daddy was. Looks of pity were replaced with a respectful sympathy, which I stoically accepted. I excelled at the graceful acnkowledgment of my loss, a different loss than the absent parent, the one I had never learned to deal with. It pains me that in his death I found the excuse I had always been looking for. His death meant I no long had to explain his absence, or even explain that there had been an absence. I relied on his death to legitimize my upbringing because it is no long obvious that it was with only one parent. As time passes, the sense of loss I feel on Father's Day has lessened. My friends have become fathers and mothers, and I see them in an entirely new light. As we've grown up, I've realized that none of us have it easy, and hdozen a father present doesn't mean that you have a Hallmark Father's Day. I guess family relationships aren't easy for any of us.