Big Boobs v. Blow Jobs: Commodities or Community Chest?

I have a friend.  She is a good friend, a good person - too good in her own fucked up way. When I first arrived in Wisconsin seeking the advice of anyone who would talk to me about the job market I was presuming to conquer, her name consistently came up as "someone I should talk to". When I had finally secured not one, but two job offers, I called her for advice.  It was a cold call; a blind, cold call.  No, it was a blindsiding phone call to someone who refused to divulge any market secrets to some hick chick from Oklahoma.  But I didn't judge, for we all know how to answer those calls; professional decorum and litigation friendly employment laws limit honesty and gag reality like a blow job gone bad. 

I accepted a job offer and one year later told the Norwegian tyrant with the red face/veins bulging from his neck to fuck off when he asked me to compromise my business ethics. Three days later I was hired to work side by side with the aforementioned friend, where I have stayed happily employed for the past ten years.

I have bonded with this woman, with her children, with her family and friends.  I have met her boyfriend, discovered he was cheating, hinted to her that he may be cheating, took pictures and developed photographs of him cheating, outright told her he was cheating,  called the woman he cheats with to see if she was out of town at the same time he was and sadly, most pathetically, stood toe to toe with this disgusting man threatening to expose him while he laughed hysterically, hugged me and gave me an extra special kiss on my cheek for being the innocent, naive schmuck I was.

Now this post is getting harder to write. I am chewing my fingernails, which is not a habit but they are fucking lame nails, not really worth saving; nonetheless, they are vanishing with my angst.  I just spotted a sliver of a nail between the H & J on my keyboard.  And I am much too exhausted to give this next bit of info any kind of  fluffy, literary treatment so I am surrendering to the bullet points.  May they rest in peace along with my fingernails.

• This gorgeous woman that I love dearly has a sugar daddy.
• He buys her lots of jewelry, pays her bills and enjoys her blow jobs until....
• Younger woman comes along with big boobs
• He promises my girl a life with BMW's, bank accounts and boob jobs of her own, he tells me she saved his life, she is literally the force that kept him alive through his divorce (see a pattern here?)
• She has no car, no money and boobies that belong rightfully to a woman of her age. They are beautiful and sexy as hell but shit sags after 50. However, he did pay for her lipo and tummy tuck a few years back.
• He still enjoys the blow jobs - and he speaks of them with his friends who are in our industry. 
• But who am I to fucking judge?
• I hate this mother fucker.
• He bailed her out of debt within the last two years by securing a loan for her. It was big debt, but she is paying it back. The stipulation was - no more spending, no more debt.
• She has now fallen behind and charged the credit cards back up at a rate exponential to her grief.
• She is hiding the new debt from him, still giving great blow jobs and still, I am quite certain, one of his greatest commodities while also simultaneously hanging on to the community chest.

Back to life, back to the new year, my friend who manages to always maintain a sunny disposition, comes to me and proposes we start a blog together.  My blog has been somewhat (in her terms) successful. We need to start our own blog, tell OUR stories and gain sympathies so people will just GIVE us money. 

But why would people give us money?

Well, you know how you always hear of rags to riches stories, someone gets tipped $10,000 - why not us?  You are struggling to make ends meet, raising your kids, daddy is gone - people will want to help us.

And it was then I realized I am not a commodity or a community chest.  I have big (yet saggy) boobs and I can give a helluva blow job but I earned my self respect through years of fucking up.  The thought of money is not enough at the age of 47 to rock me off my Gibraltar. 

So I said in the most loving, girlfriend kind of way - sweetie, I am not comfortable with that.  But if you would like me to sit down and look at your financial situation, you know I am always available.

Today, we had lunch and I gave her a good Suze Orman smack down. "Sell all of that expensive jewelry and clothing, stop paying $200 per month for your smokes, write down everything you spend and take a good hard look at what you can cut".

She said she is currently in the hole and must charge groceries, gas and utilities each month just to get by. She wants her current sugar daddy or someone else to come along and bale her out but I told her a woman with a nice home, great car, expensive jewelry and wardrobe would probably not qualify as a charity.  Are you still getting your hair done every three weeks for over $150.00?  Are you still supporting your children who are of working age, able to take care of themselves? And are you fucking kidding me that you will spend $200.00 per month on cheap cigars that will end up costing you ten times that amount with credit card interest?

She said she can't give up the cigars because she is working on the shopping and alcohol addictions first.  Plus, the asshole bought all of her jewelry so she can't sell it as long as she is with him.  (Just go ahead and infer what I was thinking here.)

I have always been after her to stop smoking but in an ironic twist, I became more concerned with her financial health than her physical health when I weighed out which would kill her first. Yes, I want you to live to see your grandchildren grow up but for the sake of all that is holy, set a fucking goal and put down those nasty ass cigars. Then I remembered I cannot change her, help her, or even inspire the tiniest flicker of hope in her mind unless she is ready.  And clearly she is not.

Now here's the rub. She is happy; carrying a perpetual smile. Always thinking on the sunny side of life, hugging me from behind unexpectedly and loving me with a gleam in her eye that is the real deal. She sees me as a negative Nelly who tells her the ugly truth but she loves me in a way that few are loved.

On the other hand, I struggle.  I want my kids to have everything they were used to before their dad went away.  I would love to take vacations, and pay for swim lessons and camping trips and the latest fashions but we have to be conservative in order to survive. (For those that are catching up, it's not because I'm missing a child support payment, it's because he owes me for his half of joint expenses to the tune of $16,000 then denied any responsibility for his share of their expenses while he serves his prison term, leaving me to cover all costs for the next two and a half years.)

Who wins, who loses and who looks down and realizes they have no fingernails left at all?

That would be me.

Ruby Blueday

Fuck me.

Ok, I know this is brain dumping on you all but I am walking around in a constant state of nausea and anxiety and need a little support from someone and most of the women I am close with are related to me and I don't want to involve them in the shit between my mom and I.

I already wrote about the tensions at Christmas and that that was just a breaking point and not really the issue. I went back to my old therapist because I wasn't coping well with the tension between my mom and I and I wanted help working through our conflicts without further damaging our relationship. I also want to get to the point where I can appreciate the good things about her and accept the other stuff. Therapy has been helping tremendously. My therapist is helping me work through some past anger that colors the way I deal with her now, helping me set boundaries to protect myself but in a way that isn't defensive or inflammatory to my mother. So mom and I have a conversation about a cousin's wedding happening this summer and I ask her how important is it that we come then versus later in the summer. The wedding falls on Jul4 weekend and travel sucks as well as everyone is very busy when we visit and it's hard to make plans, the last few years we have come a few weeks before or a few after. Anyhow, I told my mom that if it was very important to her, we would find a way to get there on that particular weekend but that if it wasn't, I had more flexibility to plan our travel around some of the kids summer stuff etc., just to let me know and I'll figure it out. We had at one time talked about the possibility of her taking the kids and extra week or two and then flying with them home. Because she and I have not been getting along at all, the idea of having to deal with her more negotiating the kids stuff etc. was too overwhelming and huz and I decided maybe next year but this year we were going to visit, get and get out, short and sweet before anyone got riled up. Rather than be honest with her and say I'm upset with you and don't want to try to do a back and forth with you with the kids because it's too stressfull and right now I don't trust you, I told my mom that we decided with all the kids different summer programs, this years it wasn't going to work--hoping to spare her feelings and my sanity.

Anyhow, my mom sends me a, uhm, pretty awful letter. I don't think she liked the itty teeny boundary I set.(And by the way, I was awesome calm and neutral on the phone with her, I was concilatory and did a very good job at comminicating all this in a friendly tone, no barbs, no hostility, no defensiveness). I would love to post the whole letter here but I would have to change too many details to make it ungoogleable and I certainly don't want her coming here.

The letter is basically,
-You have disdain for me.
-I refuse to let you mistreat me
-I don't know why this is happening
-I am telling you upfront(her words)I am unwilling to revisit my past transgressions as a mother
-no one likes everything their parents do, I'm sure your children wont either(hey mom thanks for the vote of confidence)
-Here is everything I am mad at you about(like not doing our dishes the last night we staye d at her house-uh mom, our problems run wayyyyyyy fucking deeper than that) and how you suck(1/3 of it is totally true, 1/3 of it is somewhat true but wildly twisted rememberings and perceptions, and 1/3 of it is total nonsense)
-My only mistake is not telling you how much you suck sooner.
-Great I feel better now we can move forward, except that I won't talk about the past and by the way all these other people think I am right.

My take on it is this. I am definately part of the problem in our current situation. I go into conversations with her ready for a fight or to be hurt. I am sensitive to the things she says. I am sometime unappreciatove of the things she does because of either the spirit in which they are done or feeling angry that a check doesn't make up for the other neglect. I understand that I have a part in the conflict we are in. But her drinking, my molesting stepfather and other things are part of that dynamic. In her letter she took zero responsibility for our current situation, seriously, nothing. There was no verbiage of reconciliation, yeas at the end she was all I hope we can move forward, blah, blah, blah but really, no. It's like me beating the shit out of my husband, telling him he's the problem and then saying oh babe I hope we can patch things up, if you stop sucking.

So I am left feeling attacked and really disappointed because the immaturity of her response and her total refusal to allow me to talk about things I am upset about and her unwillingness to own her part in this is making me feel like maybe this relationship is unsalvagable.

Help. I just don't know how to process this.

Know When to Hold 'Em

Did I ever tell you about time time my mother and I were going through major life changes at the same time?
My dad was so stupid then. He would say things like, "This house isn't big enough for two women!" and laugh as he walked away.
Mom = Menopause. Me = Puberty and the onset of drug addiction.
We battled.
Fuckin' bitch.
I fuckin' hate you.
Punching.
Kicking.
Hair pulling.
Scratching.
Wrestling in the back hall until we both cried.

The day after wrestling in the back hall my right arm was filled with one bruise after the other from shoulder to elbow. When my mom saw it she cried. She wept out her guilt and shame and called herself a failed mother. A disgrace.

"I don't care, I'm fine," I said.

She cried so hard in the kitchen that she doubled over and almost bonked her head on the counter. I got her into a half-hug and moved her away from the counter. Into the middle of the room. Where she wouldn't hurt herself.

She mistook it for a hug. Some sort of connection. She tried to grab onto me, pull at my shirt, wrap her arms around my waist, my neck, grab my shoulders and not let go.

I squirmed quickly away and mumbled something about 'I'm fine' or 'stop it' as I left the kitchen and went to my bedroom.

I dug a shoe box out of the top of my closet to resume removing seeds from a massive and hairy bud of marijuana that I planned to shove bits of into my bong over and over until it was gone. And then I would use a toothpick to carefully gather the resin it left behind and smoke it as well.

About 20 minutes into the seed picking my dad opened my bedroom door. There I sat on the floor with my legs spread and the shoebox full of pot in between them along with a small bowl for the seeds I was picking from it.

"Your mom's a wreck," he said.
"Yeah?" I said, only bothering to look up to get a handle on any sign that he recognized the fact that his 14-year-old daughter was cleaning up a pile of marijuana in his house.
Nothing.
"What happened?" he asked.
"Nothing," I said.
"She said she hurt your arm."
"It's no big deal."
"Let me see it," he said, leaning into the room a bit further.

I held up my arm and watched as he winced, his lips pulling back slightly so that I could see his teeth.
His eyes searched my face.
I smiled.
He smiled.

"I'll tell her you're ok," he said.
"I am. Yeah."
"OK, kiddo. Good," he said, beginning to back out of the doorway.

And then he opened the door fully and took a full step into my room. He leaned over me where I sat on the floor and took in the shoe box and bowl. Marijuana. Seeds. My hands hovering in the air over both of them, wanting to remain calm.

"Whatcha got going on there?" he asked.
"Some stupid science project that I don't understand," I said, looking him in the face.
"Oh. Ha ha. Well. I guess I wouldn't understand it either. You kids sure do lots of things in school these days that we didn't do in my day. Ha ha."

I gave a little 'ha ha' to go along with his, shook my head and rolled my eyes as if to say, "Whew! School is crazy these days, Pop!"

He turned and went out of the room, closing the door behind him.

My dad eventually figured out what pot was and started mulling around the house finding it in closets, bathroom cabinets and my purse. He started confronting me about it; calling me into his little home office for a 'talk' and then making a dramatic gesture of flipping a baggie full of weed onto his desk or pulling my poorly rolled joints out of the inner pocket of his suit coat.

He drove around town with my one hitters, pipes, rolling papers and bongs in his car. He thought he was doing the right thing by ignoring the fact that my mother and I were beating the crap out of each other on a weekly basis and confiscating all of my drugs and paraphernalia and 'hiding' them in his car.

"Under today's laws you would be arrested for child neglect and drug trafficking!" I once screamed at him years later.
"What the hell are you talking about?" he screamed back.
"Your wife turned me into one giant fuckin' bruise and you knew it!" I screamed. "And instead of talking to me about using drugs you just kept finding my shit and driving around town with it. I wish you would have been arrested. I wish you would have gone to jail for having all of that shit in your car! HA! I wish you would have tried to explain that you were driving around with it so your daughter wouldn't use it. Likely story, dumb ass!"

He became fixated on the fact that I'd called him a dumb ass. That's all the conversation was; an exercise in diversion by focusing on the fact that a daughter shouldn't call her father a dumb ass.

And then it was over.

I like it when conversations like that are over. When it becomes clear there is simply nowhere else to go. When I can just apologize for calling someone a dumb ass and go on. I mean, hell, there are a million people I can talk to about fighting with my mother when I was a teenager and my past drug use. Why try to force him to do it?

What's the big deal? When did I become so attached to the idea that an issue cannot be truly resolved unless all parties involved are discussing it on what I've defined as a 'deep' level?
Why?

My parents came to my house this past Thanksgiving. I had seem my mom once in the past three years, and my dad not at all. We ate, talked, laughed, visited our horses. My dad told funny stories to members of my husband's family that he had never met. My mom helped in the kitchen and hugged me close.

I loved it. I liked looking at my dad's face, still cherubic in his mid-70's. I admired my mother's style and intelligence as he flitted about and heaped motherly bragging on everyone in attendance about how much she loves our house and my cooking.

All day that day I kept humming that old Kenny Rogers song about gambling.
"You gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away, know when to run..."

I kept thinking I had finally just decided to hold 'em. That I had worn myself out with years of folding and walking or running away. And, though I'm sure some poker aficionado might tell me continuing to hold a bad hand is unwise, I can't say I'm regretting it at this point.

At this point I think the best idea is to invite them to my house again. To hold 'em. To talk with them and, if I feel a need to walk or run away, ask them to go with me.

A Secret Little Space

Hi, I am Grumblebum and I am new around these particular parts. I am humbled to be included here and I do hope you enjoy my first offering......

‘Oh no,’ they said, ‘don’t tell your husband. He has no need to know. It didn’t mean anything to you, so why make him feel bad?’ The problem being, it did mean something to me.

One idle Tuesday afternoon, an obviously bored colleague decided to tell me that someone we used to work with had been rather in love with me. ‘Half your luck!’you might think. I would have indeed been flattered if Mr Meddlesome had relayed it as a diverting crush. I would have laughed, blushed and stroked my ego for a while.

But alas, this was a love of epic proportions. The devoted party would get to work early as to arrive before me. He would seek the advice of others in the office as what to do about his terrible predicament. Terrible being that I was about to be married, terrible because he had a gorgeous Nordic girlfriend who he was willing to give up. I held great affection for this young gentleman - as much affection as is appropriate when one is affianced. For me there was no bolt of lightning from the sky. Had I been single? Had he been single? Asked me for coffee? I do suppose I would have said yes. But that is another sliding door.

All of this raging, wailing, rending of shirts and gnashing of teeth was going on while I flitted around all casual and friendly like, being all insufferably me. You know how it can be – all smiles and innocuous flirting, while not having a single clue you are ripping out someone’s intestines with the batter of an eyelash. I often put great stock in my people radar. I am like a bat. Wait – that is sonar. But never you mind, in this case, Oblivious was my middle name. Why didn’t the colleague who loves to play tricks on me, say anything? He was supposedly a confidante of Mr Lovelorn. In two years worth of opportunity, he said not a word and I found that hard to believe. Mr Meddlesome was adamant, ‘oh – it was just too sad, too horrible, he never would have told.’

Wait! Mr Meddlesome has more, if I didn’t feel terrible enough you hussy, you callow Jezebel. Not only did my would-be suitor stop his gym membership so that there would be no chance of bumping into me there, he left our job. I will have you know that our job is a career – it is not something that you flit into like a pollen drunk butterfly. You get in and hang on for grim death. And he left. Not just because of me, granted - but it was a large factor, or so I am told. I do hope I do not sound too dim, nor give you the impression that I believe I am all that and a bag of crisps. I am only of average looks, intelligence and personality. And I do realize that to some this tale is banality of the most inane kind. I didn’t exactly get bent over the photocopier, did I?

There was a large dash of salt to be taken with all of this news because Mr Meddlesome is prone to exaggeration, and this story had not issued forth from the horse’s mouth. And even though I told myself all of this, I was shell shocked. Blind sided. I wished I could have provided the young man with comfort and closure instead of flash my wedded bliss in his face. It did explain to me why he ignores me on a certain social network. I had been miffed, disappointed he thought of ours as a work friendship, rather than something that transcended it.

From the long way around, I return; I felt it a betrayal to not tell my husband. Not so much the letting him know about the undying love of a man who had been to our house bit, but rather the way it unsettled me, made me feel shaken up, anxious and sad; withdrawing into my own head. However, I took the advice of others and sat upon the knowledge. The crawling around in my head space reiterated the idea that you don’t have to share everything with your partner. Often I expect to give and receive and know all in my relationships, but I realized there is a secret life of me – a pocket, a corner that doesn’t need the inspection of others. I always thought as every emotion as being connected to my partner and our love. But in this secret, it was only about me; scary, liberating and maybe a little bit dangerous.