Understanding Words

Rube talked about her virginity, and now I have to talk about mine because my comment was too long and it turned into a story. Heart you, Rubes.

Being comfortable with my virginity was like living on Saturn, surviving off iced salt and chaos rings. I wore it like a cloak of shame and self-disgust. When everyone was sharing dashing stories about sex, I would darkly withdraw. Because I was not a virgin by choice, I was virgin because I was not sexy, and I'd been told so I knew it was true.

Some people would say, "oh, but you had the chance, of course, and you weren't ready." And I would clarify, "No. No one has ever shown any interest. Believe me. I'm not stupid." They would insist I was wrong and offer ignorant and careful consolations, like "well, you know, I was thinking about trying this new kind of make up, maybe it will help you feel more confident about yourself, you should just relax, sometimes you can be a little stubborn and some women find that men like them better when they listen," which is just a betrayal, justifying my previous belief that they were liars who didn't have the guts to tell me I was plainly unlovable to my fucking face. Besides, telling someone like me to "listen" and "relax" has the same effect as shoving your hand in a fire.

I would angrily point it out and they would deny it three times, but I understand words better than most people and have little respect for both magazine rehash disguised as advice and subtle implications between friends. It's goddamn insulting.

I would prefer to hear, "Well, looks are important. They're the first thing someone sees. You dress down on purpose, you don't exercise, and you assume everyone you talk with has the same knowledge as you, which is goddamn frustrating. Either stop bitching or change something." It's such a relief when someone speaks without that deceptive mind-crap.

I chose 'stop bitching.' Why? Because I wanted to know. I wanted to know if someone could really, truly be attracted to me as I am, no masks or games. This is me, in all of my angry, whiplash, anchored, beer-fueled glory, and I am loud, sometimes cruel, and protective to a fault. And your joke was not funny but I like the effort. We'll work on that. Let me tell you a tragedy:

Once upon a time there was a stone who loved the wind, but she loathed how it teased her.

It's horribly sad, isn't it? Poor immovable stone.

...

So a friend got very, I mean, embarrassingly, nay! obscenely drunk this weekend and confessed she and her husband had mutual crushes on me and every time they thought I would join them for a threesome I would go home or fall asleep and they would go to bed unfulfilled. She thanked me for always being gracious about denying their advances, and never getting awkward or uncomfortably judging.

I had no fucking idea what she was talking about.

No fucking idea.

She gave me instances of nights I fully remembered, and they were fun drunken conversations between friends, and how the fuck was I completely unaware they were underlined with subtle, insidious flirting? Granted, I would never have done it because the thought of being in a threesome makes me uncomfortable, terrified, and cold, but shit. I am not, nor have I ever been, polyamorous. I am way too selfish.

I've been edgy and nervous ever since, trying to cycle back through so many conversations I've had with guys and wondering if they were actually interested and I'm just completely illiterate in the language of pre-doin'-it. Oh my god, what if I'm a sociopath. I have an inability to read facial cues. Shit. Fuck damn. What about Donny? What about Ben? What about all of those guys I dismissed as friends when chances are I was unknowingly letting them down easy?

I have so many phone calls to make, which I never will. "Joe? Hey, it's Rassles. Yeah. Hi. So remember that night we met and we stayed up watching cartoons, and you told me I should have more faith in guys and they all weren't judging bastards and I laughed at your face? Yeah? Were you trying get some? Did we stop hanging because I wouldn't put out?"

...

"Well, Rass, honey," Savannah explains, "That's because you're naive."

"I am not naive. They rarely rarely rarely try anything with me. None of my male friends has ever tried to sleep with me." I finish off my beer, slam the glass on the table and stare at it, or behind it. There is a hole in the table.

"See, that's because...this is what I'm saying: You're naive."

"I don't follow your logic. I need another beer."

"They always, always, always want to sleep with you. Everyone wants to sleep with you. Always. All the time. Own it. Look everyone in the eyes and let them know that you know that they want to fuck you. Rum and coke," Savannah grins at the server walking by, who smiles back.

I laugh and turn my head to the server. "Ha! Kai getta High Life, please?" she nods and smiles at Savannah before heading back to the bar. "And then they say, 'what is wrong with you? Stop looking at me like that.' I know. It's happened before."

"In like junior high."

"Left an impression."

"You cannot judge how men see you based off of a conversation you had when you were twelve."

"Yes I can. I need more male friends."

"What does that...? Shut up. Half of your friends are dudes."

"Yes, and most of them are married and none have tried to make sex with me. I should have a pride of dudes at my disposal, if so many dudes want it. A fucking pride."

"Okay, no one wants to 'make sex' with you. Now you're not naive, you're just a dork."

...

I am not good with subtle implications, and I understand words worse than most people. Oh, you wonder about the man who will eventually break my stupidity?

Let me tell you a satire.

Once upon a time there was a stone who loved the wind, and she never realized its teasing, faint caress was a return of affection rather than friendly, belittling mockery.

...

Mama Pop

Boundaries...My moms ain't got them.

That is what I am discovering in therapy, well, one of the big things. And of course, figuring out how to set my own since I was not raised around them. Awesome fun I tell you, paying a near stranger $120 an hour to tell you that you need to not let your mother run her emotional battlement tank all over you. Sometimes the obvious isn't obvious to everyone(ie. me). Though it is helping and I am learning all sorts of fun techniques to move me forward and help me stop my brain from taking a kernel of anger and turning it into an three-day rumination on why my mom sucks(that list is a post in itself)when I should be sleeping.

In fact I have come up with my own mental device to disengage when I start fixating on thoughts about her. I picture her face stretched across a balloon, and then I take a long sharp needle, all glinty and menacing looking, and I pop her. It's just violent enough to satisfy me in some small way but kind of funny and shuts off the train of thought. Anyhow, a story...

I was a virgin until I was twenty-one. I wasn't the girl with the perfect, bouncy blonde ponytail with my 10-carat gold chastity ring and pristine white-knee highs. I was what is now called goth but then was just theatre chick, smoking, swearing, furiously masturbating, curious, slutty, kiss a new boy at a different party every weekend kind of girl. I was the girl who found the Joy of Sex book on our bookshelf at ten and then secreted it away for me to peruse at my leisure. I would sit on the concrete curbs of my street, far enough away from the windows and ears of our parents and I would entertain and educate my friends with descriptions of things like premature ejaculation and cunnilingus.

I made the choice early on not to have sex in high school for a handful of well-reasoned reasons. First, because I had moved schools after my first year of high school, the group of friends I landed with were mostly a year ahead of me. They did everything first from driving to fucking. I saw my best friends get their seventeen year old hearts broken in the wake of teenage intercourse. What do you mean you are breaking up with me, I thought we were going to be together forever kind of stuff. Second, my mom had birthed me at the tender age of seventeen and I saw that this was not in fact the easy path so many needy teenagers seem to imagine it is. I was resolute not to put myself even remotely near to the path of teenage motherhood. Third, I was keenly interested in sex and boys but I had enough information to understand that a sixteen or seventeen year old boy was unlikely to have the know how to make sex nice for me. So I decided pretty early on that I would save myself for college and a smarter set of boys or maybe even later. Until then I could play the ballgame to third base with no regret.

Being a kids who was, in hindsight, remarkable comfortable with certain parts of herself, I was not secretive about my decision not to have sex. I didn't wear it like a badge of superiority or some pledge to my future self, I was just open and comfortable with not being ready. My mother, probably in some part shamed by her Catholic upbringing and own unwed pregnancy, took my virginity as a sign of her successful parenting and my obvious(to her) virtue. It also became, sadly, a selling point.

Thankfully she waited until I was a freshman in college to dangle me in front of guys like a shiny new piece of unkinked tinsel. My mom met most of these would-be suitors at a dive bar a block from our house that she frequented after an arrest and DUI made it more important for a short drive home after a night of knocking them back.

"He was real nice and I gave him your number."

"You what?" I said.

"I said I gave him your number," she repeated through a mouthful of lasagna she had brought home with her, lasagna I was pretty sure she was going to be throwing up in an hour or so.

"Eew, why would I want to date some guy hanging out drinking at that shithole?"

"He was really nice, I showed him your picture, played pool with him."

"Even better." I said, sorry that my sarcasm didn't register with her when she was loaded.

"I told him you were in college and that you were, you know, you were a virgin."

This is when I would usually walk out of the room, afraid I was going to punch her in the face. How about blonde? How about interested in law or likes to read or has a cat or swims real fast or sings pretty or wants to learn how to drive stick or likes movies or listens to Peter Gabriel or anything besides whether some guy had poked my hymen like a hungry chimp shoving a stick into a busy ant hole.

I never, ever invited my mom in any way to find me a boyfriend or was ever remotely receptive to her thinly veiled attempts to pimp me out to some guy sharing the stool next to her. What did she get out of this, attention? The idea of dating some stooge my mom liked through a really solid pair of rum and coke goggles was revolting. That my mom would even say this or do this was proof to me that she didn't understand me at all. She didn't understand that I hated that she drank. She didn't understand that I would never regard her or an idea openly or warmly when she was drunk, that it would never be funny or silly or anything other than sad for me. She didn't understand that bringing one gross, inappropriate man into our house had been one more than I had ever needed. She didn't understand that although I hadn't had sex, I would never be with anyone who thought it was important that his girlfriend or wife be a virgin. These were not guys that had saved themselves for marriage, these were guys that made judgments about women and probably wanted a virgin so she wouldn't know how hard they sucked in the sack. My mom didn't understand that being a virgin wasn't part of my identity, it was just a choice and mostly a choice born out of not wanting to be like her.

These are the thoughts that keep me up at night. These are the memories(and they seem infinite) that make me so angry that I think I will crack my teeth from clenching my jaw. These are the reasons it took me almost fifteen, adult years to figure out how to trust and love someone, certain that they would not hurt me in ways that would make me lose all faith in them. These are things I think of that make me think of my own daughters that then make me furiously add up all the ways I am not like her until I can see it like a hand in front of my face. These are the things that clog my brain at two in the morning until I remember my balloon trick and that imaginary menacing needle.

Never In a Million Years Am I Buying You That

I got an evite to a bridal shower yesterday. I hate showers and will do most anything to get out of going to one, but I pretty much have to show up at this one. I'll feel guilty if I don't, because I'm guessing that the turnout will be fairly low.

I know that customs have changed since I got married 30 years ago, but I have to say that I think a lot of them have changed for the worst.

The young woman in question is registered at Kohl's, a low-end department store. Whatever--it's her wedding.

I went online to check out her stuff.

An oven mitt for $6

A potholder for $4

A Fiesta Gusto Bowl for$10.99 What the fuck is a Gusto Bowl?

There was a paper towel holder and two wooden spoons.

Jesus palomino--this is the one time in your life you get to ask rich older people to buy you shit and you ask for a fucking $5 wooden spoon?

I don't get it.

No crystal. No silver. No nice pottery. No china. Not even a candlestick holder.

I understand that you might not want all the fancy stuff, but at least aim a little higher that a wooden spoon. I mean are you going to spend your life eating off of Chinet with plastic forks?

Yes, I know. I am an old-fashioned snob.

But I can set a helluva table.

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.