Til Hot Ass do us Part

My friend A works with this guy, Rich. The first time I met Rich, I got a bad feeling about him. This is because A had told me all about Rich, as well as her other co-workers. She also told me about Rich’s wife and young child. So when I walked into the restaurant for her birthday dinner last year and saw Rich’s arm slung casually and familiarly around the back of a chair that contained the woman he brought with him instead of his wife, I started to dislike him. That dislike grew when Rich announced he was too drunk to drive home and that he was going to stay with his cute, blonde, not-wife friend. Rich must have been a real lightweight. His one and a half gin-and-tonics on a full stomach had gotten him so drunk he thought we would believe a crap story like that.
Surprisingly, A did believe him, though (in her defense, she had consumed enough alcohol that night to justify her believing that crap story. She also believed she was fine, right before she passed out on a couch at the lounge we went to after the restaurant). So it came as a surprise to her when, one night, Rich started to put the moves on her.
They were out with co-workers. Rich was, again, sans-wife and his “friend” was out of town on business. So he turned his sights towards A, who had, again, managed to drink enough alcohol to convince herself that Rich was a nice guy with altruistic motives. He told her that, if he wasn’t married, he would definitely try to take her home (isn’t that a nice sentiment in and of itself? “If I wasn’t married, I’d definitely bang you.” Doesn’t it just make you think of roses and hearts and the names of your first children? Note to men: “I’d fuck you” is not a pickup line.)
At the end of the night, Rich decided to drop A and another male co-worker off so they wouldn’t have to walk home. As decorum dictated, Rich dropped A off first. But then….
“He called you back? And asked to stop by?” I was shocked.
“I know. I thought it was odd.”
“It is odd,” I said, mouthful of Eggs Benedict suspended midair in disbelief. “But you know what? He did it on purpose.”
“He didn’t want T to get suspicious.”
“Exactly. If everything was above board, and if he wasn’t trying anything except to see your apartment, he would have either dropped you off last, or he would have asked T to hold on a sec or come up with him to see your new place. The fact that he so blatantly hid the fact that he wanted to come upstairs in itself makes the whole thing not right.”
“That’s exactly what I thought. But I was really drunk. So I didn’t think about it when he called. I just said sure. It was really late.”
“How late?”
“It had to have been at least 3 in the morning.”
“Doesn’t he have a wife and kid?”
“A wife, a kid and one on the way. But wait, it gets worse. While he was there, he came up behind me, put his arms around my waist and pulled me into him.”
“Ewwwww.”
“I know! He just hugged me, he didn’t do anything else, but still. That’s intimate. I wouldn’t do that with my girlfriends. Definitely not my guy friends. So what the hell was that?”
“Um, gross. And wrong. He’s a married man. It’s very, very wrong.”
The story really upset me for a number of reasons. I don’t like Rich at all, and now I was justified, but who the hell wants to be justified like that? He had been rude to my friend. He was being miserable to his wife. And, ultimately, he was being a real shithead to his kid, who would have to bear a lot from the fallout of his clearly doomed marriage.
More that that, though, it made me wonder: Do people’s vows mean anything to them anymore? Has “Til Death do us Part” become “’Til Something Else better comes along”?
These days, it seems like the only people who are taking marriage seriously are gay people, the one demographic who are forbidden by most bass-ackwards states from getting married. There is a actually a show that features the shortest-lived celebrity marriages (Britney Spears is apparently trying to see just how many times she can get on that show. Although, I give her credit. She and the freeloader she married have lasted a lot longer than I expected. A lot longer being 4 months). Just like the word “obey” has been taken out of most traditional vows, so to have the words “til death do us part,” if not literally, then definitely in practice.
I think of the way my great aunt talked about her husband and their marriage and I wonder if it’s possible today. My aunt was so in love with her husband. Did they have a perfect marriage? Of course not. They were dirt-poor and people kept dropping by their house to live. But they worked through all of it. People today don’t seem to have that kind of stamina, as evidenced by a 50% divorce rate and marriages that end after a few years, or a few months. The biggest difference, though, is the attitude going into the marriage. Divorce used to be taboo; now it’s almost expected. And people aren’t thinking long-term as they walk down the aisle. People are getting married the way they should be buying shoes: they may not be practical, but they’re awfully cute, and if you only get a couple of seasons out of them, so what? They’re fun. But when your spouse starts to really be a pain, just try to throw them in the back of your closet and see what happens. You’ll have a divorce lawyer so far down your throat he’ll be up your ass.
I’m not totally innocent in the married-man department. I’ve gone on dates with married men. I’ve also gone on more dates with men I had no idea were married, or had live-in girlfriends, until the end of the night, when they finally fess up. I’ve been hit on numerous times by men who don’t even bother to hide the wedding band. And it all makes me doubt the validity of marriage as an institution. If nobody really believes in it, does the institution of marriage really exist? (If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it….) Commitment should mean something, but these days, it doesn’t. We change jobs, careers, lovers, spouses like we change socks and underwear. When the going gets tough, people tend to cut and run faster than a shirtless redneck on “Cops.” Why, I have no idea. I also don’t have any plan on how to bounce back from this cultural phenomenon. Should we blame cartoons, that have given us all Adult ADD in everything in our lives, including cartoons? Is it the culture of divorce that most of us have grown up with that has made us cynical? Or is it this overriding apathy that I see has taken over so many of my generation that makes work a four-letter word? I don’t have the answers. I’m guessing that Rich’s wife doesn’t have them either, as she stares down at her pregnant belly while her husband sweet-talks the twenty-something set.

Roses are Red, Valentines' Blues

“Hello?”
“Hey E. Happy Valentine’s Day!”
“Isn’t it just your favorite day?” E’s deadpan tone is dripping with sarcasm. And, to be honest, bitterness. Clearly, this wasn’t her favorite day at all.
For some, February 14 is a four-letter word. It’s a reminder that you’re alone, that you’re clearly going to die alone, that you might as well give it up now and start adopting cats.
For me, February 14th is just another day, only, on this day, you have a better excuse to eat chocolate. This sounds like sour grapes, I know, like I don’t want a valentine anyway. But it’s not. Valentine’s Day is usually only great for a select group of people. Hallmark, Russell Stover’s and the people who make those Mylar helium balloons. Other than those select corporations, I’ve never heard of anybody who had a GREAT Valentine’s Day. A nice day, a great dinner, something special, but a GREAT Valentine’s Day? It’s like a GREAT New Year’s Eve: try to find someone who had one. Nearly impossible.
When I was a kid, I used to love Valentine’s Day. My parents would buy me one of those red hearts full of chocolate. We would have to bring a shoebox into class that we would decorate with construction paper, markers, paper lace doilies, stickers, glitter glue, whatever our New York City public school PTA budget could provide, making beautiful mailboxes to hold all our cards. The night before Valentine’s Day, I would painstakingly print out the name of each and every classmate on my tiny valentines with pictures of Strawberry Shortcake or the Carebears and the cheesy little jokes that only an 8-year-old finds funny. We would wait all day until our class moms came in with cupcakes and juice and little bags of candy and we would run around and deliver all our valentines and eat and then, when we were all good and sugared up, the teacher would send us home to our parents.
When I got older, my mom would buy me Godiva chocolates in place of the drugstore hearts. I used to get cards from secret admirers in high school and carnations from friends, sold by the student council to benefit various causes. When I was in college, my mom sent flowers a few times. My freshman year of college, when I was living in a real college dorm, my room was filled with flowers from parents, my friends, my roommate’s friends. It was nice. More importantly, it was about love. Not sex. Not desperation. Love.
To get depressed about not having a boyfriend on Valentine’s Day is to miss the entire point of the holiday in the first place. Saint Valentine (who, being a Catholic saint, would probably not approve of that garter ensemble you picked up from Victoria’s Secret, fyi) was a man who believed in love. He died a martyr because he married people in Catholic ceremonies during the Roman Empire. And while that’s a very romantic story, the part that goes overlooked in this whole story was that this was a man who died standing up for what he believed in. He believed so strongly in what he was doing that he put his life on the line to prove his devotion. And that is what’s beautiful about Valentine’s Day. When was the last time you felt that passionately about something? Most people wouldn’t put their credit card on the table for the person they’re desperately hoping will ask them to a Valentine’s dinner tonight.
St. Valentine didn’t settle. He didn’t lower his standards to fit some society’s ideas about how life should be. If he didn’t, why should any of us? And every time we feel that we should have a boyfriend, that we should have a date, every time we get depressed that we’re sitting at home on Valentine’s Day, or that we’re with a group of friends instead of that special someone, that’s exactly what we’re doing. Valentine’s Day is, at the end of the day, just another day. It’s not a mandate to try to conform yourself into what society dictates is the “right” behavior. St. Valentine didn’t do it, and now, once a year, people eat candy out of cardboard hearts in his name.

PSA

I am at a loss as to how to explain the male psyche. I am not alone in this. If my girlfriends and I could understand this, we would probably be reduced to staring at each other over half-finished pints. If my male friends had a clue, this blog would not exist.
This doesn’t mean I don’t try and pick my male friends’ brains every chance I get, trying to figure this out. My male friends know when I’m on a rant, they should just try to placate me and eventually I’ll get tired or something shiny will grab my attention and they’ll be free. Until then, they try to break things down.
I was having one of those moments and V was the unlucky male recipient of my confused wrath. I was still obsessing about the neighbor “incident.” The fact that the incident was next to nothing and I wasn’t horribly broken up about the whole matter wasn’t the point. I just thought the whole thing was incredibly indicative of a much larger force at play. And it was something to obsess about during an incredibly slow day at work.
V brought it up, anyway.
“What’s going on with that guy you were all vague about last week?”
“I never heard from him again.”
“What happened?”
“He kissed me and never called. Drive by kissing.”
“Did you try to get in touch with him?”
“I sent him a text message. He never responded.”
“That’s not cool.”
“Why do guys do things like that? You’re a guy. Explain this. Please.”
V was quick to say that he didn’t speak for all mankind and that this guy was a huge dick if he was disrespecting me like that (this is why V is my friend), but he also brought some insight.
Basically, from what I can get from him, men are still all about the chase. But because we’re no longer hunter/gatherers, they turn the chase towards us. And, sometimes, just knowing that they can have us is enough for them. Once the chase is over and they’ve proven that they can capture us, they don’t need to bother any more. This was nothing new.
What shocked me was V’s reaction. As he told me all this, he admitted that he had been guilty of this whole hunt and run method of dating. The more he talked about it, the more he became guilty. He ended his explainer suddenly.
“Now I feel bad.”
Is it possible that we’re all just hurting each other and we don’t even know we’re doing it?
V’s confessional made me think of all the times I’ve been unkind. And, sadly, there are a lot of them. There are a lot of guys I know who would LOVE to date me that I just don’t have chemistry with. I know they think we do. And, I hate to say it, but I love that they think we do. It makes me feel better about myself to know that somebody else likes me in that way. It allows me to tell myself I’m picky, not desperate. And it softens the edge of my nightmare of becoming one of those crazy cat ladies.
I never thought my acknowledgement of love unreciprocated hurt anybody. But there are people out there tonight who are feeling about me the way I feel about the neighbor. They are wondering why I don’t call, why I kissed them once and never kissed them (or called them) again. And I hardly gave them a second thought while they wondered what they did wrong, what opportunity they missed, what they could have done differently that one time, that would have turned things around.
I guess my point here is that we are all careless with other peoples’ feelings while we wonder why people are so careless with ours. The bottom line is it all comes back to the oldest of sayings, “Do unto others what you would have others do unto you.” A broken heart is a horrible thing to hold, in your hands or your conscious.