A snippet from last Thursday's Harper Valley PTA meeting:
"Yeah, because out here, if a man takes his baby to the park people are so impressed it's like he's pushing the stroller WITH HIS PENIS."
Showing posts with label single moms. Show all posts
Showing posts with label single moms. Show all posts
Monday, April 5, 2010
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Like a Coven of Witches...
Today the Harper Valley PTA is meeting.
You may remember the eponymous movie, song, or TV series. I confess I don't, presumably because I like four years old when it came out, and I wasn't into proto-girlpower media yet. I was more into Bedtime for Frances, which to be fair is one of the greatest books of all time, although it does not star Barbara Eden and there is no cleavage.
However, Claire, the founder of our local HVPTA chapter, is eight or nine years older than I (apparently I'm the baby of the group at 36; I guess I'm precocious to have gotten divorced so quickly and efficiently) and can remember the movie and sing the song, which is apparently a very funny rant about a single mom who dresses tartily and shakes up a small town. So she appropriated the name for an informal group of single mom divorcées who get together, sporadically, for drinks.
(Claire was introduced to me by my friend the polyamorist. I've got a post in the hopper about lunch with him. Stay tuned. I may not get to finishing it until after I have drinks with him, which could be even more interesting. Anyway, Claire is like my twin: biracial, recently divorced, two kids, same job, even, which is why he thought we'd get along. He was right.)
The last time the group got together, there was several great conversations, I drank five spicy lemondrops, and when The Boyfriend picked me up to go to a play we'd prearranged for after, I was Witty and Daring (as one tends to be after five drinks) and probably sexually assaulted him. This time my in-laws will be staying here and I will have just cooked them dinner, The Boyfriend is out of town until tomorrow afternoon, and I'm already knackered from the epic 3.5 hour Skype session we had last night, plus Day Seven of Toddler Vomit. (Yes, she's home again today.) So I don't know how long I'll last. But there are some new members, and it's always interesting to hear their stories, or snippets of them (mostly, I'm amazed at how much more time and investment they had in their marriages than I did in my whirlwind, shotgun, four-years-start-to-finish fiasco).
And I have to get the non-sick kid to school -- so I'll leave you with this highlight from the last time:
Pat, a 42-year-old punk rock student/mom of one, asked, "Is 22 too young?"
"To date or to fuck?" Claire inquired.
"Not to DATE!" Pat looked scandalized. "To, you know..."
"Well," Claire drawled, "as my pal Bob used to say, 'If there's grass on the field...PLAY BALL!'"
I'll just go ahead and leave you to chew on that. Later on, then.
You may remember the eponymous movie, song, or TV series. I confess I don't, presumably because I like four years old when it came out, and I wasn't into proto-girlpower media yet. I was more into Bedtime for Frances, which to be fair is one of the greatest books of all time, although it does not star Barbara Eden and there is no cleavage.
However, Claire, the founder of our local HVPTA chapter, is eight or nine years older than I (apparently I'm the baby of the group at 36; I guess I'm precocious to have gotten divorced so quickly and efficiently) and can remember the movie and sing the song, which is apparently a very funny rant about a single mom who dresses tartily and shakes up a small town. So she appropriated the name for an informal group of single mom divorcées who get together, sporadically, for drinks.
(Claire was introduced to me by my friend the polyamorist. I've got a post in the hopper about lunch with him. Stay tuned. I may not get to finishing it until after I have drinks with him, which could be even more interesting. Anyway, Claire is like my twin: biracial, recently divorced, two kids, same job, even, which is why he thought we'd get along. He was right.)
The last time the group got together, there was several great conversations, I drank five spicy lemondrops, and when The Boyfriend picked me up to go to a play we'd prearranged for after, I was Witty and Daring (as one tends to be after five drinks) and probably sexually assaulted him. This time my in-laws will be staying here and I will have just cooked them dinner, The Boyfriend is out of town until tomorrow afternoon, and I'm already knackered from the epic 3.5 hour Skype session we had last night, plus Day Seven of Toddler Vomit. (Yes, she's home again today.) So I don't know how long I'll last. But there are some new members, and it's always interesting to hear their stories, or snippets of them (mostly, I'm amazed at how much more time and investment they had in their marriages than I did in my whirlwind, shotgun, four-years-start-to-finish fiasco).
And I have to get the non-sick kid to school -- so I'll leave you with this highlight from the last time:
Pat, a 42-year-old punk rock student/mom of one, asked, "Is 22 too young?"
"To date or to fuck?" Claire inquired.
"Not to DATE!" Pat looked scandalized. "To, you know..."
"Well," Claire drawled, "as my pal Bob used to say, 'If there's grass on the field...PLAY BALL!'"
I'll just go ahead and leave you to chew on that. Later on, then.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Word Gets Around
A funny thing happened at my local independent bookstore today.
I had stopped by with V., who's still home sick from school, to pick up an order that had come in. I knew the cashier by sight but not name, so chit-chat was at a minimum, but then Dave walked by.
Dave is one of the book buyers. He's also dreamy. Curly dark hair, blue eyes, handsome, sweet, charming, my age, and -- get this -- raised two children on his own after he and his wife split when they were little and she didn't want them. They're now in their mid-teens, which means he must've been barely out of his when he got hitched the first time.
Amazingly, he almost always seems to be in a good mood. He's one of those people whom everyone loves because he's so nice. His hotness is significant, but even that is overpowered by the sheer force of his goodness. And with a bio like that, he's a single mom's wet dream.
Regrettably for all the voracious single moms like me would've snapped Dave up like coyotes would steak, he's also remarried and the proud papa of a five-month-old boy. Which is great for him, really, and I'm not even shedding tears over it since I (unfortunately) don't tend to go for the nice type. I like them a little mean. Just a little. And I'm not necessarily proud of that fact (more on this later). I'm just hard-wired that way. Guys like Dave I hang out with and love as friends. Guys that make me want to drop trou tend to be a little rougher around the edges.
Anyway, lest you think I'm a crazy, lovelorn bookstore employee stalker (a breed not unknown in this town), let me explain that I know many of the employees of this particular store pretty well because a)I used to work at another branch of same in MY teens and some of my coworkers transferred there, b)my boyfriend way-back-when worked at this store, and c)the ex's uncle-by-marriage works there currently, and we are on cordial terms. Plus, d)my good friend and also long-ago ex W., who is an independent book dealer, is in there a lot. So I get to shoot the shit with these guys without coming across as a desperate former housewife.
Anyway, Dave's cool and I like him. I had quite a few distressed and TMI-filled conversations with him about being a Divorce Survivor while my divorce was fresh. I wanted to know how his single parenting experience was, etc. But I haven't seen him in a while and it's not like I ever talk to those guys outside their work, so I try not to importune them.
Today, though, he was in a mood to talk. And he was laughing. "W. cracked me up the other day," he said, "he told me something funny that your daughter said and I almost spit out my drink."
"Oh yeah?" I asked. I imagined that it was the anecdote about how my daughter turned to W. when he was over one day and, referring to her brother, remarked, "He's stupid." W. thought that was hilarious and called me the next day to tell me about it.
"Yeah," Dave said. "He said that your daughter saw that picture of the Christian Militia that's been making the rounds, pointed at one, and said the name of your ex's girlfriend."
"Oh, that!" I replied. "Yeah, she saw it on my Facebook page, pointed right at it and was all 'Mar-o-lyn, that's Mar-o-lyn.' I told her it wasn't, but she insisted."
"That's awesome!" Dave laughed. "Out of the mouths of babes."
"Shhhh!" I said, "You know my ex comes in here!"
He smirked, took a swig of his coffee.
"So do you think I should tell him?"
That was when we had to get the paper towels.
But despite the damage to my sweatshirt, I have to say that incident buoyed me up for the rest of the morning. And I belatedly realized why: because it means those guys are pulling for me. They're rooting for me. And it's not that they'd ever be rude or insulting to my ex, but they watched us together and they watched when he left and they see me with the kids and him without and nobody there truly dislikes him, but they're also not overcompensating, the way so many mutual acquaintances do, by pretending that the playing field is equal and there are no bad guys and everybody needs validation and blah blah blah insert more of the kids of things my mother-in-law would say here to explain why she was buying presents for the ex's girlfriend, whom he started dating before he left me, just weeks after my father-in-law and I found, aghast, the sexy text messages he'd sent her while still married. (To her credit, she started wooing the girlfriend after she stopped urging me to win him back and buy some condoms against the diseases he might've picked up.)
These guys -- Dave, another guy, Josh, and the ex's uncle Alex -- are in my corner. It's not even that they're against the ex. It's just that they're behind me. And they're not shy to say so.
It's nice to know.
I had stopped by with V., who's still home sick from school, to pick up an order that had come in. I knew the cashier by sight but not name, so chit-chat was at a minimum, but then Dave walked by.
Dave is one of the book buyers. He's also dreamy. Curly dark hair, blue eyes, handsome, sweet, charming, my age, and -- get this -- raised two children on his own after he and his wife split when they were little and she didn't want them. They're now in their mid-teens, which means he must've been barely out of his when he got hitched the first time.
Amazingly, he almost always seems to be in a good mood. He's one of those people whom everyone loves because he's so nice. His hotness is significant, but even that is overpowered by the sheer force of his goodness. And with a bio like that, he's a single mom's wet dream.
Regrettably for all the voracious single moms like me would've snapped Dave up like coyotes would steak, he's also remarried and the proud papa of a five-month-old boy. Which is great for him, really, and I'm not even shedding tears over it since I (unfortunately) don't tend to go for the nice type. I like them a little mean. Just a little. And I'm not necessarily proud of that fact (more on this later). I'm just hard-wired that way. Guys like Dave I hang out with and love as friends. Guys that make me want to drop trou tend to be a little rougher around the edges.
Anyway, lest you think I'm a crazy, lovelorn bookstore employee stalker (a breed not unknown in this town), let me explain that I know many of the employees of this particular store pretty well because a)I used to work at another branch of same in MY teens and some of my coworkers transferred there, b)my boyfriend way-back-when worked at this store, and c)the ex's uncle-by-marriage works there currently, and we are on cordial terms. Plus, d)my good friend and also long-ago ex W., who is an independent book dealer, is in there a lot. So I get to shoot the shit with these guys without coming across as a desperate former housewife.
Anyway, Dave's cool and I like him. I had quite a few distressed and TMI-filled conversations with him about being a Divorce Survivor while my divorce was fresh. I wanted to know how his single parenting experience was, etc. But I haven't seen him in a while and it's not like I ever talk to those guys outside their work, so I try not to importune them.
Today, though, he was in a mood to talk. And he was laughing. "W. cracked me up the other day," he said, "he told me something funny that your daughter said and I almost spit out my drink."
"Oh yeah?" I asked. I imagined that it was the anecdote about how my daughter turned to W. when he was over one day and, referring to her brother, remarked, "He's stupid." W. thought that was hilarious and called me the next day to tell me about it.
"Yeah," Dave said. "He said that your daughter saw that picture of the Christian Militia that's been making the rounds, pointed at one, and said the name of your ex's girlfriend."
"Oh, that!" I replied. "Yeah, she saw it on my Facebook page, pointed right at it and was all 'Mar-o-lyn, that's Mar-o-lyn.' I told her it wasn't, but she insisted."
"That's awesome!" Dave laughed. "Out of the mouths of babes."
"Shhhh!" I said, "You know my ex comes in here!"
He smirked, took a swig of his coffee.
"So do you think I should tell him?"
That was when we had to get the paper towels.
But despite the damage to my sweatshirt, I have to say that incident buoyed me up for the rest of the morning. And I belatedly realized why: because it means those guys are pulling for me. They're rooting for me. And it's not that they'd ever be rude or insulting to my ex, but they watched us together and they watched when he left and they see me with the kids and him without and nobody there truly dislikes him, but they're also not overcompensating, the way so many mutual acquaintances do, by pretending that the playing field is equal and there are no bad guys and everybody needs validation and blah blah blah insert more of the kids of things my mother-in-law would say here to explain why she was buying presents for the ex's girlfriend, whom he started dating before he left me, just weeks after my father-in-law and I found, aghast, the sexy text messages he'd sent her while still married. (To her credit, she started wooing the girlfriend after she stopped urging me to win him back and buy some condoms against the diseases he might've picked up.)
These guys -- Dave, another guy, Josh, and the ex's uncle Alex -- are in my corner. It's not even that they're against the ex. It's just that they're behind me. And they're not shy to say so.
It's nice to know.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
At Your Convenience
Here's a little window into the arrangement I have with my ex. He usually comes Wednesday afternoon for 3-4 hours and Sunday afternoon from 12-7 (though he has been an hour late the last two Sundays -- hard to get up in the morning). On Wednesday they stay here. On Sunday they used to stay here, but then his girlfriend told him that he need to take control and have the kids "experience his environment"* (never mind that the kids, or one of them, anyway, are asthmatic and allergic to her cats and that environment fucks them up for a minimum of 24 hours), so they wait here until the younger one is done with her nap, then go to his place.
As previously mentioned, my daughter V. is sick. She's her normal, charming, really, really good-looking two-year-old self most of the time, then she bursts into tears and projectile vomits. She's been doing so for five days, and I am really tired of watching her cry, tired of wiping her puke off the floor, tired of hopefully feeding her bland foods, tired of worried she'll go into a dehydration coma. So we spent two hours at the doctor's this morning (fortunately, I'm on spring break, or this Week on Vomit Comet would send my stress from Ernie to Elmo). As a courtesy, I emailed the ex about the events. Here's the reply I just got:
Backstory: the ex's parents are coming to town Thursday. They will be staying with me, in order to spend time with the children (they ostensibly also give two shits about me, but I'm not sure I believe them, nor do I really blame them for it; I find them excruciatingly irritating and have long been fed up with various aspects of their hypocrisy and disingenuousness, but I'm judgmental like that, plus they did raise the dude that I am now happy to be divorced from, for which I try and fail not to blame them). Yes, you read that right. My ex-laws will be staying with me. For two nights. Even though I never got along with them in the first place. BECAUSE I AM INSANE.
So here's the ex's reply:
And, in a larger sense, you may see why the last year has really made me question the role of a father in a kid's life. I'm not saying I don't think fathers are important -- a good father is great. But I didn't have a good father, and in fact most people I know didn't. Most people I know had abusive fathers or unavailable fathers or absent fathers. The two men least likely to treat women like shit I know (my boyfriend and my old friend W., whom I dated about a thousand years ago when I was still in my teens) both grew up without fathers, and neither one especially regrets it. So to chase around trying to facilitate my ex's being the man he's not seems...just a little bit silly. And it also seems like missing the point; after all, now that we're divorced, aren't I supposed to be free of the stress of being his personal assistant, motivational coach, and scold?
*This is not my imagination of how things went down. When I met with her -- at my request to 'establish cordiality' in light of her potential ongoing contact with my kids -- she told me so.
As previously mentioned, my daughter V. is sick. She's her normal, charming, really, really good-looking two-year-old self most of the time, then she bursts into tears and projectile vomits. She's been doing so for five days, and I am really tired of watching her cry, tired of wiping her puke off the floor, tired of hopefully feeding her bland foods, tired of worried she'll go into a dehydration coma. So we spent two hours at the doctor's this morning (fortunately, I'm on spring break, or this Week on Vomit Comet would send my stress from Ernie to Elmo). As a courtesy, I emailed the ex about the events. Here's the reply I just got:
I wasn't fantastically impressed by this, but it also sounded like maybe he still wanted to come Thursday, so I replied:
I am sorry to hear that V. is sick. Please tell her I hope she gets better really soon. Let's skip tomorrow in light of this. I can't risk getting sick and coming for less than three hours is silly anyway. I have something to do for most of the day anyway and was thinking of asking if it'd work to do Thursday instead. OK?
Skipping tomorrow is fine, but you should keep in mind that she (or he, or both) will probably still be contagious Sunday.
I am planning to make dinner with/for your parents on Thursday. They are planning to be here at four. If you want to come and show up with them, you're welcome to stay for dinner. We'll be eating early, around 5:30. Let me know if you want to come. I need to buy some fish or something.
Backstory: the ex's parents are coming to town Thursday. They will be staying with me, in order to spend time with the children (they ostensibly also give two shits about me, but I'm not sure I believe them, nor do I really blame them for it; I find them excruciatingly irritating and have long been fed up with various aspects of their hypocrisy and disingenuousness, but I'm judgmental like that, plus they did raise the dude that I am now happy to be divorced from, for which I try and fail not to blame them). Yes, you read that right. My ex-laws will be staying with me. For two nights. Even though I never got along with them in the first place. BECAUSE I AM INSANE.
So here's the ex's reply:
I realize that. I am more concerned about making rent before I expose myself to the possibility of illness... Can't do dinner on Thursday, but I appreciate the invite.You see what I mean when I say that I used to try to chase him down and I gave up on that.
And, in a larger sense, you may see why the last year has really made me question the role of a father in a kid's life. I'm not saying I don't think fathers are important -- a good father is great. But I didn't have a good father, and in fact most people I know didn't. Most people I know had abusive fathers or unavailable fathers or absent fathers. The two men least likely to treat women like shit I know (my boyfriend and my old friend W., whom I dated about a thousand years ago when I was still in my teens) both grew up without fathers, and neither one especially regrets it. So to chase around trying to facilitate my ex's being the man he's not seems...just a little bit silly. And it also seems like missing the point; after all, now that we're divorced, aren't I supposed to be free of the stress of being his personal assistant, motivational coach, and scold?
*This is not my imagination of how things went down. When I met with her -- at my request to 'establish cordiality' in light of her potential ongoing contact with my kids -- she told me so.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Sex and the Single Mom Part One, or "Like a Virgin"
When I got divorced, nearly a year ago now, I didn't have the slightest idea how I would ever have sex again.
I'm a pretty highly sexed person. Once a day is generally good maintenance for me. I don't say no to twice. In most of the long-term relationships I've had, sex has been a major part of the deal, by some estimates too much (to those who so claim, I answer that if it's 50% of how you spend your waking time with someone, it had better be good, right?). Even my marriage, which managed to make me declare that I hated my life and to sing along with Pearl Jam's song "Better Man" with entirely too much pathos, didn't entirely kill my sex drive. I can't remember an average, but in the fall of 2008, when everything was coming to an ugly, bulbous, about-to-erupt head, we did it at least once or twice a week.
But when I got divorced, my sex drive went on vacation. I initially felt that sleeping with another man would feel like being unfaithful, especially since I was not the initiator of the divorce and would have liked to spend more time "working on the marriage" before calling it quits. I imagined with terrifying vividness the moment arriving, being naked with a man, about to consummate my divorcée status, and bursting into tears at the sight of his cock...
(This scenario was based, it must be admitted, on a convoluted Heideggerian argument I'd constructed in which I was "always already" married to my ex, therefore always already would be married to him, and therefore would be betraying that marriage by sleeping with another. At least, it started with Heidegger. I think it probably ended with that Robert Creeley poem "A Marriage," the one that ends "he gave up loving/and lived with her." But I digress.)
...Which, let's face it, isn't the most encouraging response for a dude to get the first time he flashes his Johnson.
Many would turn tail and run.
The other problem I imagined with resuming a sex life was that I had, and have, the kids full time. 100% of nights. Nearly 100% of days. The parenting plan has the kids spending one afternoon a week with their dad; we informally agreed on an additional afternoon, but it has been hit-and-miss. And I work full time. And had only 16 hours of daycare for the younger one for several months (I can work partly from home). That's going up to twenty this week, but it still doesn't leave a lot of time to get my work done and then prowl the streets for willing men. Basically, my time was all allocated, and I was very conscious, and remain so, of not letting anything but my kids monopolize my attention.
Here's how I'd put it to my friend J.: "I don't want to subject the kids to the Parade of Men. And I can't have dudes over unless they can at least risk seeing the kids. And I don't have any nights off or money for babysitting. So basically, I'm never going to get laid until I establish some kind of serious relationship with a dude who's willing to wait around for several months until I can introduce him into my life a little. And WHO HAS THAT KIND OF PATIENCE?"
Now, J. has been a single mom for fourteen years. So she just nodded and smiled, then said, "I'd be happy to babysit for you sometime. You know, it is possible to have sex at someone else's house."
Duh. Of course I continued my protests that I'd probably become a nun, that the town would erect for me a chastity arch (a practice in pre-revolution China done for women who, widowed young, remained faithful to their husbands FOREVER, thus adding to the honor of the family), etc. etc.
Don't get me wrong, I knew that something would probably happen. To put it bluntly, I'm not the type of girl who goes for long periods without a boyfriend. Which probably has something to do with how I got in this single-parent situation in the first place.
But that something was actually a long time coming. The last time I had sex with my husband was on Nov. 30, 2008. He moved out Dec. 10. The divorce was final April 28, 2009.
And I met L. on July 29.
Eight months of celibacy isn't insignificant for anyone in my book. For me, it was an eternity. Because a lot happened in that time. I went through the stages of grief. I was uninterested, a little interested, repulsed, enthused. I wept. I began to feel oddly grateful to my ex for leaving, because I wouldn't have and because I was happier without him and our family was happier without him. I changed, I grew, I became exceedingly grateful for that sex toy shopping spree my cousin took me on in June. I basically spent every night in July before L. showed up with three vibrators and a few different volumes of Penthouse Letters.
L. was a friend of a friend. We'd gotten to be friends through Facebook. We had never met. This is not something I ordinarily do, but he friended me, and he's an old college pal of my best friend in town, and I wasn't feeling like being as exclusive and unavailable as usual. So I said yes. We had a fair amount of internet back-and-forth, we sent some emails. He started phoning me during the stormiest period, December and January, when the ex had just moved out, when I thought I might not actually survive, and when I spent pretty much every moment my kids weren't awake chain-smoking and weeping.
It was a bad winter. I recommend that if you plan to undergo a miserable divorce that inspires you to resume smoking and give up food, you do it in summer. Your hands won't get chapped and your basal body temperature won't suffer as much. As it was, I was a shadow of my normally thin self, a scarecrow of Angst and Weltschmerz.
But by summer I was better. I was, at least, horny again. I'd actually had several minor flirtations, one of which resulted in a man standing outside my house staring up at it for an hour, which was sort of cute in a Say Anything sort of way. Or would've been, if he'd been 18 and John Cusack.
And the L. came to town. He had been living overseas and was moving -- with his fiancée, natch -- across the world, with a stop in the U.S. on the way. I knew we, um, liked each other, or at least had the potential for it. And somehow he managed to arrange this trip into a crisscross of geography that resulted in him being in my town after the fiancé left the country.
Arrive Wednesday noon, leave Friday morning. He was slated to stay with our mutual friend, she who had known him for 16 years. It was the hottest day of the year. I'm going to resist the urge to say that it got a lot hotter.
But you know it did.
Because, after all, when a couple of differently chromosomed heterosexuals spend eight months whispering sweet nothings in each other's virtual networking ears, it's like laying tinder at a gas pump.
Or something.
How it all happened, and how it remained a secret from our mutual friend, was very sweet. I met L. at the corner bar Wednesday afternoon. We chatted. We hung out. I took him to our mutual friend's house, came home, and got the kids in bed. Then J. came over to babysit.
When I showed up back at our mutual friend, M.'s, house, L. was out front having a cigarette. He sat on the top step, wearing a t-shirt and sweating. It was still over a hundred degrees, maybe 9 p.m., summer above the 45th parallel meaning it was still light out. Still light and hot enough to sweat without even moving.
"Honey," L. cried, "I'll give you a hundred dollars if you let me come sleep in that air-conditioned room of yours. A hundred dollars. And I promise I won't try to sleep with you."
I looked at him. I smiled. I said, "The hell you won't. But okay."
He kissed me.
M. came out and we all had a drink. We drank and shot the breeze for a while, until she and her husband were bleary-eyed and she was slurring her words and tripping. L. made his excuses. L. and I walked, upright, to the car.
When we got to my house, J. gave a wink and took off. Then L. and I retired to the attic, turned on the crappy window air conditioner that my ex-father-in-law had just helped me prop up with dowels, sat in chairs, and talked.
Sat on the bed. And talked.
Lay in each others' arms. And talked.
It was exactly like getting together with a shy guy you really like in college, when dorm rooms are easily accessible, beds are the only furniture, and nobody really wants to make an unequivocal first move, so you just keep inching together until at some point it's a tangle of limbs and nebulous intentions. Except that we were in our mid-thirties and not our late teens, and he was engaged to someone else, and we were probably never going to see each other again, or at least for years, after two days. So at some point before any clothes came off, one of us (it was probably me) called a smoke break and we retired to the sweltering (at 2 a.m.) front porch.
"So, um." I said, "Is this okay?"
"What do you mean, okay?" L. asked, "Do you mean is it okay with her or do you mean is it okay in the sense that it's not going to wreck anything?"
"Both."
"The latter, yeah, I think so," he said. "The former, definitely not."
I thought about this for a minute.
"So...how not okay is it?"
"On a scale of one to ten? Maybe a four."
Sold. We went back upstairs. Oh, there was more discussion, but this is the gist and the important part. I wanted to confront this man that I thought I knew, through our mutual friend and through our correspondence, and see what he had to say about his situation. I didn't know, going into that conversation, if I would get an answer I could deal with. I didn't want to be a homewrecker (and in fact had discussed the issue with our mutual friend M. when his arrival became imminent; that there was "a vibe" was clear, what would develop less so -- and in fact she apparently admonished him, when he announced his intention to stay with me, to not "take advantage of my situation"). I had been the victim of homewrecking, actually, though whether it was sexually consummated was unclear (the erotic texts, Facebook love letters, etc., were there, but the ex swears he did "nothing dishonorable" -- in our last memorable fight about it, I asserted that it didn't matter where his penis went if he'd already betrayed me emotionally). And our friend M. knew this, so she thought I was vulnerable and also urged me to take the high road.
And I had thought I would. I wasn't dumb enough to think that L. hadn't come to visit at least partly to get in my pants. And I wasn't dishonest enough to think that I didn't want him to. But I had thought that I would decline. I had thought that I would find a way not to have sex with him in order to stay on my moral high horse with regard to my ex, or in order to not have to face M. and her disapproval, or in order to not let myself get attached to a man who was completely, utterly unavailable, because (as a recent episode of Grey's Anatomy put it), my heart lives in my vagina. I am not the kind of girl who has meaningless sex. And I frequently turn sex into a relationship because I can't fathom the idea of having fucked a stranger I don't care about.
I realize this might be seen as a slightly flawed strategy. On other other hand, who has a perfect one? Maybe I could protect my heart by putting a big LOCAL USE ONLY sign on my vajayjay. But I kind of doubt it. I think then I might just be sexually frustrated and lovelorn.
So I really thought there was a possibility I would say no to sex with L.
But I didn't.
Not because I was that desperate to get laid, actually. I was horny, yes, -- but I don't recall that being my primary emotion. And not because I wanted to wipe away the stain of the ex by, um, turning to the next chapter in Penises I Have Known (a possibly multi-volume tome that really needs to be switched to the Kindle version), although that impulse -- the impulse, quite simply, to have the ex not be The Last Person I Fucked -- was strong. But because I wanted the First Person I Fucked, post-divorce, to be L. I wanted the first person I had post-divorce sex with to be this guy who was hilarious and flawed and macho and hip-hop, this guy who wrote letters with cartoons drawn in the margins and who wrote short stories about Jesus or divorce or Robocop, this guy who, for whatever reason, had decided to let me in, and who looked at me back and got me. I wanted to lose my chastity arch with a person I really, to put it simply, liked. And who liked me back.
And at some point I had to ask myself if I was responsible for L.'s relationship with his fiancée, or for what he chose to do within or without it, and even as the woman formerly scorned, my answer was no. I maintain this is true. I don't think much of my ex's girlfriend, it's true, but she is not the one who betrayed my marriage. He is.
So we went upstairs. And we got naked. And as it happened, I wondered if all those feelings of grief and regret, the ones I had thought would make me cry the first time I had sex with someone other than my husband, would come back. But they didn't. I didn't come close to crying. Maybe it was because I was pretty clear about what I was doing. Maybe it was because enough time had passed. Maybe it was because I was with a man who (for all his apparent flaws and idiosyncrasies) was a better friend, lover, and boyfriend in 48 hours than my husband ever was.
It is a powerful thing to be looking in someone's eyes as you straddle him and realizing that he hasn't failed you as a friend.
We had sex. It was hot. And it felt like the first time. Not just because the quality of my relationship with L., and of my knowledge of myself, was so different than before -- also because, after the eight-month drought, it kind of hurt at first. But in a good way. Just exactly like when I was seventeen and having sex for the very first time with my boyfriend of six months, whom I loved, who loved me, and I knew that even though it hurt like a bastard, I wanted this, it would be good.
This time didn't hurt like a bastard. But it was a little uncomfortable at first, and the discomfort reminded me of why sex is so good and why we want it and how part of me had known that, even the first time.
So that was it. It was like being touched for the very first time. And as the argument goes in Reservoir Dogs, was it like that because I was vulnerable and I'd been fucked over a few times and I met a nice guy, or was it like that because of a really big cock?
That's a tough one. But offhand, I'd say both.
I'm a pretty highly sexed person. Once a day is generally good maintenance for me. I don't say no to twice. In most of the long-term relationships I've had, sex has been a major part of the deal, by some estimates too much (to those who so claim, I answer that if it's 50% of how you spend your waking time with someone, it had better be good, right?). Even my marriage, which managed to make me declare that I hated my life and to sing along with Pearl Jam's song "Better Man" with entirely too much pathos, didn't entirely kill my sex drive. I can't remember an average, but in the fall of 2008, when everything was coming to an ugly, bulbous, about-to-erupt head, we did it at least once or twice a week.
But when I got divorced, my sex drive went on vacation. I initially felt that sleeping with another man would feel like being unfaithful, especially since I was not the initiator of the divorce and would have liked to spend more time "working on the marriage" before calling it quits. I imagined with terrifying vividness the moment arriving, being naked with a man, about to consummate my divorcée status, and bursting into tears at the sight of his cock...
(This scenario was based, it must be admitted, on a convoluted Heideggerian argument I'd constructed in which I was "always already" married to my ex, therefore always already would be married to him, and therefore would be betraying that marriage by sleeping with another. At least, it started with Heidegger. I think it probably ended with that Robert Creeley poem "A Marriage," the one that ends "he gave up loving/and lived with her." But I digress.)
...Which, let's face it, isn't the most encouraging response for a dude to get the first time he flashes his Johnson.
Many would turn tail and run.
The other problem I imagined with resuming a sex life was that I had, and have, the kids full time. 100% of nights. Nearly 100% of days. The parenting plan has the kids spending one afternoon a week with their dad; we informally agreed on an additional afternoon, but it has been hit-and-miss. And I work full time. And had only 16 hours of daycare for the younger one for several months (I can work partly from home). That's going up to twenty this week, but it still doesn't leave a lot of time to get my work done and then prowl the streets for willing men. Basically, my time was all allocated, and I was very conscious, and remain so, of not letting anything but my kids monopolize my attention.
Here's how I'd put it to my friend J.: "I don't want to subject the kids to the Parade of Men. And I can't have dudes over unless they can at least risk seeing the kids. And I don't have any nights off or money for babysitting. So basically, I'm never going to get laid until I establish some kind of serious relationship with a dude who's willing to wait around for several months until I can introduce him into my life a little. And WHO HAS THAT KIND OF PATIENCE?"
Now, J. has been a single mom for fourteen years. So she just nodded and smiled, then said, "I'd be happy to babysit for you sometime. You know, it is possible to have sex at someone else's house."
Duh. Of course I continued my protests that I'd probably become a nun, that the town would erect for me a chastity arch (a practice in pre-revolution China done for women who, widowed young, remained faithful to their husbands FOREVER, thus adding to the honor of the family), etc. etc.
Don't get me wrong, I knew that something would probably happen. To put it bluntly, I'm not the type of girl who goes for long periods without a boyfriend. Which probably has something to do with how I got in this single-parent situation in the first place.
But that something was actually a long time coming. The last time I had sex with my husband was on Nov. 30, 2008. He moved out Dec. 10. The divorce was final April 28, 2009.
And I met L. on July 29.
Eight months of celibacy isn't insignificant for anyone in my book. For me, it was an eternity. Because a lot happened in that time. I went through the stages of grief. I was uninterested, a little interested, repulsed, enthused. I wept. I began to feel oddly grateful to my ex for leaving, because I wouldn't have and because I was happier without him and our family was happier without him. I changed, I grew, I became exceedingly grateful for that sex toy shopping spree my cousin took me on in June. I basically spent every night in July before L. showed up with three vibrators and a few different volumes of Penthouse Letters.
L. was a friend of a friend. We'd gotten to be friends through Facebook. We had never met. This is not something I ordinarily do, but he friended me, and he's an old college pal of my best friend in town, and I wasn't feeling like being as exclusive and unavailable as usual. So I said yes. We had a fair amount of internet back-and-forth, we sent some emails. He started phoning me during the stormiest period, December and January, when the ex had just moved out, when I thought I might not actually survive, and when I spent pretty much every moment my kids weren't awake chain-smoking and weeping.
It was a bad winter. I recommend that if you plan to undergo a miserable divorce that inspires you to resume smoking and give up food, you do it in summer. Your hands won't get chapped and your basal body temperature won't suffer as much. As it was, I was a shadow of my normally thin self, a scarecrow of Angst and Weltschmerz.
But by summer I was better. I was, at least, horny again. I'd actually had several minor flirtations, one of which resulted in a man standing outside my house staring up at it for an hour, which was sort of cute in a Say Anything sort of way. Or would've been, if he'd been 18 and John Cusack.
And the L. came to town. He had been living overseas and was moving -- with his fiancée, natch -- across the world, with a stop in the U.S. on the way. I knew we, um, liked each other, or at least had the potential for it. And somehow he managed to arrange this trip into a crisscross of geography that resulted in him being in my town after the fiancé left the country.
Arrive Wednesday noon, leave Friday morning. He was slated to stay with our mutual friend, she who had known him for 16 years. It was the hottest day of the year. I'm going to resist the urge to say that it got a lot hotter.
But you know it did.
Because, after all, when a couple of differently chromosomed heterosexuals spend eight months whispering sweet nothings in each other's virtual networking ears, it's like laying tinder at a gas pump.
Or something.
How it all happened, and how it remained a secret from our mutual friend, was very sweet. I met L. at the corner bar Wednesday afternoon. We chatted. We hung out. I took him to our mutual friend's house, came home, and got the kids in bed. Then J. came over to babysit.
When I showed up back at our mutual friend, M.'s, house, L. was out front having a cigarette. He sat on the top step, wearing a t-shirt and sweating. It was still over a hundred degrees, maybe 9 p.m., summer above the 45th parallel meaning it was still light out. Still light and hot enough to sweat without even moving.
"Honey," L. cried, "I'll give you a hundred dollars if you let me come sleep in that air-conditioned room of yours. A hundred dollars. And I promise I won't try to sleep with you."
I looked at him. I smiled. I said, "The hell you won't. But okay."
He kissed me.
M. came out and we all had a drink. We drank and shot the breeze for a while, until she and her husband were bleary-eyed and she was slurring her words and tripping. L. made his excuses. L. and I walked, upright, to the car.
When we got to my house, J. gave a wink and took off. Then L. and I retired to the attic, turned on the crappy window air conditioner that my ex-father-in-law had just helped me prop up with dowels, sat in chairs, and talked.
Sat on the bed. And talked.
Lay in each others' arms. And talked.
It was exactly like getting together with a shy guy you really like in college, when dorm rooms are easily accessible, beds are the only furniture, and nobody really wants to make an unequivocal first move, so you just keep inching together until at some point it's a tangle of limbs and nebulous intentions. Except that we were in our mid-thirties and not our late teens, and he was engaged to someone else, and we were probably never going to see each other again, or at least for years, after two days. So at some point before any clothes came off, one of us (it was probably me) called a smoke break and we retired to the sweltering (at 2 a.m.) front porch.
"So, um." I said, "Is this okay?"
"What do you mean, okay?" L. asked, "Do you mean is it okay with her or do you mean is it okay in the sense that it's not going to wreck anything?"
"Both."
"The latter, yeah, I think so," he said. "The former, definitely not."
I thought about this for a minute.
"So...how not okay is it?"
"On a scale of one to ten? Maybe a four."
Sold. We went back upstairs. Oh, there was more discussion, but this is the gist and the important part. I wanted to confront this man that I thought I knew, through our mutual friend and through our correspondence, and see what he had to say about his situation. I didn't know, going into that conversation, if I would get an answer I could deal with. I didn't want to be a homewrecker (and in fact had discussed the issue with our mutual friend M. when his arrival became imminent; that there was "a vibe" was clear, what would develop less so -- and in fact she apparently admonished him, when he announced his intention to stay with me, to not "take advantage of my situation"). I had been the victim of homewrecking, actually, though whether it was sexually consummated was unclear (the erotic texts, Facebook love letters, etc., were there, but the ex swears he did "nothing dishonorable" -- in our last memorable fight about it, I asserted that it didn't matter where his penis went if he'd already betrayed me emotionally). And our friend M. knew this, so she thought I was vulnerable and also urged me to take the high road.
And I had thought I would. I wasn't dumb enough to think that L. hadn't come to visit at least partly to get in my pants. And I wasn't dishonest enough to think that I didn't want him to. But I had thought that I would decline. I had thought that I would find a way not to have sex with him in order to stay on my moral high horse with regard to my ex, or in order to not have to face M. and her disapproval, or in order to not let myself get attached to a man who was completely, utterly unavailable, because (as a recent episode of Grey's Anatomy put it), my heart lives in my vagina. I am not the kind of girl who has meaningless sex. And I frequently turn sex into a relationship because I can't fathom the idea of having fucked a stranger I don't care about.
I realize this might be seen as a slightly flawed strategy. On other other hand, who has a perfect one? Maybe I could protect my heart by putting a big LOCAL USE ONLY sign on my vajayjay. But I kind of doubt it. I think then I might just be sexually frustrated and lovelorn.
So I really thought there was a possibility I would say no to sex with L.
But I didn't.
Not because I was that desperate to get laid, actually. I was horny, yes, -- but I don't recall that being my primary emotion. And not because I wanted to wipe away the stain of the ex by, um, turning to the next chapter in Penises I Have Known (a possibly multi-volume tome that really needs to be switched to the Kindle version), although that impulse -- the impulse, quite simply, to have the ex not be The Last Person I Fucked -- was strong. But because I wanted the First Person I Fucked, post-divorce, to be L. I wanted the first person I had post-divorce sex with to be this guy who was hilarious and flawed and macho and hip-hop, this guy who wrote letters with cartoons drawn in the margins and who wrote short stories about Jesus or divorce or Robocop, this guy who, for whatever reason, had decided to let me in, and who looked at me back and got me. I wanted to lose my chastity arch with a person I really, to put it simply, liked. And who liked me back.
And at some point I had to ask myself if I was responsible for L.'s relationship with his fiancée, or for what he chose to do within or without it, and even as the woman formerly scorned, my answer was no. I maintain this is true. I don't think much of my ex's girlfriend, it's true, but she is not the one who betrayed my marriage. He is.
So we went upstairs. And we got naked. And as it happened, I wondered if all those feelings of grief and regret, the ones I had thought would make me cry the first time I had sex with someone other than my husband, would come back. But they didn't. I didn't come close to crying. Maybe it was because I was pretty clear about what I was doing. Maybe it was because enough time had passed. Maybe it was because I was with a man who (for all his apparent flaws and idiosyncrasies) was a better friend, lover, and boyfriend in 48 hours than my husband ever was.
It is a powerful thing to be looking in someone's eyes as you straddle him and realizing that he hasn't failed you as a friend.
We had sex. It was hot. And it felt like the first time. Not just because the quality of my relationship with L., and of my knowledge of myself, was so different than before -- also because, after the eight-month drought, it kind of hurt at first. But in a good way. Just exactly like when I was seventeen and having sex for the very first time with my boyfriend of six months, whom I loved, who loved me, and I knew that even though it hurt like a bastard, I wanted this, it would be good.
This time didn't hurt like a bastard. But it was a little uncomfortable at first, and the discomfort reminded me of why sex is so good and why we want it and how part of me had known that, even the first time.
So that was it. It was like being touched for the very first time. And as the argument goes in Reservoir Dogs, was it like that because I was vulnerable and I'd been fucked over a few times and I met a nice guy, or was it like that because of a really big cock?
That's a tough one. But offhand, I'd say both.
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