You like me! You really like me!!

“Put this on. And hurry. The other girl is already ready to go.”

He tosses me a plastic Safeway bag and I pull out what looks like a child’s tank top. I reach into the bag for the rest of the outfit, but the bag is empty.

“Wait, I think you forgot the bottoms.”

He laughs. “That’s it honey.”

“But you must be joking. Have you seen my ass?”

“Put it on. You will be fine. No one is looking at your ass.”

I stand perfectly still with my mouth open. Staring at him. He stubs out a Winston on the bar and reaches for his cell phone, clipped neatly to his belt. Staring down at the number on the 1996 Nokia he turns to head outside for better reception and yells over his shoulder.

“Hurry the fuck up.”

But I can’t move. A woman comes around the corner and pushes me into the bathroom. She’s 6’2” in her 4 inch white pumps and she is already wearing the white spandex dress that spells out Budweiser from her ample cleavage to about an inch below her pelvic bone, where she is pulling the dress down to keep it from rising up in the back over her perfect uncellulited ass. Any higher and there is no mystery as to whether or not she is wearing panties.

And for the record, she is not.

“I can’t put this on. He must be kidding.”

“He’s not kidding. Do you need some help? Because we need to get going.”

But I can’t really hear her. I’m going into the early stages of physical shock. I can’t believe that I am here and that I am about to do this. Me. The geeky girl that played the clarinet in the marching band and had braces until my Junior year. I’m about to slip on the white spandex dress that will transform me into a Budweiser girl. Every 21 year old boys fantasy.

My knees are shaking and the other girl sounds like she is speaking to me from the top of a tunnel. What makes me think I was good enough to be looked at? What makes me think I am thin enough or pretty enough to have men clamoring for a Polaroid photo of me in this dress. This dress. This tinsy, tiny, white spandex dress. However did I get here?

What makes a card carrying feminist don a white spandex dress and frolic flippantly in front of an audience of toothless men?

Attention.

For most of my life, I have sought it. Craved it. Built a lifetime of hypocritical moments to attain it.

Look at me! Talk to me! Tell me I’m beautiful. Important. Special. Validate me.

I grew up in the William Hung generation, where anyone can be famous. The myth of celebrity that if you are famous then you adored. You are loved. You aren’t lonely any more.

One only needs to see an interview with Teri Hatcher to know that isn’t true.

So what is it about being seen that is so alluring, so intoxicating that we are willing to be made a fool of just to have a taste?

Filed under: Uncategorized, Family of Origin, Melancholy Reminiscing

The Woodland Park Zoo

“Well there is an example of behavior learned in captivity.”

Betty and I are at the Woodland Park Zoo, the day before I depart for Philadelphia, watching an ostrich peck incessantly at the metal cage that divides us. We have been watching for the last twenty minutes.

“It’s as if he thinks that eventually he will break through.”

“It’s disturbing.”

My cell phone rings and I can barely look away long enough to answer the phone

“It’s Paris calling.” I instantly recognize the French accent speaking to me on the other side of my cell.

“Didier!”

Didier tells me he wants to spend my birthday with me in August. This makes me nervous. I met him a year ago for a night of flirting and unrequited crushing. We have kept in touch. But our monthly phone calls have made us both real. And over the past year I have pretty much erased my fantasy image of him.

Gone is the mystery of that first night strolling through the streets of New Orleans, trying on the idea of something romantic and exciting with this foreign stranger. The last year has changed me. Now I’m afraid of things that move too fast. They feel false. They hurt.

I have to stay focused on my belief that patience and friendship are the true foundation of lasting relationships. I try not to be excited, but I am. More than a little.

I should know better.

I hang up the phone and chase after Betty who has already moved on to watch them feed the tigers.

Filed under: Uncategorized, Boys Suck, Life Lessons

Happy Father’s Day!

Rainbow Pop

I am seven and have just endured a day of yard work under the tortuous leadership of my sadistic older brother Jeb. He hit Francine with the rake and she sulked in tears under the tree refusing to continue. Kay tried to smooth it over, but Jeb threw her in the pile of leaves. Miraculously, we somehow made enough progress for Dad to pile us into the back of the suburban and drive us down the street to the gas station where we each get to pick out our favorite flavor of rainbow pop. It is a sunny spring day and Jeb, Kay, Francine and I are all allies while we sip our pop out of old fashioned glass bottles leaning against the car in the gravel driveway. Dad buys a case and we all drive home. I get to sit in the front seat. Next to Dad.

Snot

The winter means ski trips and stolen moments with Dad on the chairlift between runs down Crystal mountain. Dad has me giving him a book report on Ramon Quimby, Age 8, which is one of my favorite books, because I am also eight. It’s so cold that my nose is running and I can’t feel it. He looks at me, removes a leather glove, pulls a Kleenex from a pack of tissues in his pocket and puts it over my face.

“You got a runny nose kid.”

When he pulls it away, I feel as if half my face has been removed.

“Well you have snot icicles hanging from your moustache.”

Devo Dad

The Schmo residence is the first on the block to get MTV and my father has seen a video of a song he wants to find. Arriving at the door to Tower Records, he disperses his seven children with the mission to locate a cassette tape by a group of five or so men with slicked back hair, one wearing an oversized white suit jacket. We scour the store before I find a record cover with five men wearing funny red hats. He takes a look at it and declares the search over. He buys all of Devo’s cassettes and once in the car, we play thirty seconds of every song, fast forwarding to the next to try and find the right tune. Dad doesn’t have to try very hard to make the experience fun for everyone. By the time we arrive home, we have discovered that Devo is not the right band. Dad hands all the cassettes to me and Devo becomes my favorite eighties band of all time.

It is the following week when we are watching MTV and the video reappears. Dad jumps off the couch. We kids sit with our jaws dropped, staring as our dignified and serious Neurosurgeon father uses his right hand to karate chop across his left forearm singing along with The Talking Heads, “…this aint my beautiful wife, these aren’t my beautiful kids…”.

Thanksgiving

It is the awkward years. Dad and I had not spent much time together since I had turned 16. I came home, he left the room. I phoned, he handed the receiver to my mother. We just didn’t have much to talk about. But I insist on staying connected to the family and at least trying, no matter how disastrously I fail. This year, I have decided to make Thanksgiving dinner and include everyone in the event. The idea of his children in his kitchen messing up the order of his spice rack is enough for Dad to offer to take us all out to the Yacht Club for turkey and gravy. But I am determined. I’ve planned out the menu, assigned each sibling a dish, timed out the items and began chopping and prepping at nine AM that morning. Dad has been up since 5 am and coming in and out of the kitchen to periodically throw a discerning glance over my shoulder. As the afternoon wears on, each one of my siblings reluctantly begins their contributory dish. But then they get bored and leave the kitchen. So five various projects have begun in different corners of the kitchen. Dad enters, he sees me, I haven’t left the kitchen since I arrived. I’m smiling. This is me happy.

He puts on an apron. We don’t speak, at first. But he begins looking over my shoulder at the recipes and next I know he is beside me. Chopping. The other siblings wander into the room, Mom begins a puzzle on the kitchen table. Dad and I are rolling dough, talking about apple consistency. Tigersmiles is popping green beans over the sink. Joe begins peeling potatoes for his contribution of mashed potatoes. Georg is reading through his recipe, one step at a time. He thought he was making stuffing, but in the end it turns out to be a frisee salad.

Dad and I are working in tandem to have everything perfectly timed. I line the wok with oil, a few red pepper flakes, some garlic and a pinch of salt. He is over my shoulder with the beans ready to drop them on my cue.

“Not yet Dad. I’m letting the oil absorb the seasoning.”

“Where did you learn that?”

“In culinary school.”

“Hm.”

Dad cuts the onion up for Georg’s stuffing/salad. He dices into identical thin slivers, his hand working the knife with expert precision.

“Where did you learn that?”

“Practicing on peoples brains.”

“Nice.”

Grandpa’s Fritters

I am home for Christmas and there is a strange older version of my father living in my parents house. Dad moved Grandpa home a few weeks after his 100th birthday. I’ve met Grandpa three times in my life, and now he is shuffling about in a wing of my parents house, designed for his comfort and ease. Dad gutted two rooms, lay wood floors, and installed bars to make the bathroom handicap accessible.

Christmas morning finds my father up at 3 am to start making my Grandfather fritters the way my Grandmother used to make them. When Grandpa joins Dad in the kitchen, I can hear them talking as Dad buzzes about with the dough, the oil and the powdered sugar.

They talk for a few hours. No one talks to Dad for a few hours. You are lucky if you get a few minutes. I peek my head around the corner to stare. Yes, it’s true, my father is someone elses son. A son who just wants to make his father happy. And I get that.

Half a Euro

I’ve just returned from a walk across Bryant Park to grab my lunch and head back to eat at my temporary desk located in the Board Room of the New York office of my firm. I’m sharing the room with four colleagues when my cell phone rings.

A deep and barely audible voice. “Hello from Italy.”

“Who is this?”

“It’s your father.”

And I’m sure it is some imposter, because in thirty one years of life I have never once received a phone call from my father. And now, hundreds of miles away on a Rick Steves tour of Italy, my father has decided to place an expensive long distance call to me on his cell phone. To say hello. He must have gotten the number from my mother.

“Uh, hello.”

“Jane, your mother and I are having a wonderful time in your country. And I wanted to let you know that you can call the search party off. Stop looking. I have found your future husband.”

Now I am sure that our planet had been invaded by aliens that have taken my fathers human form and this man speaking to me is but a pod from some other world. My father doesn’t call me on the phone, he doesn’t address me by name, he doesn’t think of me when on vacation in Italy, and he certainly doesn’t care about the state of my love life. Unless it means he has to pay for a wedding. Which he had already told me he had no intention of financing after I turned 30. No, this man was definitely not my father.

“That’s great. I’m so relieved. Is the food good?

“Better than when you make it.”

Maybe it was my father. And in the background I hear my mother saying, “Oh stop it Joseph. Be nice.”

“So you are enjoying Italy?”

“Immensely. We have met the greatest group of people. But it’s the tour director that I’ve picked out for you. He’s seven feet tall. Right?”

And I hear a group of about twelve or so people chiming in behind him.

“And I know you like ‘em tall. He’s right here. I’ll put him on.”

“Dad. Dad. I’m at work. It’s not really a good time.” I look anxiously at the faces of my co-workers who pretend to be lost in their e-mail but are sucking up every word that I am saying.

I get up and start to head for an empty room in the office. But before I can find one, my Dad has put someone else on the phone.

“Buongiorno. I am Alfio. Your parents are delightful.”

After a short chat, my father gets back on the phone.

“Dad. What is going on?”

“Don’t worry honey, If you don’t like him I’ve got a few more that I met in Germany. I gave them your e-mail so you could follow up with them at another time. But I took their photos so I could show you what they look like when I get home. So take care, we will likely call you again from France. Especially if we meet some men on the train.”

There are howls of laughter in the background and I swear I hear the clinking of glasses, wine being poured and my father smiling.

“Okay then. Bye.”

“Yes. Ciao. And Alfio says he will call you later.”

Happy Father’s Day Pops!!

Look how much you have changed over the years…

I’m grateful for your presence in my life. Hope your day leaves you feeling appreciated.

Love, — Your Favorite Child

Filed under: Uncategorized, Family of Origin, Holiday

Dolly Parton

My mother has just had a double masectomy and Dad has returned from the hospital for forty five minutes to take a shower. He doesn’t expect to find me and Tigersmiles in his closet emptying out Moms bra drawers into green glad bags.

“What are you doing?”

Tiersmiles and I look at eachother and stop what we are doing.

“We didn’t think she would want to see them when she got home.”

He sighs and shakes his head.

“Good idea. I was going to do it. But I haven’t had a chance.”

“It’s okay. I think we have it under control.”

Dad just can’t seem to stop watching.

“Really, we got it. We didn’t want you to have to do it.”

He’s staring at the pile of La Perla and Victoria Secret. His eyes trace the outline of the beautiful lace, the delicate embroidery, the tiny details.

“You know. I bought her most of those.”

Tigersmiles and I exchange a glance.

“I thought you were going to take a shower. Are you hungry?”

He is still staring. “No.”

“Where are you taking them? She might want those later.”

“I’m not going to throw them away Dad. I’m just going to hide them. So she doesn’t have to look at them.”

“Okay.”

And he turns slowly and goes to the bed. And he lies down.

Filed under: Uncategorized, Breast Cancer, Family of Origin, Melancholy Reminiscing, My Faves

White

It is the summer of 2001 and I am somewhere in the Sahara dessert in the back of an old jeep with four men named Mohammed and an Egyptian bodyguard named Hosnik. Hosnik was assigned to watch over me by a government, ever protective of their tourism industry. I’m not sure how much money the government charged my friends for my protective custody. But judging by Hosnik’s 1945 British uniform and 1920’s rusty pistol, I am guessing that they are not paying him much.

When I met the four Mohammeds in Karnak I was assigned a security force of eight. Three rode in an open jeep behind me, three in a van in front and two in the car with me, one on either side. Those guards wore bullet proof vests and carried semi-automatics. But their uniforms still fell off their bodies like tissue in some spots. And their boots were covered in tiny holes.

It all looked very official from afar. But we all knew it was a big show.

When I had to stop the caravan for a bathroom break, four guards entered the restroom before me, came out and signaled I could enter. I entered a room with three inches of standing water, rolled up the bottom of my jeans and waded into the room to hover ridiculously over the spot where the Turkish toilet was buried under brackish water in the back corner.

This was Egypt. I had learned to expect challenged plumbing.

Whilst pulling my drawstring pants back up over my falafel filled ass, I turned back to see two distinct holes that had been punched in the wall behind my Turkish toilet. Three men stood on the other side giggling at the full viewing access of my western sized ass.

Cursing at my useless security guards I shook my Tevas out onto the sand, got back in the car and continued in silence until the lunch camp. It was here that we left the six guards with their fancy guns and chest plates. Apparently terrorists don’t venture this far into the dessert.

But we did.

The next leg of our journey is by jeep. So here I am bouncing around in the back of the car and trying not to bump into Hosnik for fear his ancient pistol will shoot my knee cap off and we will be 100 miles from the nearest hospital. I had been suckered into buying the travelers insurance from STA, but I don’t recall it covering air lift.

Hosnik is happy. He smiles a lot and chat’s easily with the four Mohammeds. Two of the Mohameds never look at me, Grumpy Mohammed doesn’t look at me or speak with me, but Friendly Mohammed is patient with my broken Arabic. He seems to mildly enjoy my company. Or at least he doesn’t carry the same bitterness for my whiteness, typical of so many of those we meet along our journey.

Last night, before we left the city, he watched me struggling with my Hejab. For as hard as I tried to cover my white blonde hair and farmer bronzed fingers, I couldn’t cover my Western origins. In this crowd, I would always be white. I would always be a foreigner. And I wanted nothing more than to blend.

When I walked into a room, the mood shifted, the conversation lowered to slow whispers, people left.

It was as if Friendly Mohammed knew that I so desperately wanted to assimilate. To be one of them. When the waitress approached my table with a $30 Shisha, Friendly Mohammed shooed her away. I didn’t dare smoke in front of the others. Even if we were in a tourist joint where all the women dressed in vintage belly dancing gear because that’s what the Westerners wanted to see. I am a woman, and that would be inappropriate. Because I am white, they would probably let it go. But then I would be drawing attention to my differences. So I declined. Friendly Mohammed darted his eyes to the back door, inviting me to meet him out back.

I did.

Out back were the waiters, their ties loosened, hookahs dangling off their lips. He sat me down and paid one of the waiters a few coins from his change purse. One waiter moved aside and let me sit and Friendly Mohammed placed the hookah in my hand. Because he knew I wanted to experience something that was typical of the Egyptian life. But there was nothing typical about me sitting in my Hejab, surrounded by unamused waiters, smoking apple tobacco in a cloud of dust rising up behind a touristed shanty.

“Shukran.” Thank you. And I shot Friendly Mohamed a thankful smile.

Now today, we arrive at an oasis as the sun is beginning to set a yellow glow over the horizon. Desert sunsets are like that. Yellow. The oasis is a small but thriving town and I immediately notice the warmth of the people. It is a warmth I didn’t feel in the city.

I notice wealth, clean buildings, streets without garbage, and clear water running into basins in the center of town. The children here smile wide, they wear crisp white shirts over burgundy school uniforms. The girls sport headbands and knee high socks. I wander down where all the children are gathering after school and one of the girls pulls off my head scarf. Someone squeals and they fall into little girl giggles, swarming to touch my white hair. I ask them if I can take a photo.

“Minfadlik.” Please. But I don’t have to ask again because most of the girls aren’t shy.

“Hello…What is your name…How old you are…Thank you.”

They ramble off every English word they know. The girl with the ponytail is shy and she doesn’t want her photo taken. But the other girls convince her I am harmless. They touch my hand to show her that I don’t bite.

“Ma ismok?” What is your name.

“Fajr.” She smiles and let’s me take the photo.

“Ma’assalama.” Goodbye. And she turns to join the others

“Fi aman allah.” And I wave at them as they throw dust behind their thin legs, running back to their homes for dinner.

I explore the city, happy to escape the chaos of Luxor and Cairo. The oasis is clean, people are nice, they have proper toilets. I can walk the market without developing a crowd of salesman following behind.

“You are American? Follow me. I have an Uncle who sells carpets. I can make you a great deal. Come with me.”

In the oasis, no one seems to look at me with pained glances. Out here I am not someone to resent. I am just a friendly visitor with funny skin, light eyes and white hair. I am only one tourist, not part of a pack of hungry, greedy tourists trying to rob them of their culture and poison them with my Capitalism.

I wander back to the jeep and find Hosnik and the Mohammeds behind the local restaurant smoking Shisha. They stand up when I come around the corner and I realize that I have not rewrapped my hair since the playground. But at this point it feels useless. No matter how much I try to cover my hair, bleached white after a month at the Red sea, I can never cover up that I am a Westerner. I will never be able to assimilate; I can never slump down in a corner and observe the culture playing out before me like a local. I will always be a white foreigner and my physicality will always deny me from the Arab privilege.

The next morning, we take jeeps into the White Desert. I try to contain my amazement at the world transforming outside my window. The lonely desert is turning into the moon. Once the bottom of the ocean about a million years ago, the White Desert is miles of limestone formations sprouting up from the earth like life size mushrooms down Alice and Wonderlands Rabbit Hole. Everything is White. Some stone formations are the size of buildings. One looks like the profile of George Washington in one of those shadow etchings you get at Disneyland.

I am at home in the whiteness and it makes me giddy.

We light a fire. Grumpy Mohammed lays out our sleeping bags. Hosnik and I go into our nightly ritual of charades. This is how he plans to increase my Arabic vocabulary. But so far, we just act out funny sounding animals. And at this point, I figure I know the arabic word for 50 or so Northern African creatures. Tonight, his 6’3″ lanky body is framed by the light of the campfire as he slumps over and morphs into the form of a camel.

“Yella, Yella,” I sqeal. And we all laugh because this is what they told me to say to the camels when we were trekking into the Valley of the Kings.

“Yella, Yella.”

The four Mohammeds repeat with chuckles.

Maybe it was the Shisha, or maybe the long day, but Hosnik is laughing so hard now that he is falling over. And now all the Mohameds are laughing at Hosnik. And now I am laughing at the four Mohammeds. And I fall backward onto the white rock behind me.

That’s when I hear it.

The sound of air coming out of a tire. A slow, smooth, hiss.

“Hissssss.”

And I look to my left. There it is. Staring me cold in the eye. A hands length from my nose.

A snake. A white snake. A hooded white viper snake.

No larger than the garden variety we would find when weeding the yard back home. But a snake in the desert is never a good thing. She is in strike mode, her body raised up about a foot from the coil of her tail. And we are miles away from a venom. I don’t recall seeing a kit in the back of the car.

I slowly begin to move my body to the left. I don’t break my stare. I speak quietly in a whisper that only Friendly Mohamed could hear over the raucous laughter.

“Snake.”

It comes out like a prayer.

And then everything happens fast. I have pulled away a few more feet from the snake and the snake strikes. Friendly Mohammed is on his feet and has somewhere found a large rock. Hosnik pulls out his rusty gun. Friendly Mohammed brings down the rock on the snakes head in a swift blow that instantly decapitates. Hosnik begins shooting at the sand around the headless body. The other Mohammeds scramble to avoid the bullets ricocheting off the rock. And I am still half laughing at ‘Yella,Yella’, trying not to wet myself with confused delayed emotional response.

But no one else laughs. They are all cautiously staring down at the sand.

“Pack up. White Vipers travel with mates. Where there is one, you will always find another.”

I get it. Every word. Everyone snaps into motion. I help Grumpy Mohammed pack up the sleeping bags and we move to the top of one of the white rocks. As we lay out the bags on the stoney surface of the white mountain, the mood begins to lighten. The Mohammeds are alive with chatter about the scene around the fire. They are re-enacting my fall against the rock and my cool response. I zip myself into my bag as Grumpy Mohammed shoots me an amused look. In the eye. He says something in Arabic, very quickly and all the Mohammeds laugh.

“Lil’asaf, anaa ataHaddathfaqaT qaliil min aläarabiyya.” Unfortunately, I only speak a little Arabic.

“Haadhaa Hasan,” That’s all right, “Anaa afhamuk.” I understand you.

And I feel like I’m sleeping on the surface of the moon.

When we wake up, we travel back to the base camp. When the jeep stops in front of the oasis, the Mohammeds all scatter and I am left alone in the big tent with all of the Bedouin. I try to tell them the story of the snake which makes them begin hooting and hollering and laughing and slapping their knees. And then one asks me what kind of snake. I shrug my shoulders because I don’t know. There is no google in the desert.

So I put my index fingers up over my head and flare out my other fingers to show the hood and they laugh some more.

“It was white.”

And the room goes silent. And no one laughs.

“Very dangerous. Not many out this way. I’ve never heard of one in this part of the desert. You are very lucky. Those are the bad ones.”

Filed under: Uncategorized, Melancholy Reminiscing, My Faves, Travels

Re-entry

I hadn’t seen Professor Johnson since grad school. But when a friend called me up needing advice on a conflict resolution program in the Middle East, I knew he would be the expert to consult.

I met him at the Starbucks across the street from my office and he was waiting very gentlemanly near the door without even a thought to join the line snaking in switchbacks towards the back door. Professor Johnson was not worried about getting coffee and he wasn’t in a hurry. He was here to see me.

My momentary befuddlement about how to greet my old professor was swept away when he raised his arm and drew me in to a small hug and light kiss on the cheek. Tall, in his late 60’s, with a head of white hair and an honest friendly smile that stretched across his face with relaxed purity, he looked like the ice cream man from a Norman Rockwell painting.

I noted almost immediately that he now had two hearing aids, as opposed to the one he used to adjust during his lectures when his voice would begin to drop to an almost inaudible softness. You know how sometimes when someone lowers their voice; they duck their head like they are telling you a secret that they don’t want others to hear. Well Professor Johnson’s voice would lower, but like you had just turned down the volume on your favorite news program, his mannerisms and gesticulation would be unaffected. He would just keep on giving the news.

“So good to see you Ms. Jane. How have you been?”

And unlike so many people that ask you that question, he really wanted to know the answer. I could feel it.

We joined the Starbucks line. We found a table near the front door. I gave him the quick career run down. But there was something so genuine about him that I didn’t bother to throw in all the hyperbole and exaggeration that often accompany you telling someone from grad school how far you’ve made it in the real world. There is just something about his easy going and non-judgemental manner that instantly makes me feel safe. Safe, respected and appreciated.

I like that I can tell him the truth.

“And what about you? What’s this I hear about you working in Ramallah?”

With complete lack of ego, professor Johnson begins to tell me about his work negotiating with the PLO. He’s had an incredible career and an exciting life of meeting heads of state, living in the caves with Bedouins and helping resolve conflict amongst a nunnery in Iraq. It was his career path that first inspired me to study conflict resolution. I read his bio when I was selecting classes for my first year of grad school and I knew that one day I wanted mine to contain at least one of the stories I knew he could tell.

“Well, I asked you to meet with me because I thought you might be able to help my friend with a current project he is running in Gaza. He’s got Israeli and Palestinian kids playing basketball together to overcome their differences. He’s thinking about adding an educational element to the program and I think you could help him.”

I tell him a little about the program. And somehow he knows exactly what I’m avoiding trying to say are the weaknesses of the organization.

“Sounds like you might have a little trouble with re-entry. You can take these kids away from their communities and their parents and introduce them to kids that they learn to appreciate as being just like themselves. But when you send that child back home, he has to survive. And in order to survive, he has to assimilate. How do you get him to retain what he’s learned. How do you affect his re-entry into society?”

Then he looks me straight in the eye.

“What’s your attachment to this project Jane?”

And I know that he wants to know where I’m coming from before he answers so that he can only give me the information specific to help me solve my problem myself. That was how he would teach. I would wander into his office hours wanting answers and he would ask me questions. He would qualify my questions and try to help me figure out what I was really asking. Even if I didn’t know.

“Because when I heard this man speak, it inspired me. It reminded me of what we studied. What you taught me. And he’s making a difference. He’s doing it. What all of us talked about. He’s doing it.”

A smile spread across Professor Johnson’s face.

“Well that’s a good reason Jane. I think I can help.”

And we talked and he encouraged and offered consult and made me look at things in ways I never really thought to frame them. Or at least ways I hadn’t thought about in a long time. When we were all finished, I had established next steps and Professor Johnson wasn’t rushing to throw away his coffee cup or looking at his watch. He was really, truly listening to me. He was being of service.

“How did you get into this stuff?”

I asked him because I really wanted to know.

“That’s a good question. Let me tell you.”

And he told me about his brother-in-law being taken hostage by the Lebanese. He told me about moving to Cyprus and commuting illegally to Beirut for six dedicated years to negotiate with terrorist and arrange his brother-in-laws release. He told me about being passionate, being in the right place at the right time, letting things fall into place. And I could see that he loved what he did, and that his path had found him. He was combining what he was good at with the circumstances in his life.

And as if he knew that hearing all of this made me doubt my career path. He leaned across the table and gently encouraged me.

“I think you are going to do great things with your life and career.”

“Too bad you are not a fortune teller.”

“Jane. Look at all you have done with your life. All the different areas where you have gathered expertise. Those experiences are always applicable and can always be pulled forward. You just have to take the opportunities as they present themselves.”

He went on. But his voice dropped. I could see his lips moving and observe his tender and thoughtful expression as he carefully chose words that I couldn’t hear. But it didn’t matter, I was lost for a moment in my own head.

I sort of felt this little sting in my eyes. The sting you get when you read Hallmark cards or watch the Lifetime movie of the week. I felt a little, well, emotional. In broad daylight, in the middle of my work week, on a lunch hour mere steps from my office, I actually felt something real.

Professor Johnson was demonstrating for me what it meant to make a difference in other peoples lives without ever having to fly to Bosnia and live in the middle of a war zone. Without even having other people understand exactly what you were trying to say.

“Thanks Professor.”

“You know, you don’t have to call me that anymore. The name is Bill.”

But we both knew, he was still my teacher.

Filed under: Uncategorized, Life Lessons

Google

It’s Tuesday night and I’m bored. I don’t have cable, because TV hits my system like crack cocaine and once I start watching it I can’t stop. If I had a TV I wouldn’t read. I would never return e-mails and I certainly wouldn’t spend idle hours every night surfing the net. Unfortunately, boredom and idle hours surfing the net signals certain danger.

I google an ex. Nothing interesting pops up. So, I google another.

Something new pops up. In my periodic spot check of googling and cyberstalking ex boyfriends, nothing has ever popped up for Wes before. Wes was a few years back. I called him ‘shower boy’ because of his propensity to take showers immediately after copulation. Each time using a fresh bar of Dove soap. Cleaning me off of his skin in the shower he would spend almost a half hour in the bathroom and usually I would be asleep by the time he came back to join me in the bed, a trail of shower steam bellowing out from the bathroom door behind him. But if I wasn’t asleep, I could watch him pull the covers up neatly around his chin, tuck the sheet around his body like a mummy and lay his head on the pillow, careful not to mess his hair or touch me in the process. For obvious reasons, we didn’t work out.

But like most ex boyfriends, over the past few years I had thought about him. Occasionally thinking I had been too hasty. We had so much fun together. We went out all the time. He was really hot. Maybe I judged him too harshly. And like bending back the corner of a page in a good book, I marked Wes as a spot I might want to come back to in the future.

And now here I am looking at his bio on the web page of his MBA program. I am ready to read that he had ended up in an insane asylum for the OCD impaired. Surely after the devastating loss of the only one real deep character in his life, Wes had dropped out of school and gone into the seminary to seek meaning in his life. I mean this is a feelingless ex that I imagined was never going to find true happiness or experience emotions without me. But sure enough, he is still alive. He has not committed suicide after losing me in his life. The photo doesn’t reveal a priest collar. And from what I am reading he is doing disturbingly well.

Shit, now I can’t stop thinking about Wes. I pick up the phone, find his name in my cell directory, stare for a very long time considering the consequences, and I call him.

“Is that you I saw jogging shirtless down 17th street the other day? Or was it some other hot young stud in great shape?”

“Schmo, how you been? I haven’t heard from you in forever. 17th street? Are you in DC?”

Not being one for chit chat with men, I keep my answers short. I am feeling him out for weak spots. Am I imagining it, or did his voice crack a little when he said my name.

“I finally got my apartment decorated. You should come by and check it out before I take off for the summer. I set it up exactly like you told me to. Looks good.”

“You’re leaving for the summer? Where are you going?” Here it comes. He’s been incarcerated for public drunkenness. Perhaps he was found crying in his beer over the loss of my affections. Some poor man bumped into him at the bar and Wes, who spends an uncomfortable amount of time preening in the mirror at the local gym, turned around and popped the guy in the face with a very well toned bicep.

“I’m going to Europe to study abroad.”

Who the fuck was this guy and where was my ex Wes? My Wes was xenophobic, and thought men wearing jeans that fit were gay. My Wes didn’t want to go out of his neighborhood to eat, for fear some homeless guy would scratch the Beemer. My Wes thought movies with subtitles were too much work, voted Republican and felt all waiters should learn English. What the hell was he doing going to Europe to study?

“I’ll come by tomorrow on my lunch break.”

And I do.

We sit on couches at Tryst and order lunch. I’m wearing a business suit, which is a stark contrast to when I first met Wes as a waitress at 18th Street Lounge. Wes is wearing a pair of men’s Seven Jeans and a faded tee, which is a stark contrast to the suit, tie and white pressed shirt combo I would see him in when he shook the bed to kick me out so he could lock up and go to work in the morning. He didn’t like to leave girls alone in his apartment. Apparently he was afraid I might break into his Dove bar soap collection or use some of his man products lined up next to the sink like little toy soldiers on display.

He has the Tuna. Which is also weird because tuna fish has mayonnaise and my Wes eats egg whites and one slice of wheat bread and then touches his six pack all night to feel for muscle loss.

I order salad. And after the lady walks away, I realize how awkward it will be to eat a salad whilst sitting on a couch, one nude fishnet leg tucked under my chocolate brown skirt, talking to my ex boyfriend that I haven’t seen in over a year.

We talk about family and we talk about work. And then he asks me about my love life.

“So are you seeing anyone?”

I swallow a lettuce leaf and wipe the olive oil off my right cheek.

“Are you?”

I use my CIA interrogation tactics to turn the question back on him.

“Yeah. You know me.”

Well, apparently I don’t anymore. So I feel compelled to ask.

“What does that mean?”

“Well, I dated someone seriously, after you, for like a year. She was a little debutante chick. Had all kinds of daddy’s money.”

It stings a little bit. Wes and I were plagued by his inability to commit. I tried desperately to engage him in conversations about feelings, but he was steadfast about keeping all of our interaction surface deep. Ten months of talking about the weather, politics and other people. Even in the bedroom, I couldn’t get Wes past the superficial.

I mean, don’t get me wrong. I’m the Queen of superficial relationships outside of the bedroom. I can keep it light and breezy and easy. As long as I can get my attention fix through intense and passionate screwing that communicates without words, “I like you. Lots.” But Wes didn’t even give me the tongue when we kissed. In fact, we hardly kissed. He just flipped me over and did his thing. So I rarely knew what kept him calling and coming back.

Based on this, I was constantly trying to break things off with Wes. I would explain that I needed a little more from him. He would feign confusion and tell me I was blocking the TV set. I would throw up my hands. “I’m done, you are just not that into me.” But then he would call the next day and ask me to dinner or a concert or a show and I would go. Because I thought this was his way of showing me what he couldn’t say. I thought that deep down he must have real emotions for me, and he just can’t say them. But those emotions never surfaced, were never spoken and well, I guess I have to accept that they may have never actually existed. And now I discover that after me he was able to commit to someone. Someone that was not me.

“So what happened?”

I didn’t really want to hear the answer. I had always told Wes that someday he would find someone special and someone that moved him.

“Well, it started well. We were having fun. Hanging out. But then she got all heavy. I think she was crazy or something. She started talking about marriage when he had only been dating a few months. It was so weird.”

Oh thank God. It is my Wes. The color is beginning to return to my cheeks.

“She started getting all jealous and bitter. She said I wasn’t serious enough for her. Can you believe that?”

And he looks at me, because he knows that I can.

“But she had a lot of money. She was going to buy a house from my Dad. Really pissed him off when we broke up and the deal fell through.”

And my Wes is back. But just to make sure, I have to ask.

“Did you love her?”

He rolls his eyes and scoffs.

“Jesus Schmo. You cut to the chase. No. But I told her I did the day before we finally broke up.”

I wince.

“Don’t look at me like that. I had to say something. My Dad was going to lose a huge commission. ”

Bingo. It’s my Wes.

“Oh Wes. I don’t think she is crazy. Sometimes girls get jealous when they aren’t sure about your feelings for them. When you don’t put out a lot of signs or tell someone how you feel, they are forced to read every little action. And often people react with a lot of anger when they are frustrated. It’s frustrating to not know how someone feels about you. And I don’t think there is anything wrong with a woman believing that if you are still with her after a few months then there is potential for something bigger. You know?”

We both know I’m talking about me.

“Yeah, well, she’s 22. She has plenty of time to find someone new to latch on to. And there are plenty more 22 years olds out there dying to get Big Daddy Wes to take them to a Zagats rated restaurant. I’ve got another 22 year old up to bat right now.”

“Yeah, Wes, well you’re 35. And how long are you going to keep dating 22 year olds? At some point you are going to have to have a grown up relationship. I mean, don’t you eventually want to have something deeper?”

“You sound like my sister.”

And suddenly I remember the pain of dating this man. The pain of never feeling good enough. The feeling that if I was just prettier, younger, firmer, then maybe he would look at me and say something nice. The belief that there was something wrong with me that made him unable to show me the affection and attention I deserved. I recall how much it hurt to be with someone who didn’t make me feel sexy or beautiful or wanted. I think of that 22 year old girl and I want to save her from the bad sex, shallow conversation and constant rejection.

“What time is it? I think I might need to start heading back to work.”

I grab for my Blackberry to look at the time and he grabs for my arm.

“Well wait. You want to come up and look at my place?”

He raises an eyebrow.

“Nah. I can’t. I’m running a little late. Maybe next time.”

But there won’t be a next time.

I’ve read this part. I already know what happens. There is no need to go back and read it again.

Especially not when there are so many good books out there I’ve yet to read.

Filed under: Uncategorized, Boys Suck, My Faves

The Massage

I’ve had a late night at work, it’s raining and I’m procrastinating going to the gym. I decide to stop off at Body Co. on Connecticut and get a massage.

“Do you take walk-ins?”

“Sure. You want man or woman?”

“Whatever you have.”

G appears in the doorway. He is young, he is cute and he is Brazilian. Knowing my weakness for foreign men and accents, I wonder if it’s too late to trade in for a woman. Would that be rude? I mean, a massage is meant to be relaxing and I don’t want to be thinking about arching my back and sucking in my gut the entire time. I resolve to sleep during the massage.

I take off all my clothes down to my white hip hugger sheer panties and I get under the crisp cotton sheet. I flip over on my belly and place my face in that horrible little hole at the end of the table. He enters. He dims the lights. He puts on soothing music.

“Are there any areas where you need extra attention?”

Yes. My ass is very sore and I could do with an entire hour of ass rubbing.

“Um. My lower back?”

“Great.”

And he begins by pressing on my back through the sheet. By the time he pulls back the sheet to expose my back, I’m already feeling a little, well, damp.

“So you’re from Brazil.”

“Yes. “

“I hear the women there are beautiful.”

“Is true.”

And he kneads into my fleshy arms.

“Is it true what they say about plastic surgery in Brazil.”

“Depend. What they say.”

“Just that a lot of women get it.”

“Yes. Many women trying to look perfect. Many men too. The new thing is butt implants. But you no need one of those.”

I blush. But he can’t see my face.

“I maybe need some.”

“G. I can’t really see your ass at this moment, but I’m sure you are perfect just the way you are.

“No, I really need work out.”

“I guess I used to feel that way about myself once as well. I’m just happy that I’m finally at an age where I don’t care anymore.”

“You can never stop caring. You stop going to gym?”

“Well. I go to the gym. But I feel like I’ve accepted my body. You know? I can only change it so much.”

“I a personal trainer and you can always change your body. You just need to work harder. Watch diet. Go to gym more.”

“Yeah. But in the end, how much can you really change your body. In it’s natural state, it only really fluctuates by a few pounds here and there.”

“Nobody happy with their body. Can always make better.”

“I’m happy with my body.”

“Just like it is?”

“Just like it is.”

“You don’t think can get better with workout and diet.”

“I don’t think I will ever look like Cindy Crawford. No matter how hard I work out or what I restrict myself from eating.”

At this point, he has moved onto the most unflattering part of my body. He pulls the sheet back to reveal the backside of my leg and upper thigh. He lowers my sheer white panties and tucks the sheet into them.

“How old you are?”

“Um. 32.”

“Oh. That old? You look good for thirties.”

“Thanks”

Now he is caressing the inside of my thigh and I decide it is time to end the discussion. There is something too oddly intimate about inner thigh massage and discussions about age and beauty. Although I am not sure which makes me more uncomfortable.

After G has rubbed me down to my toes, he covers me back up with the towel, comes to the center of the table, holds up the towel and asks me to flip. I’ve had a massage before. Usually they tell you to turn away from them to protect your modesty. Usually they are not looking while you flip. He looks.

I flop over on my back and try to breathe through my nose. Hanging upside down always makes me a bit congested. He starts rubbing my shoulders, down my arms, over my thighs, down my knees and back on my toes.

As my time wears down, he comes around to the tip of the table and starts touching my face. Very slowly.

“You have a husband?”

“No.”

“A boyfriend?

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I’m not really interested in one.”

“How come you no want boyfriend?”

“Boyfriends are boring.”

“Well, I done with that party life. I want a girlfriend. Clubs are boring.”

“I agree. Clubs are boring. But if you don’t have a girlfriend and you don’t like clubs then wont you make yourself go out and find new things to do?”

“Like what?”

“Like bowling or book readings or theater or museums.”

“Sound boring.”

“How can you say that?’

He finishes rubbing my face and I open one eye to realize that the room has become incredibly dark. But not dark enough for me to realize that G’s face is very close to mine.

I feel his breath on my eyelashes when he speaks.

“Boring because you have no body to see all those things with.”

And I think he might kiss me. But he doesn’t. He pulls his head away and pats my nose with the tip of his index finger.

“You have a beautiful nose.”

And he leaves the room. I lay there for a moment staring at the ceiling and thinking. Then I pop up off the table, get dressed and take myself out into the lobby.

G is sitting behind the counter with a cup of tea for me.

“Feel good?”

“Yeah. I feel great. Thanks.”

I’m sure I have eyeliner making deep dark circles around my eyes. And hair sticking up in strange places.

I pay. I tip. And just as I am walking out the door, he comes around the counter and hands me his card.

“Have good night.”

“You too.”

I get outside and take the card out of my pocket. On the back he has scrawled his cell phone number. And suddenly, I feel so naked.

Filed under: Uncategorized, Boys Suck, My Faves

Revenge of the Nerds

I met Wes after returning from two weeks in LA filming a reality TV show. When he came into the bar I worked at in Washington DC with his friends, I noticed him right away as the type of guy who rarely gave me more than an up and down glance.

Wes was the epitome of cool. He didn’t ask me stupid questions or talk incessantly about himself. He wasn’t looking around the bar in an anxious attempt to find someone to go home with.

Wes was hot. And for some unknown reason he kept grabbing my arm and trying to talk to me.

I thought he wanted a drink discount.

Two hours until 2 AM, I fell into the chair next to Wes, balanced my tray over my head and put my hand in my bar apron.

“What do you do when you’re not working the waitress at the local bar?”

He told me he worked out twice a week with a trainer and liked to find excuses to take his shirt of in public places to show off his ripped abs. I laughed. I thought he was joking.

He pulled my chair closer to him by grabbing it at the legs. “And what about you?”

“I do peacekeeping contracts for the government. Usually developing countries. You know, employment work shops, election monitoring. I once observed the Chechnya border for rebel crossings.”

His eyes glazed over. He was trying to drink three beers in the three minutes before the bar closed.

“Oh yeah, and I recently filmed a reality TV show”.

Then it was 2, the music had stopped playing, and I had legions of angry customers waiting for their tabs. Wes leaned in and took his phone out of his pocket.

“Give me your number. I’ll call you. We’ll go out and finish this conversation.”

I stuttered out the numbers and then he and his friends left me to wash down the tables, pick up the chairs and mop the floor.

I wasn’t looking for anything serious. I had just ended an intense relationship and was busy with publicity for the reality TV show.

Wes was a chance to go back to high school. Except that in high school, I dated the newspaper geeks and exchange students. I thought Wes was going to be my ticket to the ‘in’ crowd, a fun-filled, shallow summer of barbecues, keg stands and copious amounts of meaningless sex.

On our first date, he picked me up in his brand new BMW and we went to brunch at a hip hangout along the Georgetown waterfront. Between bites of egg white omelet, Wes talked about sports, X-box and his ‘awesome’ relationship with his family.

Although he was animated about our topics of conversation, he barely looked at me. In fact, he seemed way more interested in catching his reflection in the nearby shop windows than the sight of my new Victoria Secret Push Up bra. I chalked it up as him being too cool to act overly interested.

I danced through a variety of topics trying to hold his focus. But the only one that seemed to catch his interest were the details of the Reality TV show I had just filmed. I was sworn to secrecy and had signed a five million dollar confidentiality agreement, but the experience made me sound so cool.

“Dude, no way!? So are you going to be in Maxim magazine? If you go to the Playboy mansion can I come? Can you get courtside tickets to a Lakers game?”

Shaking off the fact I had just been called ‘Dude’ for the first time since the 1989 summer release of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, I sought comfort in the fact that in 1989 he was likely playing quarterback on his high school FB team while I was playing the clarinet in the marching band.

Since I was on a low-budget, third rate reality TV show that I wasn’t even sure would make it to air, I indulged him with stories of the experience and found it quite therapeutic to discuss it in length with someone. We began to speak easily. Maybe a little too easily.

Devoid of any flirting or intimate connection, I sort of felt like I was talking to one of my girlfriends or on a very cordial job interview. I was shocked when at the end of our afternoon date he leaned over and gave me a closed mouth kiss on the lips. I was even more shocked when he called the next week to ask me out again.

Over the next few weeks we went to restaurants that had Zagat’s rated stickers on the window. We met his friends out at the hippest bars and saw blockbuster movies on opening weekends. He loved telling his friends that I had been on a reality TV show.

One day we ran into some friends at an Italian café. I ordered from the waiter in Italian and I heard him lean over and whisper to his friend, “she speaks like eight languages, you know she was on a reality TV show, right?” I mistook his pride for genuine affection.

Something was definitely missing. Things were not unfolding the way I had hoped. While I often joined the cool kids for nights of drinking, watching the game or barbecues, Wes never accepted invitations to meet my friends. He said they were all freaks, geeks and gays.

I couldn’t get Wes to have a deep conversation about anything. We talked about politics and current events, I listened to long rants about sports and we shot the shit the way I suspect 75% of most intra-male conversations flow. We had become buddies. Except that at the end of each evening I got a “Cool Dude”, followed by a pained, closed mouth kiss on the lips-the equivalent of an ass pat between soccer players.

After two months of dating, Wes still hadn’t tried to touch my double D’s. After a night of watching him get drunk in a loud nightclub, I asked him why he hadn’t made the moves on me yet.

“Dude, can’t we just hang out?”

I said it was cool if he just wanted to hang out, but that the pained kiss at the end of the night was sort of confusing and he could just stop doing that if he didn’t enjoy it.

“Schmo” he said, calling me by my last name and pulling me into a headlock, “Don’t get so heavy. Just relax, it should just be natural.”

After he saw my pained expression, he offered the incredulous, “I just don’t want to disrespect you”?

The next night, we attended a No Doubt concert about 45 minutes outside the city. Since I didn’t have a car, he picked me an hour late up and I listened to him talk on the phone with his brother for 45 minutes while we sat in horrible traffic.

At the concert, he drank too much to drive and asked me to drive his car back to his place. When we got back to his place he told me he was too tired to set up the couch and I could just sleep on the other half of his bed.

Perhaps this was my chance. I got into the bed and waited.

He started kissing me. I kissed him back.

I had been so beaten down at this point, I just wanted to feel wanted. Before I knew what had happened, Wes had skipped over the foreplay, put it in me about ten times and was finished.

Three minutes had passed and somehow we had done ‘it’.

Within 30 seconds he was up and headed towards the bathroom. I was still lying there catching my breath trying to figure out what had happened when I heard him opening a fresh bar of soap and jumping into the shower.

It was one of those moments when you could either cry or laugh.

I lay there recalling quirky things I had formerly overlooked. The forty bars of unopened Dove soap under his sink, the twenty minutes it took to fix his hair before we went out, the stubble on his chest when he hadn’t had time to shave, the way he would spend an evening out engrossed in conversation with a group of men at the table next to us.

After the shower incident, things changed for me. The fantasty began to wear thin.

We had fun together, we went cool places. We both wore cool clothes and everyone turned to look at us when we entered a room. I knew that Wes was never going to be ‘the one’ – But I wasn’t ready to stop being cool.

As much as I tried to keep the fantasty alive. My dream built on threads began to unravel.

After the publicity for the show ran out, invitations to the Playboy mansion missing from my mailbox, courtside tickets to the Lakers game clearly out of scope and shout-outs from strangers on the Subway lagging, I noticed a change in Wes.

It stopped being fun.

We ran out of things to talk about and our dates began to consist of me watching him top his score on X-box. My fifteen minutes under the bleachers with the Captain of the Football team were most definitely up.

But he continued calling.

Apparently he wanted some help redecorating his new apartment.

I moved to New York. He continued writing me with web links to furniture, rugs, drapes and lighting. He would call and ask me for advice on fabrics.

I stopped returning Wes’ phone calls.

I was tired of trying to fit in his world.

Being cool just doesn’t seem that important anymore. This square peg wants movies with subtitles, lingering dinners with friends in tiny no-name cafes. I want to sing karaoke and be silly, wear sweatpants and refuse to shower on Sundays. I want to spend an entire day in bed with someone that can’t get enough of my naked flesh on theirs. I want to be where I’m not trying to be like everyone else.

This square peg.

Filed under: Uncategorized, Boys Suck

Crushed

It started with a crush. It ended in a dark and dank hotel room with full frontal male nudity, McDonalds French fries and an unrequited kiss.

I liked him for the right reasons. I thought when he talked he sounded healthy. Whenever I heard him at an Alanon meeting he seemed so ‘together’. I was patient. I didn’t stalk. It took me weeks before I even stood close to him in the hallway during the break. And I’m not shy. I could have marched right up to him the first day I heard him speak and entered his phone number into my blackberry. But I didn’t. I waited. I was patient.

Three months later, I announced at the meeting that I was moving to DC for a short while. And he bit. He finally talked to me. Not in front of me. To me. And I was hooked. Even before he opened his mouth to get my email, I was imagining what brilliant intelligent and healthy thing would come out.

“So. Um. Can I get your e-mail?

It was like poetry.

I gave it to him.

Two weeks later an e-mail arrived in my in box.

“Hi there. How are you?”

Wow. He liked me. He really liked me.

We sent a few e-mails back and forth. I ignored his propensity toward emoticons. I overlooked his over usage of monosyllabic words. I tried not to focus on his simplistic view of the world and instead I thought about how all the little hairs on my arms stood up when I saw his name in my inbox.

On a weekend visit to New York I invited him along to catch my sisters play. That was when he told me he didn’t like women who liked him. Something about issues with his mother. Something about describing all his ex girlfriends with derivatives of the word ‘hot’. As in ‘She was so hot”. Something about being 39 and never having had a serious relationship. I was disappointed. Slightly disturbed. But I ignored my feelings. He was perfect for me. I had been so patient. Surely he was the reward.

Last week he wrote to say he would be in DC for the weekend and would I like to hang out.

He joined me late Friday nigh at 18th street lounge and we spoke few words over the heads of our friends and the sound of the pumping bass. So I was pleased when I woke up the next morning to a text.

Want 2 go 2 Baltimore w.us tonight?

I should have known I was in for disaster from the start. Running late, I took a taxi from Dupont Circle to Union Station. But that is the wrong direction. I was supposed to go to Grosevnor not Glenmont. I turned back. An hour late and thirty dollars poorer, I met him and his friends on the train platform.

“We got a convertible. Is it okay with you if we drive with the top down?”

“Sure,” I said eyeing the dark sky and folding my perfectly coiffed blonde locks down the back of my shirt.

“No problem. It will be fun.”

We arrived an hour and a half later at a dank hotel in Baltimore. My hair was teased back in an uncomfortable mop behind my ears. The crush and I couldn’t talk much over the hum of the passing air and the pumping 80’s tune from the front seat. He took a lazy seat in the lobby while his friends began to assemble around him.

It was his friend Rick’s birthday and Ricks girlfriend Alice had booked the entire trip off a late night google expedition. It was clear she hadn’t done much searching before she booked the reservation. We were two blocks away from Po’ House Street. Which was one block away from Martin Luther King Parkway. Neither is a good sign that you are in the right hood.

The rooms had no windows and crisp polyester sheets. There were two rooms and twelve people. When I lay my bag over the foot of the bed I would be sharing with three strangers, I somehow knew the night was going to go terribly wrong.

The rowdy crew dropped their bags in the rooms and started drinking right away. I saw my crush on the other side of the room. He didn’t drink either, so surely we could bond over this. But I couldn’t really catch his eye. He was laid out in a chair with his right hand tucked into the top of his jeans. Funny, in all my fantasies of him, not one ever involved a vision of him with his hands down his pants.

The crew cabbed it to a ghetto crab shack where the crush’s friends consumed sixteen pitchers of beer in the course of two hours. Conversation consisted of raunchy sex jokes, declarations of men’s gayness and a contest of who could say the grossest and most inappropriate comment to the waitress. Sometimes this sort of humor can be amusing, when played out amongst the witty. But in this crowd of dimwits with Britney Spears educations, it just sounded crass and tacky. “Country”, as Britney would state it. And she would surely emphasize this with air quotes.

The scene was dangerous for this recovering alcoholic. Suddenly, I was seventeen again, crowded around the keg with a red plastic cup making jokes that would make everyone look at me. How funny I thought I was, how much I would jockey for your attention by saying shocking and disgusting things. How disturbing it is to watch these buzzing idiots and realize how I must have sounded.

The posse moved onward to a piano bar called ‘Howling at the Moon’ and buckets of Long Island Iced Teas ensued. Shots, more buckets, beers to follow, and the groups buzz began to violently sway into a drunken slur. The class of the establishment was reflected by the patrons. I counted thirteen bachelorette parties, marked by women wearing white veils, ‘suck for a Buck’ t-shirts and sipping Coronas through penis straws.

To make the scene even more upsetting, my crush seemed to be thoroughly enjoying the scene. He looked everywhere, but at me. And this made me want to be noticed. What is it about that white trash world that makes you want to fit in, by showing off, showing a little more skin, or inflating your importance?

Crush smacked his friends when two barely 21 year old girls promoting a new liqueur approached the table in skin tight baby blue tank tops and white mini skirts that fell an inch below their asses.

“She’s so hot,” Crush said, referring to the bleach blonde.

Watching the crush salivate almost made me remind him that I was once a Budweiser girl, tied my shirt up to show off my ripped abs, wore white knee high boots, had hair that fell down to my back and sat on toothless men’s laps to take Polaroid photos.

But then I realized how ridiculous that was.

My crush’s friend Langdon took a neon straw out of his mouth long enough to respond.

“I’d like to stick my penis in her mouth.”

Langdon is so gross. But at least it was a reprieve from gay bashing.

“Dude. Talk to her.”

The girl passed and the crush looked timidly down at the floor. And I was thinking that maybe the crush was a good guy aftre all, just surrounded by very strange circumstances. I was reminded of my fantasy that he was smart and cool and perfect for me in every way.

“Is that your type?” I batted my eyelashes at the crush, ready to exchange witty banter and gain an ally in the center of all this insanity.

“She’s every mans type,” he said, and looked up to stare after the girl in the hopes she would drop something, bend over to pick it up, and give the crush a flash of her perfectly round ass.

I was staring too. I was staring at myself, thirteen years ago. A young girl defined by the amount of attention she could garner, a group of friends thinking they were bonding over the selfish consumption of alcohol, offensive jokes that disrespected the intelligence and position of all those around them, and a woman desperately seeking attention from the one man in the room who wouldn’t give it to her. Yes, I was seventeen again.

“Yeah. Every man’s type, ” Langdon repeated.

No. I beg to differ. I knew first hand that this woman was not everyone’s type.

And in that moment I saw how far I had come. Since the drinking. Since the attention seeking. Since the lying and the stealing and low-cut tops. Since I had been that woman.

“You know what? I’m tired. I think I’m going to head out.”

And I left. Because now I know I have choices.

I found my way back to the hotel and I waited for what I knew would come next.

As if I needed another reminder of what an asshole I once was, three AM brought the sound of eleven drunken men and women to the outside of the hotel door. They screamed, they howled, they ran up and down the halls yelling obscenities. They were carrying six large bags of McDonalds French Fries. Langdon entered my room, took off all his clothes and left them in pile on the floor next to my bed so he could streak down the hallways being chased by hotel security.

The crush went to bed, leaving me to struggle with the drunkards on my own. Once I finally got them all to calm down, I lay my head back down on the pillow.

That’s when I heard the Langdon stir, lean over and try to kiss his best friend lying next to him.

“Dude. What the fuck are you doing?”

“Oh. Sorry. I thought you were someone else.”

And I understood how he felt.

Filed under: Uncategorized, AA Stuff, Boys Suck