I wrote last week about my flesh-and-bone physiological sense of monogamy with Mr. Black. And it’s true. He is the best, smartest, sexiest, kindest, Simpsons-quotingest, left-wing-bloggingest, dish-washing, enchilada-making former rock critic that ever helped me fix a toilet. Nothing you can say can tear me away from my guy. I don’t want anybody else.
That is…I don’t literally want anybody else. But I must admit, there are times when the mind does wander. It wanders on its own, with no intention of asking the heart or the body to follow. But wander, it does. Out of boredom, out of habit. It’s the hypothetical never-gonna-act-on-it crush. And I’m willing to bet these crushes are a lot more common than we think.
I was single for a long time, and lonely for much of that time. Crushes could be soul-consuming, but more often they were just a pleasant diversion from coping with an unsatisfying job, absentee friends, or the latest disappointing non-relationship.
It took me a while to understand that a crush is not necessarily a call to action. It’s not your soul’s way of telling you it’s found its mate. No, it’s just some baser part of the mind saying “mmm, donuts” as it catches a particularly gorgeous pair of hands working a stapler during a particularly boring mass-mailing session at your non-profit job. You can acknowledge the hands and still have nothing to do with the person. Might seem obvious, but I was well into my twenties before I’d grasped the concept.
So maybe that’s why I find it such an awkward, unpleasant challenge to negotiate a crush now, with no chance or even the desire to actually see it through. First of all, I’m still breastfeeding a baby and barely even have a sex drive anymore. When some unexpected zing comes at me from left field, it takes a minute to even recognize what that feeling is. And then, the cover-up. The physical feelings of attraction are there, but you genuinely don’t want anything to come of it. You certainly don’t want the guy to notice and think you’re some sort of Mel-from-“Flight of the Conchords” freak. Are my eyes dancing? Am I looking too long? Speaking with too much enthusiasm?
And it does show sometimes. I’ve seen it show. Like that time when a bunch of us took our kids out for a snack after a group playdate. One of the dads bumped into a woman he knew from work. She was so animated, so vibrant. Her eyes were sparkling like Japanimation, her hands fluttered with Annie Hall charm. I watched her surreptitiously with fond recognition. I’ve been there, sister. But as soon as she left, the other dads started in on the guy. “What was with all the eye contact? What’s going on?” He was visibly uncomfortable and breezily defensive; everyone decided best to just let it drop and the conversation moved on.
And I thought: Shit. They notice. They really notice. And they tease each other about it and bristle with embarrassment at a woman’s undeniable, maybe even involuntary adoration. Damn. Note to self: Stop. Adoring. Don’t talk, don’t look at all. Don’t even look up. Now he just thinks you’re weird, but at least he won’t think you like him. Did I mention that my current crush is the guy who was doing most of the teasing about “eye contact” that day?
He’s got nothing on Mr. Black, that’s for sure. But he’s quirky and obnoxious, nerdy and funny, shaggy and bespectacled. Not something you see very often on the playground. So, in our insular little playdate circle, he’s the cool kid. And this quirky geek-girl feels her heart speed up a little when she sees him, against her will and all her better judgment. Damn.
How to channel these feelings? No flirtation, obviously. As little contact as possible, really. Just acknowledge the feelings, feel them honestly for what they are. Don’t attribute any extra meaning to them. Suppress a little chill when we happen to speak, act casual. “Don’t mention the war.” Hope he’s oblivious or at least benignly flattered and leave it at that.
If you must fantasize, it can’t be about real-life scenarios under which we might hook up. That borders a little too closely on infidelity for my taste. So, any fantasizing has to be completely out of context or a complete projection of your own desire onto him. Imagine he’s the one fantasizing about you. Fantasize about what you imagine he’s imagining.
If this is starting to seem a little ridiculous, well, that’s because it is. I mean, what’s the point? The guy who lives in my house kicks playdate-guy’s ass. I already have the best one. This is just a crush for the crush’s sake; to satisfy that part of the brain that still looks, that still hunts. Just a little something to get you through the day. But is it worth the adolescent anxiety and the fine-line-walking?
I’ve often wondered if I could ever psych myself into this dynamic with Mr. Black. Could I somehow generate crush-level-excitement for him by imagining he’s some cute, quirky stranger I work with? I mean, we’re practically like co-workers anyway, taking care of Impy and Chimpy and trying to keep the house from falling apart. Why not?
But then I try it and it never gets off the ground. Maybe this works for some people, but my Mr. Black…I don’t know. He’s never been big on the whole flirtation/seduction thing. We didn’t have much prolonged unrequited yearning in our courtship. I was instantly attracted to him when we met, and I instantly tried to be clever and funny and dry and just ended up confusing him. He moved on to another conversation while I curled into a ball of shame. But then for some reason, he found me again and started another conversation. I did much better on the second take. We coupled almost instantly.
But there have been many, many times since then when he’s been less than enchanted by my particular brand of kooky charm. He twitches up his eyebrows in smirky adolescent bafflement at my mishaps and incomplete thoughts. And he’s a very straightforward “Gotta watch Wapner” / “Time to make the donuts” kinda guy. That is to say, sometimes “The Daily Show” comes first. Sometimes he will break away from a kiss to finish doing the dishes. (And yes, I suppose in the long run it’s better to be married to the guy who puts the dishes first. Or is it? Yeah, I guess it is.)
But getting back to my original point, all of Mr. Black’s lovable quirks make it impossible to imagine being in a crush situation with him. If I had a crush on a guy who matter-of-factly blew me off for the dishes, I’d figure he wasn’t the least bit interested and move on.
The thing is, though, Mr. Black is actually rather fond of me. His utter inability to be mushy is a chronic issue in our marriage. But it’s a benign one. Like mild seasonal allergies. He is sweet in a myriad of unconventional ways, and I know and trust that I am loved by him. As long as I keep my feet firmly planted in that reality, I don’t think an occasional foray into crushburg will do us any harm.
Viva la Mel.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Mr. Kavorka Came Back (June 2008)
I dreamt I ran into Mr. Kavorka at a smelly old urban grocery store. We were both with our babies.(Does he even have a baby? Who knows.) But in the dream, his baby had shaggy black hair and dark wise eyes; an uncanny resemblance. We sat down on a bench to catch up, he draped that double-jointed arm around me and I sank into his chest. After a few small talk exchanges, he said he wanted me back. “It’s a little late for that,” I said, scoffing down my racing heart. “Why didn’t you answer any of my e-mails all this time?” And he laughed, matter-of-factly, “I don’t answer any of my e-mails.” Fair enough.
The dream proceeds. We’re trying to sneak off and be alone, trying to figure out what to do with our babies. We leave them sleeping in their shopping carts and curl up in our self-indulgence for a while until I suddenly and ferociously want my baby back. I race back and find her just in time, just as she’s waking up crying and concerned citizens are intervening.
I come home late, Mr. Black doesn’t even question it, and I suddenly realize that I have to tell him. Telling him will mean ending the prospect of an affair with Mr. Kavorka, which I don’t really want to do but know I should.
Then the dream completely switches venues; Mr. Black and the kids and I are trying to fly home from Canada, but we can only catch these little commuter planes in between towns. Vancouver to Port Angeles. Port Angeles to Forks. Forks to Seattle. Why don’t we just drive home?
And then I wake up. My first thought: Thank God that didn’t really happen, thank God I’m not really faced with telling my husband I cheated on him. My second thought: Damn. It didn’t really happen. Mr. Kavorka doesn’t actually want me back; he’s still the same old elusive non-mystery.
There’s nothing much out of the ordinary about this guy or my relationship with him. Same old story. College senior year drama, stolen star-crossed dorm room encounters, one intensely indulgent blissful summer before we moved to different time zones. I pursue, he withdraws. We go our separate ways and it tears me to shreds for a while. I move on, a few years pass, he moves back to the east coast and we fall back into bed like nothing happened. Minus the drama, minus the obstacles, a relationship in the conventional sense never happens. He does the old male angst bullshit pull-me-closer / hold-me-back dance that should have had me yawning even then. Eventually we part ways for good.
And, for the most part, I got over it and moved on like a normal person. There were other relationships, other unrequited obsessions. There were the early Mr. Black years, running toward each other through a field of independent films while Stereolab swelled in the background.
I even saw Mr. Kavorka in person a few years ago, right here in Seattle. He was in town with some friends who were recording a CD. In typical Mr. K fashion, he contacted me out of the blue with vague offers to get together. I’d return the message and not hear from him for days until it started over again. But we finally got it together and met for dinner. Mr. Black came too (he’s got his own Ms. Kavorka from his past and was remarkably understanding about the whole thing).
It was kind of easy, actually. We just sat and talked like any other old friends from college. No butterflies, no yearnings, no resentment or desperation. We caught up. Mr. Black and Mr. K had some interests in common and chatted with ease. He was visibly older and a little flakier. It was clear that we were in our own separate stories now, briefly intersecting, pleasantly irrelevant to each other in the present.
The next night, I found out I was pregnant with my son. It was as if I’d finally put the last of my Kavorka issues to rest, clearing the way for my life to really move on. And for a long time, it really felt like it was Past.
Then. One summer, visiting my parents, my mom asks me to clear out my old closet. And I came across the box of his letters. (You heard me, letters. Our courtship took place in the early 1990’s, before the dawn of AOL. “Hey everybody, an old man’s talkin’!”)
While my son napped, I read each letter one last time. With each one, you could connect the dots from the initial passion to the long-distance-relationship grasping to the years-later reconciliation attempts; poetic break-up letters, wildly-passionate-yet-neurotic letters, mundane letters telling me where he's sitting and what he's eating, what kind of pen he’s using to write. It left me feeling a little shaky, just a jumble of unexpected, irrelevant, outdated emotions.
And I threw the letters all away. Every last one. There’s no longer a trace of physical evidence in this world that Mr. K ever loved me. But he did. He wanted and resisted, pushed me away while mourning the loss of me. Trés High Fidelity. It’s always a jolt to read those old letters and remember that it wasn’t just him flaking out, it wasn’t just me yearning with empty arms. He loved me too. Adored my quirks. Admired small, ordinary details.
At the time I wrote “There's a risk that I'll ultimately forget these feelings, and the details, and it will all become lost or mis-remembered. But I suppose it's better off lost.” But instead, something was stirred. I missed him again. I thought about him again.
Months went by, with Mr. K still heavily occupying the corners of my imagination. It was mildly exhilarating and highly irritating. I tried to get in touch with him just for a reality check, to recapture the normalcy we had that time at dinner years ago, to make it feel Past again. But he didn’t answer. Six months passed and I e-mailed again. Nothing. When my daughter was born, I included him in the group e-mail announcement. Nothing. How humiliating.
I guess I don’t get to know why. Turning 39 this year with two kids, I just can’t bring myself to chase him anymore. Besides, I’ve already crammed so much closure down this thing’s throat, I can’t imagine a few more breezy e-mail exchanges would change anything.
I don’t know if I’d even recognize him on the street anymore. I don’t even want to have sex with him, really. It all exists in the abstract far corners of my mind with no intention of ever acting or even actively coveting. I love my life. Mr. K was right to be afraid of comittment; it’s not for the faint of heart. You get dragged through the trenches by your teeth, but there’s progress in that. Mr. Black and I have been through so much shit together, he’s in my blood now. Monogamy has become physiological somehow, not just a lifestyle choice. Flesh and bone.
When Mr. Black was having his little mid-life mini crisis over his own Ms. Kavorka, he admitted that it wasn’t her he missed as much as he misses that time in his life. Youth. The unbridled sense of optimism and self-actualization. I guess that’s as good an explanation as any.
The dream proceeds. We’re trying to sneak off and be alone, trying to figure out what to do with our babies. We leave them sleeping in their shopping carts and curl up in our self-indulgence for a while until I suddenly and ferociously want my baby back. I race back and find her just in time, just as she’s waking up crying and concerned citizens are intervening.
I come home late, Mr. Black doesn’t even question it, and I suddenly realize that I have to tell him. Telling him will mean ending the prospect of an affair with Mr. Kavorka, which I don’t really want to do but know I should.
Then the dream completely switches venues; Mr. Black and the kids and I are trying to fly home from Canada, but we can only catch these little commuter planes in between towns. Vancouver to Port Angeles. Port Angeles to Forks. Forks to Seattle. Why don’t we just drive home?
And then I wake up. My first thought: Thank God that didn’t really happen, thank God I’m not really faced with telling my husband I cheated on him. My second thought: Damn. It didn’t really happen. Mr. Kavorka doesn’t actually want me back; he’s still the same old elusive non-mystery.
There’s nothing much out of the ordinary about this guy or my relationship with him. Same old story. College senior year drama, stolen star-crossed dorm room encounters, one intensely indulgent blissful summer before we moved to different time zones. I pursue, he withdraws. We go our separate ways and it tears me to shreds for a while. I move on, a few years pass, he moves back to the east coast and we fall back into bed like nothing happened. Minus the drama, minus the obstacles, a relationship in the conventional sense never happens. He does the old male angst bullshit pull-me-closer / hold-me-back dance that should have had me yawning even then. Eventually we part ways for good.
And, for the most part, I got over it and moved on like a normal person. There were other relationships, other unrequited obsessions. There were the early Mr. Black years, running toward each other through a field of independent films while Stereolab swelled in the background.
I even saw Mr. Kavorka in person a few years ago, right here in Seattle. He was in town with some friends who were recording a CD. In typical Mr. K fashion, he contacted me out of the blue with vague offers to get together. I’d return the message and not hear from him for days until it started over again. But we finally got it together and met for dinner. Mr. Black came too (he’s got his own Ms. Kavorka from his past and was remarkably understanding about the whole thing).
It was kind of easy, actually. We just sat and talked like any other old friends from college. No butterflies, no yearnings, no resentment or desperation. We caught up. Mr. Black and Mr. K had some interests in common and chatted with ease. He was visibly older and a little flakier. It was clear that we were in our own separate stories now, briefly intersecting, pleasantly irrelevant to each other in the present.
The next night, I found out I was pregnant with my son. It was as if I’d finally put the last of my Kavorka issues to rest, clearing the way for my life to really move on. And for a long time, it really felt like it was Past.
Then. One summer, visiting my parents, my mom asks me to clear out my old closet. And I came across the box of his letters. (You heard me, letters. Our courtship took place in the early 1990’s, before the dawn of AOL. “Hey everybody, an old man’s talkin’!”)
While my son napped, I read each letter one last time. With each one, you could connect the dots from the initial passion to the long-distance-relationship grasping to the years-later reconciliation attempts; poetic break-up letters, wildly-passionate-yet-neurotic letters, mundane letters telling me where he's sitting and what he's eating, what kind of pen he’s using to write. It left me feeling a little shaky, just a jumble of unexpected, irrelevant, outdated emotions.
And I threw the letters all away. Every last one. There’s no longer a trace of physical evidence in this world that Mr. K ever loved me. But he did. He wanted and resisted, pushed me away while mourning the loss of me. Trés High Fidelity. It’s always a jolt to read those old letters and remember that it wasn’t just him flaking out, it wasn’t just me yearning with empty arms. He loved me too. Adored my quirks. Admired small, ordinary details.
At the time I wrote “There's a risk that I'll ultimately forget these feelings, and the details, and it will all become lost or mis-remembered. But I suppose it's better off lost.” But instead, something was stirred. I missed him again. I thought about him again.
Months went by, with Mr. K still heavily occupying the corners of my imagination. It was mildly exhilarating and highly irritating. I tried to get in touch with him just for a reality check, to recapture the normalcy we had that time at dinner years ago, to make it feel Past again. But he didn’t answer. Six months passed and I e-mailed again. Nothing. When my daughter was born, I included him in the group e-mail announcement. Nothing. How humiliating.
I guess I don’t get to know why. Turning 39 this year with two kids, I just can’t bring myself to chase him anymore. Besides, I’ve already crammed so much closure down this thing’s throat, I can’t imagine a few more breezy e-mail exchanges would change anything.
I don’t know if I’d even recognize him on the street anymore. I don’t even want to have sex with him, really. It all exists in the abstract far corners of my mind with no intention of ever acting or even actively coveting. I love my life. Mr. K was right to be afraid of comittment; it’s not for the faint of heart. You get dragged through the trenches by your teeth, but there’s progress in that. Mr. Black and I have been through so much shit together, he’s in my blood now. Monogamy has become physiological somehow, not just a lifestyle choice. Flesh and bone.
When Mr. Black was having his little mid-life mini crisis over his own Ms. Kavorka, he admitted that it wasn’t her he missed as much as he misses that time in his life. Youth. The unbridled sense of optimism and self-actualization. I guess that’s as good an explanation as any.
Ken's Class (June 2008)
There was this writing class I took in Philadelphia in the carefree 90's single days. It was called “Writing Short Stories,” and promised to introduce us to all the basic components. Plot. Characters. Dialogue. All the usual suspects.
The thing is, we were no strangers to The Short Story by then. Myself, I’d minored in fiction writing in college and had notebooks and floppy disks all over my apartment filled with fits and starts of Lorrie Moore/Raymond Carver wannabe attempts.
And my classmates were no different. There were lawyers, computer programmers, actuaries. There was even a state representative who showed up occasionally (the same one who appeared on the old "TV Nation" with Michael Moore and Crackers the Corporate Crime Fighting Chicken. Anyone? Anyone?)
We knew our writing was competent but mediocre. We needed those day jobs, and we’d given up on whatever delusions we’d had of writing as a career. But still, sometimes we just needed to step away from our cubicles and dip our toes in the creative realm again. And Ken, the teacher and ringleader, made us feel like we were writers for real.
How to describe this man? Overflowing with merriment and charisma. Laugh lines and an ill-advised mullet. Cackled at his own jokes, but most of them were funny enough that you could forgive it. Wide-eyed sincerity. He could make you believe that he was your best friend; that if you Needed to Talk he’d drop everything for you. Clearly it was fake, but not in the sleazy way it probably sounds. No. I believe it was fake with the best of intentions. I believe he really wanted to be that close with each and every one of us. He wanted to be that important in his students’ lives. Jaime Escalante of the disillusioned yuppies.
His approach to the class was thankfully more workshopy and less pedantic than the catalog described. You handed in a story when it was ready, and the following week everyone critiqued it. Aside from some folks trying to out-do each other with clever illuminations of how much something sucked, the critiques were quite helpful. And the stories were often really good. Every night after class, Ken invited us all to join him at a nearby bar that featured paper placemats with illustrated cocktail recipes.
People stayed in Ken’s class for years. They might still be there for all I know; I just Googled him and it looks like he’s still teaching it. Good for him. I took the class about four or five times myself. I wrote stories in much the same way my 4-year-old paints in preschool: with the immediate gratification of splashing color on a page, saying “Look what I did!” to a small appreciative audience, hanging it up to dry and forgetting about it. There was no purpose but the process.
Oh..and… (um… /preschool metaphor)… The guys. Those beautiful, sensitive, funny, quirky, wish-I-was-a-writer guys. There were always at least two or three crush-worthy ones, and the setting was perfect for hook-ups. You’d read each other’s stories and talk about them at the bar after class. Maybe move to a different table. Maybe walk each other home. Et cetera.
In retrospect, it must have been pretty obvious that many of us were looking for companionship. But these were the days before Match.com, people. We pretended not to notice each other’s thinly veiled desperation, because we were all in the same boat.
A friend of mine actually met her first husband in the class. Me, I didn’t fare as well. There was a promising date with a cool bespectacled 30something architect, followed by weeks of no phone calls, followed by a tolerable, reluctant one-nighter. I saw him a year later at Ken’s Christmas-in-July party (oh, you heard me) with his Laura Ashley-and-pearls-clad fiancée and he pretended not to know who I was.
There were dates and make-out sessions with a sweetly clueless 40something social worker who I probably could have long-term-relationshipped with. But something inside me slammed on the brakes. We became friends for a few years after that, but his disappointment became an overriding theme and we gradually lost touch.
And then there was the wildly insecure, emotionally sadistic 40something artist/bartender who blamed his erectile disfunction issues on my lack of appeal. He’d call me at work to break up with me, then end up trying to seduce me over the phone. He’d disappear for weeks, then show up lurking around my apartment building to kiss me on the neck. And disappear again.
You lose some, you lose some. Que será.
Ironically, while I was dealing with my motley bunch of suitors in the Writing Short Stories class, Mr. Black was taking Writing the Novel down the hall with a friend of mine. We would eventually meet at her party years later. And the rest, oh it’s just history.
Anyway. I’ve taken other writing classes since then, but nothing has come close to matching the real sense of community in Ken’s class. But lately I’ve been noticing some similarities between that class and our little Offsprung community. Think about it. Dynamic ringleader, check. Wacky group of undiscovered moderately talented intellectuals, check. We’re not desperately seeking romantic companionship anymore, but there’s still that need for creative expression and a connection with other humans who appreciate us on a different level than work or parenting allows. Hmm…
Or maybe it’s all just a bunch of stuff that happened. I don’t know. Homer sleep now.
The thing is, we were no strangers to The Short Story by then. Myself, I’d minored in fiction writing in college and had notebooks and floppy disks all over my apartment filled with fits and starts of Lorrie Moore/Raymond Carver wannabe attempts.
And my classmates were no different. There were lawyers, computer programmers, actuaries. There was even a state representative who showed up occasionally (the same one who appeared on the old "TV Nation" with Michael Moore and Crackers the Corporate Crime Fighting Chicken. Anyone? Anyone?)
We knew our writing was competent but mediocre. We needed those day jobs, and we’d given up on whatever delusions we’d had of writing as a career. But still, sometimes we just needed to step away from our cubicles and dip our toes in the creative realm again. And Ken, the teacher and ringleader, made us feel like we were writers for real.
How to describe this man? Overflowing with merriment and charisma. Laugh lines and an ill-advised mullet. Cackled at his own jokes, but most of them were funny enough that you could forgive it. Wide-eyed sincerity. He could make you believe that he was your best friend; that if you Needed to Talk he’d drop everything for you. Clearly it was fake, but not in the sleazy way it probably sounds. No. I believe it was fake with the best of intentions. I believe he really wanted to be that close with each and every one of us. He wanted to be that important in his students’ lives. Jaime Escalante of the disillusioned yuppies.
His approach to the class was thankfully more workshopy and less pedantic than the catalog described. You handed in a story when it was ready, and the following week everyone critiqued it. Aside from some folks trying to out-do each other with clever illuminations of how much something sucked, the critiques were quite helpful. And the stories were often really good. Every night after class, Ken invited us all to join him at a nearby bar that featured paper placemats with illustrated cocktail recipes.
People stayed in Ken’s class for years. They might still be there for all I know; I just Googled him and it looks like he’s still teaching it. Good for him. I took the class about four or five times myself. I wrote stories in much the same way my 4-year-old paints in preschool: with the immediate gratification of splashing color on a page, saying “Look what I did!” to a small appreciative audience, hanging it up to dry and forgetting about it. There was no purpose but the process.
Oh..and… (um… /preschool metaphor)… The guys. Those beautiful, sensitive, funny, quirky, wish-I-was-a-writer guys. There were always at least two or three crush-worthy ones, and the setting was perfect for hook-ups. You’d read each other’s stories and talk about them at the bar after class. Maybe move to a different table. Maybe walk each other home. Et cetera.
In retrospect, it must have been pretty obvious that many of us were looking for companionship. But these were the days before Match.com, people. We pretended not to notice each other’s thinly veiled desperation, because we were all in the same boat.
A friend of mine actually met her first husband in the class. Me, I didn’t fare as well. There was a promising date with a cool bespectacled 30something architect, followed by weeks of no phone calls, followed by a tolerable, reluctant one-nighter. I saw him a year later at Ken’s Christmas-in-July party (oh, you heard me) with his Laura Ashley-and-pearls-clad fiancée and he pretended not to know who I was.
There were dates and make-out sessions with a sweetly clueless 40something social worker who I probably could have long-term-relationshipped with. But something inside me slammed on the brakes. We became friends for a few years after that, but his disappointment became an overriding theme and we gradually lost touch.
And then there was the wildly insecure, emotionally sadistic 40something artist/bartender who blamed his erectile disfunction issues on my lack of appeal. He’d call me at work to break up with me, then end up trying to seduce me over the phone. He’d disappear for weeks, then show up lurking around my apartment building to kiss me on the neck. And disappear again.
You lose some, you lose some. Que será.
Ironically, while I was dealing with my motley bunch of suitors in the Writing Short Stories class, Mr. Black was taking Writing the Novel down the hall with a friend of mine. We would eventually meet at her party years later. And the rest, oh it’s just history.
Anyway. I’ve taken other writing classes since then, but nothing has come close to matching the real sense of community in Ken’s class. But lately I’ve been noticing some similarities between that class and our little Offsprung community. Think about it. Dynamic ringleader, check. Wacky group of undiscovered moderately talented intellectuals, check. We’re not desperately seeking romantic companionship anymore, but there’s still that need for creative expression and a connection with other humans who appreciate us on a different level than work or parenting allows. Hmm…
Or maybe it’s all just a bunch of stuff that happened. I don’t know. Homer sleep now.
how did I get here? (June 2008)
So. This all feels a little played at this point. You know. Unlikely parent finds herself parenting anyway and in a constant state of navel-gazing amazement at her ability to listen to Sleater Kinney while driving the kids to preschool in the Mommy-Mazda. Been. Done.
And yet, I'm compelled to write about it anyway. Who doesn't love a good navel gaze, after all?
I used to participate in an online parenting community with the word "hip" in the title. (And whenever someone didn't like what was going on, invariably they'd huff off with a caustic "I guess I'm not HIP like the rest of you.") Now I'm in this community, associated with "alterna-" and "hipster" parenting. Although I'm actually pretty ordinary, sitting here in my mom-shorts, SAHMing it up, volunteering at the kids' preschools, being all married and Target-shopping and middle classy. I don't even have a tattoo.
And from what I can tell, a lot of my fellow community members see themselves that way too. Often we're talking the same old shop talk that all parents have, only with more Simpsons references. So what makes it different?
For me, it's this:
This incredibly mainstream lifestyle I'm living was never inevitable in my mind. I never assumed this future or aspired towards it. Didn't quite believe I was...worthy of it somehow.
My single years were long and delicious, sometimes exhilarating, sometimes downright degrading. It was "Sex and the City" with Birks instead of Manolos, weed and cheap pitchers of Yuengling instead of cosmos, and an ever-changing rotation of friends and drinking buddies as folks moved in and out of Philadelphia toward some shinier destination.
It was the nineties and I was perfecting a sassy, acerbic persona. You know, to go with my glasses. I was Rhoda. Daria. Janeane Garofalo. But underneath the smirk I was more like Wiggle-Puppy, squirming and squealing with unspecified joy and neediness.
I have totes full of old spiral-bound journals chronicling this time period, and I hope to write about some of the more hilarious adventures here. There were some good ones.
But it all came to a euphoric end when I met Mr. Black at a party one night and we fell into a mutual swoon of blissful slacker couplehood. He became a permanent fixture on my ugly plaid couch. We traded Dirty Frank's for the Moosewood Cookbook; we'd spend our weekend nights cooking and watching movies, our weekend days having sex and sleeping and having sex again. And sleeping.
Ah, youth. Yeah, it's over. And it had the happiest of happy endings. Followed Mr. Black to Seattle, started a whole new series of adventures, got married, had two amazing children. And truly, I am incredibly happy. But I'm not quite ready to let go of the old dippy 20something identity just yet. I can see around the corner; we're grown-ups, getting over whatever sillly Gen-X prejudices we may have had toward a mainstream lifestyle. Because we're simply happy. And this is definitely where I want to be.
But I still need to keep in touch with my inner-20s-girl. Because she's still me...being too goofy on the playgrounds for the other moms, slacking off my fundraising duties for the preschool, faced with uncomfortable one-way never-gonna-act-on-it crushes. I'm still smirking jadedly and swirling joyfully with equal sincerity. No spiral notebooks this time, though.
So. Blogging. This will be fun...
And yet, I'm compelled to write about it anyway. Who doesn't love a good navel gaze, after all?
I used to participate in an online parenting community with the word "hip" in the title. (And whenever someone didn't like what was going on, invariably they'd huff off with a caustic "I guess I'm not HIP like the rest of you.") Now I'm in this community, associated with "alterna-" and "hipster" parenting. Although I'm actually pretty ordinary, sitting here in my mom-shorts, SAHMing it up, volunteering at the kids' preschools, being all married and Target-shopping and middle classy. I don't even have a tattoo.
And from what I can tell, a lot of my fellow community members see themselves that way too. Often we're talking the same old shop talk that all parents have, only with more Simpsons references. So what makes it different?
For me, it's this:
This incredibly mainstream lifestyle I'm living was never inevitable in my mind. I never assumed this future or aspired towards it. Didn't quite believe I was...worthy of it somehow.
My single years were long and delicious, sometimes exhilarating, sometimes downright degrading. It was "Sex and the City" with Birks instead of Manolos, weed and cheap pitchers of Yuengling instead of cosmos, and an ever-changing rotation of friends and drinking buddies as folks moved in and out of Philadelphia toward some shinier destination.
It was the nineties and I was perfecting a sassy, acerbic persona. You know, to go with my glasses. I was Rhoda. Daria. Janeane Garofalo. But underneath the smirk I was more like Wiggle-Puppy, squirming and squealing with unspecified joy and neediness.
I have totes full of old spiral-bound journals chronicling this time period, and I hope to write about some of the more hilarious adventures here. There were some good ones.
But it all came to a euphoric end when I met Mr. Black at a party one night and we fell into a mutual swoon of blissful slacker couplehood. He became a permanent fixture on my ugly plaid couch. We traded Dirty Frank's for the Moosewood Cookbook; we'd spend our weekend nights cooking and watching movies, our weekend days having sex and sleeping and having sex again. And sleeping.
Ah, youth. Yeah, it's over. And it had the happiest of happy endings. Followed Mr. Black to Seattle, started a whole new series of adventures, got married, had two amazing children. And truly, I am incredibly happy. But I'm not quite ready to let go of the old dippy 20something identity just yet. I can see around the corner; we're grown-ups, getting over whatever sillly Gen-X prejudices we may have had toward a mainstream lifestyle. Because we're simply happy. And this is definitely where I want to be.
But I still need to keep in touch with my inner-20s-girl. Because she's still me...being too goofy on the playgrounds for the other moms, slacking off my fundraising duties for the preschool, faced with uncomfortable one-way never-gonna-act-on-it crushes. I'm still smirking jadedly and swirling joyfully with equal sincerity. No spiral notebooks this time, though.
So. Blogging. This will be fun...
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