I think it may be clear that – generally speaking and on a regular basis – I love myself the menfolk.
You know how the New Year brings on the urge to rid your home and closets of clutter?
My closets have skeletons. Mostly male. And mostly live. I just like to keep them around.
At any given time, I have new men in line a-waitin’ an audition while the ex’s wait for a call-back.
This isn’t a “ooh I’m so hot, I can get any man I want”, because that is just not true.
Please trust and believe that my ass is way fatter than yours (and I’m wildly okay with that most of the time) and so my admission of more-men-than-I-can handle isn’t a competition or a challenge to be The Hottest of Women Alive because I WILL NEVER EVER WIN at that game.
No, it is way worse than that.
I think I may be a collector. It is a morbid hobby and it consumes most of my available mental closet space.
So my cleaning of closets started last year.
It started in the fall, when That Very Bad Lying Man from the summer came back around and professed to having made mistakes and wanting me back.
There were insincere speeches. There were insincere calls. The last insincere telephone call went like this:
Very Bad Lying Man: Hi. I love you.
moi: Oh Very Bad Lying Man, you do not. Stop this. All of it.
Very Bad Lying Man: Are you sure you want me to do that?
moi: YES.
Very Bad Lying Man: [hangs up. stops calling]
moi: [RELIEF]
And that felt so good. It felt good to just relent and admit to myself that although the words were pretty – of course they were, they were scripted and rehearsed – the person professing them was not.
It felt good to just be calm and decisive and honest and walk away.
So I was DONE with That Situation months before That December Phone Call from another woman.
When I heard that the Very Bad Lying Man was married, and a fraudster, I was not traumatized. In fact, I was a little relieved. All my suspicions were confirmed, I am not crazy, and what’s more, I called “rain!” long before he was finished the game. I decided this is not good enough and said no more.
That was good. So good that I’m compelled to repeat myself.
Still, I wrote about it and I think it appeared as though I was upset and in a deep, dark place.
I wasn’t.
I marvelled, though, at the chaos the Very Bad Lying Man sowed in so many lives. I even marvelled at how impoverished his own interior and emotional life must be to make him so hungry to rob other people – of their bank and of their butterflies.
But for me: no grief. No anger. Instead, confirmation.
Intuition, standards and judgement: briefly on hiatus, but firmly back in play.
So, with that loop being closed in the most surprisingly unsurprising of ways, other strings started knotting or unravelling, too.
There was a man with whom I had an ongoing, months-long flirtation. He kept asking me out. I kept saying no – but not because of anything to do with him, but because of timing, babysitters, the waiting list, etc. Still, I really was interested. He’s smart, and there was definitely a shiver of electricity between us.
Then, last month, I was excited about a piece I was writing, that really meant something to me. It was about sex. It was wildly enthusiastic.
I told him about it. It went like this:
Mr. Potential: How are you?
moi: I’m in freaking heaven. White wine, chocolate, writing about porn, sex, and love as an ashram. Go ahead. Try and top that.
Mr. Potential: Nice. Love as an ashram?
moi: Yes. I’m being poetic and extravagant. Love is an ashram.
Mr. Potential: It’s a nice conceit but…[rolls eyes]
moi: Is that at me? What was that about?
Mr. Potential: You’re fooling around with a conceit and academic theory when what you’re really talking about are human emotions and wants and needs.. and it is not just you… a whole body of literature does it.
moi: Sweetie, it is called a metaphor. It is a useful tool for thinking and exploring concepts.
Mr. Potential: I know.
moi: Why is that so exasperating?
Mr. Potential: Because it doesn’t get at the heart of the matter.
moi: You haven’t read the piece. You don’t know if it does or does not. But please, do tell me what is the heart of the matter is, in your opinion.
Mr. Potential: I suspect that you’re not laying out your real emotions and feelings about it. Your conflicts. Your real sense of who you are. Your shame.
(my shame. my shame? MY SHAME?
Please, man-who-wants-to-sex-me-but-has-given-up-and-therefore-no-longer-needs-to-maintain-the-facade-of-friendship – or even RESPECT – feel free to prescribe my sexuality to me.
Go ahead and tell me when and where and of what I should be ashamed. Because I am sadly remiss in that area, that’s for damn sure.)
(also, importantly: “Not having sex with you” does not equal “Ashamed”.)
Condescending. Patronizing. Malicious. Astonishing.
This – unlike the predictable betrayal by Very Bad Lying Man – was a surprise attack and and it wounded me.
What was it all about?
I knew you’d want to know, Dear Reader, so I asked him, directly.
moi: You know what is kind of disconcerting? When we started talking, I was bubbling over with positivity and inspiration. What was so irritating about that, that you needed to rub the shine right off my lamp?
Mr. No-Longer-Has-Any-Potential: You interest me but you won’t even have a drink with me so I’ve given up on that notion. Now when I talk to you, it’s more like a cat batting a toy. If I thought you were genuinely interested in me…… I would take your words more to heart.
I swear that I am not making this up.
I read somewhere – but can’t remember where, so if it was your blog, say hey! – that if you want to see what someone is really like, don’t give them something they want, and see what happens.
Now, normally, I would disagree with that experiment and that approach to interpersonal relationships. I do not explicitly, intentionally test people. I think it is manipulative.
But maybe I should back that thought right up, because that test, even if accidentally implemented, works.
I didn’t go out with this guy on his timetable and he got impatient with me…and then couldn’t be bothered to keep up the nice guy routine.
Telling.
So yeah, I’ve started being even more direct than usual – and asking, be still my heart, for exactly what I want and need – and as a result, I’m purging my life and my closets of extraneous men. I will no longer be the female Bluebeard of suburban Vancouver.
If I keep cleaning the live skeletons from my closets I may even end up with enough storage space for my shoes.
2010 is looking gooooood. And tidy.
___________________
this is a lesson I learned from my brush with the Very Bad Lying Man.
If you want to know more about THAT story, here it is:
December 2009. The thin line – cleavage, even – between vulnerability as strength and just out-and-out stupidity.
Here are the breadcrumbs. Bits of the Very Bad Lying Man fell into these posts while the un-love story was happening:
August 2009. Vacation. Day 1. I am THAT Scene in When Harry Met Sally, but It Is Real. And Better.
August 2009. On Being a Needy Girlfriend and What IT SHOULD Teach You
August 2009. When Tough Love Turns Poetic. In a blood, guts, and broken-ego kinda way.
September 2009. On Harm, Healing, Ceilings and How Absent Apologies are the Pits – The Sorry Series, #1
September 2009. How To Receive an Apology. How To Accept an Apology. How To Forgive. Or Maybe Not. – The Sorry Series, #4
December 2009. ask and ye shall…well just ask, anyways.
January 2010. I am the female Bluebeard of suburban Vancouver and I am running out of closet space.
February 2010. Love is a Compass.
February 2010. sexifesto
March 2010. butterflies are a drug and I’m in rehab
March 2010. hearsay brilliance: “Only go when the light is green”
The basic assumption underlying most of my choices and behaviour: lead with my strengths.
Self discipline? Over-rated.
Will power? Temporary. Don’t count on it. Much.
I think this is an excellent philosophy. It makes my dreams real. Opera singer? Never. Playboy model? Nope. Writer? Sex pot? Mama extraordinaire? YESSIREE X 3.
So I don’t waste a lot of time with things I’m just not good at or don’t like or just plain can’t be bothered. Instead, I spend my time feeding my joys, leading with my strengths, and strengthening my strengths. I don’t work at being well-rounded. (I let chocolate do its job, there.)
Except…
I have a core weakness that is almost physical. It spreads, painfully, through all the musculature of my life.
Ask.
I don’t. I rarely ask for things. Anything. Help with my girls, help with my house, help with a task, help help help. I don’t ask. I don’t ask for business. I don’t ask for the job or the promotion or the next step or even what is the next step.
I could fold this into my philosophy of lead from strengths and don’t worry about the weaknesses. It would look like this: I’m not good at asking, so I’m not going to do it or work at it.
And I kind of do, do that. That’s what this blog is about. If you like my writing, by the time you ask me to do some for you, we’re best friends and it is all sunshine and roses and paypal. I don’t have to ask for a damn thing. And we have a great time.
That’s sweet. I like that, a lot.
But I think this is a stuckness*.
In love. All the worst of me comes from skating around asking and trying to get what I want without articulating it. There’s a word for this: manipulation.
Or, accepting what is on offer, no matter how inadequate or unappealing.
In parenting. All the worst of me comes from reacting to transgressed boundaries that I NEVER ARTICULATED. Friction and fights flow from imaginary lines being crossed because I don’t ask for those lines to be noticed or even respected.
In my career: I get frustrated because I’m not getting what I want, but I don’t ask for it. (If you have employers with ESP, I need to work there.)
Clearly, my askus requestus** muscle needs exercise.
So I’ve been thinking about this: what is the worst that can happen if I ask?
The answer could be no. Instead of getting what I want, I could get nothing.
Well, how is that different from what I had before I asked?
Not much, except that I skip the regularly scheduled ambivalence and anguish. I can live with that.
____________________________
* stuckness. That’s all Havi Brooks, baby. She’ll help you destuckify.
** totally copped the phrase “askus requestus muscle” from Danielle LaPorte who, like the Digital Underground, also preaches the gospel of doowutchalike. Amen, sister.
________________
this is a lesson I learned from my brush with the Very Bad Lying Man.
If you want to know more about THAT story, here it is:
December 2009. The thin line – cleavage, even – between vulnerability as strength and just out-and-out stupidity.
Here are the breadcrumbs. Bits of the Very Bad Lying Man fell into these posts while the un-love story was happening:
August 2009. Vacation. Day 1. I am THAT Scene in When Harry Met Sally, but It Is Real. And Better.
August 2009. On Being a Needy Girlfriend and What IT SHOULD Teach You
August 2009. When Tough Love Turns Poetic. In a blood, guts, and broken-ego kinda way.
September 2009. On Harm, Healing, Ceilings and How Absent Apologies are the Pits – The Sorry Series, #1
September 2009. How To Receive an Apology. How To Accept an Apology. How To Forgive. Or Maybe Not. – The Sorry Series, #4
December 2009. ask and ye shall…well just ask, anyways.
January 2010. I am the female Bluebeard of suburban Vancouver and I am running out of closet space.
February 2010. Love is a Compass.
February 2010. sexifesto
March 2010. butterflies are a drug and I’m in rehab
March 2010. hearsay brilliance: “Only go when the light is green”
someone – ok, my sister, only a sister can say things like this – said to me recently that I appear to be a strong woman but am in fact all fucked up.
Kinda true. Kinda not.
True in the sense that I make mistakes. Lots of ‘em. I don’t even really regret them. I might cry about them, I may lick my wounds and steri-strip my cracked heart, but mistakes are part of living life with abandon. I would rather regret action than inaction.
I think this is strength. I am all pulpy vulnerability. I wear my heart out. I’m soft. I admit mistakes, I show my weaknesses, and I interpret all of this as bravery. So what if I slip? So what if I fall? So what if everyone sees?
I’ll just get up tomorrow and do it all again. Hopefully not exactly the same – hopefully the mistakes are new and improved – but mistakes are guaranteed as long as I’m alive.
I don’t save face.
And so that’s why I looked fucked up to my friends and family. Because I fuck up, publicly, and predict more fucking up, on a regular basis, and think that said fuck ups are a function of my commitment to stretching and growing and being happy dammit. All of which means I will screw up and then write about all of it for all of you. Voyeurs. I love you so much. Thank you for reading.
That was the intro. Here’s the story. It’s a good one. Get comfortable. Get a snack.
In the summer, I met a man. I was excited about this man, and although I’m passionate and excitable, I don’t often feel the butterflies and the rush-rush for someone. Usually it takes a long time for someone to become important to me, and for me to really feel it.
(I’ve wondered about butterflies recently, too, when I started dating the no-longer-calling Gentleman Caller. I wondered what it said about us that neither of us were feeling the grand passion thing.)
But I felt it. I was a little giddy over this guy. And since I was feeling it, I followed it.
Bad, bad, bad idea.
He stood me up. He made me cry. He made me contemplate ceilings. He behaved inexplicably. And the more inexplicably badly he behaved, the more I wanted an explanation. It almost became a detective mission: I must know what is wrong with this man. Because something is deeply, obviously fucking wrong with this man.
Eventually – like in a month – I got tired of the drama and withdrew to draw my own conclusions.
But not before I lent him money.
Oh, yes, I lent him money.
(That ringing in my ears is actually not metaphorical at all. It is the sound of all my friends and family blowing up my phone to scream abuse at me for lending a man money.)
And then he didn’t pay me back. Naturally. Because why would he? His game, I’m sure, is about bewitching a woman out of her wallet.
But I didn’t back down. I was like a dog with a bone AND a woman scorned, all at once, which, as you might expect, is a very scary combination.
I dogged him. I called every hour on the hour. I announced that I would come to his office – where he is a very well paid executive – and tell the receptionist and anyone who would listen why I was there.
I was mad (at myself, mostly). I was shameless. It was liberating. I wanted what was mine, no matter how stupidly and easily I parted with it, and I would have it.
And I did. He paid me back. It was like extracting a pint of blood with a spoon and cup, but I eventually – drop by drop – got what was mine.
And today I heard from another woman who heard from as many as thirty women all of whom had the same experience with the same man.
And oh yes, he’s married.
So that’s the second time this year I’ve had a call from a woman wanting to know if we’re sleeping with the same man – and had to answer “yes”.
So maybe I am screwing up. Because I don’t know anyone else who gets phone calls from scorned wives and women on a regular basis.
On the upside: really cool, smart, sassy, pretty, overachieving women, all of them. The crappy men I date have excellent taste in women.
_________________________________
If you want to know more about the Very Bad Lying Man, here are the breadcrumbs. Bits of the Very Bad Lying Man fell into these posts while the un-love story was happening:
August 2009. Vacation. Day 1. I am THAT Scene in When Harry Met Sally, but It Is Real. And Better.
August 2009. On Being a Needy Girlfriend and What IT SHOULD Teach You
August 2009. When Tough Love Turns Poetic. In a blood, guts, and broken-ego kinda way.
September 2009. On Harm, Healing, Ceilings and How Absent Apologies are the Pits – The Sorry Series, #1
September 2009. How To Receive an Apology. How To Accept an Apology. How To Forgive. Or Maybe Not. – The Sorry Series, #4
December 2009. ask and ye shall…well just ask, anyways.
January 2010. I am the female Bluebeard of suburban Vancouver and I am running out of closet space.
February 2010. Love is a Compass.
February 2010. sexifesto
March 2010. butterflies are a drug and I’m in rehab
March 2010. hearsay brilliance: “Only go when the light is green”
When I was twenty-one years old, I declined a monumental apology.
If everyday apologies – oops sorry, I bumped you with the cart, oops sorry I cut you off at the intersection, oops sorry I accidentally had sex with your room-mate – are pleasure crafts, this apology was a freighter. A tanker. A leaking oil tanker about to slick up some helpless sea-life and require flotillas of volunteers, enormous donations and teams of public relations professionals to clean up.
Not only did I refuse the apology, I declined to offer an audience to even hear the apology.
Yet in that decision there was no malice. There was no vengeance. There was nothing. I had been wronged as a child – sadly, habitually, sexually wronged – and now an apology was being offered to my adult self. And I didn’t need it. It was over. As a six year old, as an eight year old, as a ten year old, the only thing I needed from anyone was for someone to make it stop. But as an adult, I had made amends for myself, to myself, and I was fine. I was neutral. I needed nothing from my abuser: no apologies, no explanations, no reparations, no reconciliation. Nothing.
I didn’t need the apology, I didn’t need vengeance, or justice, and I didn’t need to offer forgiveness. Not even for myself.
Forgiveness is a slippery fish. There exists the idea that forgiveness can be offered, like a plate of cookies, or maybe a shot of penicillin, or a priestly palm to the forehead, to cure what ails you. There exists the idea that granting someone forgiveness can help you to release your pain and cure yourself: that forgiveness is, possibly, a selfish act of self-care.
I’ve wondered about that, this week. I thought about apologies that I’ve received and grudgingly accepted, which is not acceptance at all, and apologies I’ve greeted with a tongue-lashing. I wondered about the right way to apologize, to hear an apology, to receive an apology, to accept an apology. I wanted a formula for achieving authentic graciousness, accountability and magnanimity.
I have been struggling to remember a formula I forgot that I knew by heart when I was twenty-one.
Maybe there is grace in refusing to engage in an awkward social show that, deep-down, you don’t require. Maybe it is generous to return the gift to the giver and say:
here.
here is the harm you granted me.
it is for you to intimate and decipher.
the only relationship to be decoded and repaired is yours with your actions.
the pain has passed.
it is nothing to me.
Maybe forgiveness is not mine to give. Maybe asking it of me, at all, is asking me to right your wrongs. Maybe forgiveness is a journey you take, yourself, with yourself. Maybe that is the only path that leads to peace. Maybe what I offer – the nothingness, the absence of any need to inquire, to understand, or to accept – is the meaning of magnanimous, itself.
______________
one of apologies I was waiting for should have been from the Very Bad Lying Man, but this essay is part of The Sorry Series – How To Apologize, How NOT to Apologize, and the Power of Forgiveness:
On Harm, Healing, Ceilings and How Absent Apologies are the Pits – The Sorry Series, #1
A Child’s How-To Guide for Heart-felt Apologies and Chris Brown’s Example of How-Not-To-Apologize. OOPS. – The Sorry Series, #2
Guest Post by Josh Hanagarne: Three Lame Types Of Apologies – The Sorry Series, #3
How To Receive an Apology. How To Accept an Apology. How To Forgive. Or Maybe Not. – The Sorry Series, #4
The Forgiven, The Sorry Series #5
It is okay NOT to teach people how to treat you. Unless they were raised by wolves. Then Cold Play or a quick exit is in order. Your call. *
*not really part of the series but I do make a wildly necessary apology in it
When I was eight or nine, my mother grievously injured my fragile soul.
She may have asked me to clean my room. Possibly she made me put down my Nancy Drew to wash dishes. In all likelihood, she gave me grief for sassing her.
[Note to self: there is a lesson here. This dynamic - my unrepentant, inevitable and perennial backtalk and my mother's attempt to curb it - was the mainstay of our relationship, I believe, and a lesson in the frustration and futility of attempting to alter another's temperament and inclination.
Her efforts to de-sassify me were for naught.
This is why parenting sucks. We're supposed to shape and smooth and socialize small wild animals with pointy teeth and even more pointed wills and we're supposed to enjoy it.]
[Note to self's note: The sins you commit are the sins you will suffer. My mother endured snide comments and outright challenge from me from the time I spoke my first word to the the time I moved out. I now know her delicious pain. I'm three years into it. Her name is Lola.]
[Note to my dearerst of dear readers: If you really love me, you will babysit the little political one. The one who, when the choice to behave or not behave and the attendant consequences are outlined to her, tells me: "No, that's YOUR choice. I'M taking the power."]
Whatever happened, what ultimately happened was that I was banished to my room where I cried hot, insulted, evidently wholly unloved tears into my frilly pillow. I cried myself through the afternoon and into a sweaty sleep.
When I awoke, my questioning heart was heavy and needed answers and as every slighted child knows, the best replies are found in the heavens, or at least the ceiling, or if you’re the girliest of girls, in the ruffled canopy that arches over your bed. So I did that.
I contemplated the injustice inscribed in winding lines of flowering vines on the fabric of my bed’s canopy – the bed I had received for my birthday after earmarking years of editions of the Sears catalogue. I wanted a pink canopy bed but I received a burgandy one. Clearly That Woman hated me.
And I needed her to love me, more than ever, because she was mad at me. Because she hurt me. Because I knew then, and I know now, that the one who makes the cut should bind the wound.
If I am a nectarine – and I am – then this bit of knowledge is the pit that I carry. Hard, inedible, necessary, generative.
Je m’excuse. I am sorry. The words don’t matter but the hunger must be fed.
My children know this, too. When I have wounded them, and exiled them to their rooms to contemplate their ceilings – and they are even more oppressed than I was, as they lack canopied beds – their hearts break loudly open.
They protest. They protest me. They grieve their pain. They blame me for their wounds. And when the protesting and sobbing subsides, they need me to kiss them and their boo-boos better.
This is what I remembered, this weekend, when life was an archer and launched arrows of outraged misfortune at me and forced me to contemplate my own ceiling. Meditating on the intricacies of the fifth wall yielded these conclusions:
- The developer who built this house had the good sense not to spray texture on the ceilings of the first two levels of the house, but somehow that sense departed him on the third story. This is unfortunate. Textured ceilings are a crime against design.
- Life doesn’t have very good aim because no actual organs – including my heart – were irreparably harmed in the making of this misfortune. But pride has poor circulation and bruises vividly. It is almost satisfying to behold.
- Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is woefully incomplete and should be updated, preferably by me. I’ve mentioned this before.
- Aggrieved souls need apologies.
So, yes, dearest perceptive readers, someone hurt my feelings, and hurt my feelings in a way that was almost masterly: I endured – oh the agony, oh the woe, oh oh oh – a snub that was successful, effective, essential, repetitive, and, I think, remorseless.
Still, despite my suspicion that the villain in this story is not sorry and never will be, I crave a conversation, an explanation, an apology.
Apologies are magic. They are the play button when a relationship has been paused. Interrupted. Broken. An apology can bridge that distance, span that cleavage, heal that break, and start that song, again.
But only when they are real. And offered. And neither of these words captured the absence dancing across my ceiling.
So what to do with my truth, my stone fruit, that only the person who harms you can heal you?
_________________
this essay is part of The Sorry Series – How To Apologize, How NOT to Apologize, and the Power of Forgiveness:
On Harm, Healing, Ceilings and How Absent Apologies are the Pits – The Sorry Series, #1
A Child’s How-To Guide for Heart-felt Apologies and Chris Brown’s Example of How-Not-To-Apologize. OOPS. – The Sorry Series, #2
Guest Post by Josh Hanagarne: Three Lame Types Of Apologies – The Sorry Series, #3
How To Receive an Apology. How To Accept an Apology. How To Forgive. Or Maybe Not. – The Sorry Series, #4
The Forgiven, The Sorry Series #5
It is okay NOT to teach people how to treat you. Unless they were raised by wolves. Then Cold Play or a quick exit is in order. Your call. *
*not really part of the series but I do make a wildly necessary apology in it
These are lines cut-and-pasted (and artfully arranged, of course; I can never just leave well enough alone) from one side of an old IM conversation. It struck me that they are beautiful, in a slashed-hope/floundering-pride/bruising-advice kind of way.
he will tire of what is easy
[yet he lies easily and doesn’t tire of that]
you want it to be true no matter what he does or how he acts
desperately hoping you are wrong about him
but you are not
it is the truth
[the truth: you don’t just want to fuck him
you want so much more]
fooling yourself to think you control this but he does
you ride him for as long as you can
obviously he just watched
he doesn’t even respect you
he thinks you are stupid and will believe his bullshit
he isn’t as smart as you but thinks he is
you want to fuck him and you want him to love you so don’t do anything that you don’t want to do
even if it hurts you
if it is what you want then do it…
just don’t tell me that he tells you he loves you and how wonderful he is because he isn’t
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