Scold Not Your Lover

I think Nick's reading my blog. Are you reading my blog, Nick?

Greaaattttt........

I checked the computer cache and found it visited--when I was at work.

Okay, that's right, Nick. I check up on you from time to time. Not in any big way, but just enough to kind of keep a general idea of what's up with you--who you're hanging with, where your head's at. I try to walk a fine line between invading your privacy and knowing what's going on with you. I think, as your mother, I need to have a general shape of where you're at. Since I love you, etc.

So, guess the blog is not anonymous. Which poses an interesting question. When it was anonymous, I felt much more free to write about my experiences with things like sex and herpes and drugs and rock and roll. Now that my kid is reading it, I'm kind of constrained. Hmmm....maybe you feel the same sort of responsibility towards me that I feel towards you. I'm sorry I've made you into sort of a parent, baby. I was the parent in my household and it sucked. It really screwed up my relationships with the opposite sex. A little. For a little while.

Okay, maybe not so much.

My dad wrote poetry--published. And it was all about sex. I found it when I was about your age, Nick, and it was just yucky. Blechhh. I mean, I guess it was good poetry, but sex + parents =ick. Acck! Think about that, Nick. Granddad. Your espresso swilling, junk hoarding, tweedy old granddad, writing things comparing women's snow white asses to running deer--that sort of thing. Aackkk!

Aackkk!

Jay and I almost broke up two nights ago. I showed my dark side.

About two years ago, he went on this float trip and these two people went with him--both were cancer survivors. One was a woman going through chemotherapy. She made a pass at him which he says he didn't accept. She was vulnerable and felt undesirable (her husband had left her with her two children when she got sick--asshole!)and they were sitting on the riverbank in the moonlight, that sort of thing....

I've met her a few times since then. She's gone into remission now and her hair has grown back, and let me tell you....she is the most beautiful, radiant thing around. Christ. She's gorgeous, a luminous woman. Hooray, luminous woman, I'm glad you're alive and you beat it, yadada. Quit hitting on my fucking guy.

So we're at a river relief party in this little town by the river on Saturday night. It's a beautiful summer night. Racing Dave grabs me the minute we walk up and starts waltzing me around. I like Racing Dave in this weird way. I find him strangely compelling...but that's another story. He's drunk. Everyone's a little drunk. I'm a little drunk--one glass of wine--but I worked 14 hours. Didn't mean to. We don't have a unit attendant and I decided to leave through back door in the utility room--where I found Wiz, surrounded by this mountain of stuff. Cleaning it.

"What are you doing?"

"Cleaning the equipment, of course."

It dawns on me. "You've been staying every night to clean the equipment?"

"Every night."

So I pick up a rag and start scrubbing, of course.

"You could have asked for help."

"I don't need help."

"How late do you stay?"

"Doesn't matter. Don't stay. Go home."

"Okay," I say, and keep scrubbing. We got everything done in an hour.

Wiz, man. He needs to learn how to ask. His world would be a kinder place if he knew it was okay to ask for help.

So I get out there late. And I'm dancing. And Jay is talking to Beautiful Cancer Woman. We finish and I walk over and he introduces us.

"Haley, this is Pat."

"We've met, actually. I know all about you." I say, cattily.

Jay looks at me like I've just taken a poop on the sidewalk.

I feel immediately awful and try to backpeddle. "All about you--especially the crack dealing."

After an initial sort of shocked and hurt look she gamely joins in--"no," she corrects me, "just pot."

"Oh, well that's too bad. I was looking for a connection. You must have read that Good Housekeeping article--the one about turning your hobbie into a business"

"That's the one!"

"good for you--I'm just trying to figure out an angle on human sacrifice...haha..." Jesus, I felt like a creep.

Drunken Racing Dave pats my hair. "You have beautiful hair," he says dreamily.

"Okay," Jay says, "gotta go!"

Walking the car...."What kind of crap was that? What did you say that for? That really bothers me."

"You know," I reply, probably the wrong way, "I don't really care whether that bothers you or not. "

"She has cancer for christ's sake!"

"We're all going to have cancer. Big fucking deal."

"You're a vicious person." he tells me. "You're a vicious, jealous woman. This is why I never take you out with my friends."

"Is that the reason? I thought it was so you could keep your options open and no one would know you have a girlfriend."

And so on. I got to hear the litany. "Here's what I hate about you..."

1) I'm mean.

2) I'm obsessed with social class.

3) I have medeival expectations of how men are supposed to treat women.

4) I don't think like him. I don't think like other people. And because of this, he will never marry me. If he married me, he would just become my errand boy.

5) I work too much. I work weekends.

6) I'm jealous of other women. For example, he wants to have his ex girlfriend, a beautiful french expatriot rock-climbing artist (okay, she's not really that beautiful--but she's very muscular and very talented) and her niece out to the farm, but he feels that it would be awkward to have me around as well, given his past with her. And I mind this. So I'm crazy and jealous.

Hours of this.

But at the bottom of all of it...I heard a lonely, lonely man who has burned many of his bridges and is looking for someone, anyone to blame but himself.

Yeah, I'm jealous, but I think I'm pretty typical. The intense relationships he has with his exes bother me. But I have intense relationships with my exes--they just happen to be in different states.

And I am obsessed with social class--but not in a really judgmental or exclusionary way. I just think that American culture is much more stratified than we realize and that many so called political issues are really class issues. I think we all labor under this fantasy that America is classless, and I think that's to our detriment if we want to move forward as a people. I think the race issue is just a little bleep when you compare it to the class issue--in fact, I think the race issue is part of the bigger class issue. I would never personally exclude someone based on social class. And the proof in the pudding is my strong enduring friendships with people from all walks of life--all through my life. I make friends with souls. But, yeah, I think about it a lot and talk about it a lot and I don't think Jay is really smart or subtle enough to get the difference between my interest in it vs. making judgments based on it.

I think if I drive 20 minutes out to your house and fuck you, then get up ass early in the morning to go to my job as a trauma nurse, yes, fuck yes, you should get up and walk me to the FUCKING DOOR. Not medeival. And if it is, so FUCKING WHAT!

I don't think like him. I mainly think about other people. And how they're feeling. Except on some occasions--like when I've had too much white wine and I'm dealing with someone who's made a pass at my boyfriend. Then I'm an animal. I also think about how to be of significant service to the world. That is right. I do not think like him.

I work too much. I work weekends. True. So do something. Move in with me. Split my mortgage. I've raised two kids without child support. I've sent them to private schools. I'm sorry I work too much, but I don't see another option. There isn't one at this point. You do the best you can for your children. Period. Everything in your capability. You only get one shot. I think what he really hates about this is that he hasn't put as much on the line for his kids as I have for mine. He hasn't made the sacrifices. His past 15 years were about his ex, Hali, not about his children. And they should have been about his children. His poor children. My investment with my kids shames him.

Well...what do you do?

He left me a message the next day apologizing for saying mean things. I restrained myself for the most part, apologizing for being catty (and apologizing and apologizing). I did criticize his tendency to give his dogs people names(like Mike and Annie....I hate that. My grandmother did that. She named her border collie Haley. Who does that? Weirdos.)

I guess we try to figure it out.

"scold not your Lover," Rumi says.

One hour on this. Guess I was lit!