I know the title of this post begs to be refuted and it may appear that I'm fishing for compliments. Actually, the negative self-talk is a symptom of having been unemployed this long. I go back to work on Friday and hopefully I'll be bitching about the network running me ragged soon enough but right now I'm a loser not because I'm not earning an income but because idle hands are the devil's workshop.
I didn't just call him- the ex who broke up with me. I called him and suggested that we include each other in our respective dating pools. You know, not get back together but date.. on occasion. And I did this not because I haven't been on any dates. I have. Even though the whole friends with benefits thing blew up in my dumb face and the next time I see aforementioned friend, he is apt to pat me on the head, I'm still out there. Tomorrow night I have a date with a photographer named Miguel. I suspect he might be cheesy. He asked if I would meet him on the corner of 23rd and Seventh Ave. and we could walk and find a place together.
Wtf? First of all, how am I supposed to be fashionably late if you're waiting on a street corner. And HELLO? It's a blind date, do you really want to try to find each other near the Chelsea exit of the 1 line? In his favor is the fact that his pictures allege that he's cute.
And then there's the guy from Queens who teaches English to high schoolers and immigrants. I unwittingly noted on my profile that "Vocabulary not salary makes me swoon." A phrase that a discouraging number of men took to the bank.
And finally the struggling actor who has an HBO credit to his name and responded in all seriousness when I asked him if it was hard playing dead (he had just taped an episode of Law & Order SVU). Anyway, the actor is actually pretty funny, I just think he was nervous when we met out for drinks alone versus the group setting where we had first met.
So my point here is that I have options. Yet I found myself presenting my case to my ex as if I was pitching a great idea for a documentary..."and since we moved too fast, we could just date, you know, each other and others and.." And how about you just ask him if he could freeze some sperm for you seeing how you couldn't possibly sound more desperate and pathetic. I had steeled myself for the rejection I was inviting, thinking it's better to put it out there and hope for the best. After all, how unlikely is it for me to make a connection on multiple levels like we did? And he was such a good boyfriend until he wasn't..
So that's why I wonder aloud, in cyberspace why I'm a loser. Because now that it's done, and I cried about it and then ordered a pizza and inhaled half of it, I feel better. I'm not devastated again. But I definitely took a big step back.
I need a job. And I need people to stop telling me how skinny I am because it undermines my motivation for going to the gym. Gross. I can't believe I asked him to date me. I'm going to finish the rest of that pizza now.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
When Pop Makes You Blue
"Romeo, save me, I've been feeling so alone."
"I'm lucky I'm in love with my best friend, lucky to have been where I have been.."
Who would have thought that my affinity for pop music would give me the blues? The aforementioned lines are from Taylor Swift (shut up) and Jason Mraz (judge if you must).
They're actually the part of my iPod that usually makes me happy, puts a spring in my step as I get off the bus ten blocks early to enjoy the walk along Riverside Park on my way home. But today as I was listening and packing for my trip (read: refilling my iPod for the flight to Tampa), I got really bummed out about the part of my life that remains for all intents and purposes, a failure. Dave and I decided to exit the pernicious arrangement we had and so now I'm dealing with the fallout from my break up without the emotional crutch. I like it better that way. Although, I wonder if healing without the aid of a crutch will have the same effect on my heart as it has on my foot. I sprained my foot a few weeks ago, walking in stilettos on the Lower East Side. That's the part of the city that has yet to be completely gentrified and potholes, even in sidewalks, abound. I fell, went to the E.R. where they told me to walk on crutches for 2-3 weeks. Manhattan is not a very handicap-accessible city and so that lasted a week. I've been told that the limp in my stride will become permanent unless I stop the occasional donning of heels and use the crutches again.
I'm sure the analogy is flawed for many reasons. Not the least of which is that Dave is not an inanimate object. He's my friend and a good one. I loved the idea of falling in love with one of my friends. But it's never felt right and this time it didn't either. Oh well. As I reassessed things and soaked up the warmth of the sun in the park yesterday I felt my blackberry buzz in my purse. It was an email from a lawyer I had met about a month ago. "How are you, ace?" Here we go.
For inspiration in the ongoing dating wars, I refer to another line from the same song noted above:
"They don't know how long it takes, waiting for a love like this."- Jason Mraz feat. Colbie Caillat
"I'm lucky I'm in love with my best friend, lucky to have been where I have been.."
Who would have thought that my affinity for pop music would give me the blues? The aforementioned lines are from Taylor Swift (shut up) and Jason Mraz (judge if you must).
They're actually the part of my iPod that usually makes me happy, puts a spring in my step as I get off the bus ten blocks early to enjoy the walk along Riverside Park on my way home. But today as I was listening and packing for my trip (read: refilling my iPod for the flight to Tampa), I got really bummed out about the part of my life that remains for all intents and purposes, a failure. Dave and I decided to exit the pernicious arrangement we had and so now I'm dealing with the fallout from my break up without the emotional crutch. I like it better that way. Although, I wonder if healing without the aid of a crutch will have the same effect on my heart as it has on my foot. I sprained my foot a few weeks ago, walking in stilettos on the Lower East Side. That's the part of the city that has yet to be completely gentrified and potholes, even in sidewalks, abound. I fell, went to the E.R. where they told me to walk on crutches for 2-3 weeks. Manhattan is not a very handicap-accessible city and so that lasted a week. I've been told that the limp in my stride will become permanent unless I stop the occasional donning of heels and use the crutches again.
I'm sure the analogy is flawed for many reasons. Not the least of which is that Dave is not an inanimate object. He's my friend and a good one. I loved the idea of falling in love with one of my friends. But it's never felt right and this time it didn't either. Oh well. As I reassessed things and soaked up the warmth of the sun in the park yesterday I felt my blackberry buzz in my purse. It was an email from a lawyer I had met about a month ago. "How are you, ace?" Here we go.
For inspiration in the ongoing dating wars, I refer to another line from the same song noted above:
"They don't know how long it takes, waiting for a love like this."- Jason Mraz feat. Colbie Caillat
Friday, May 15, 2009
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Nice Guy's Revenge
You know what's interesting? I'll tell you. I think it's interesting that even when I thought I was happy, I really wasn't. I came across an email that I sent to my good friend Frankie a few months ago:
This email was sent when I was in one of my healthiest relationships with someone I really liked and had just scored a timely fellowship that would take me to Africa and Turkey. Yet I was channeling Eeyore?
This account should serve to vindicate any woman who has ever chastised herself for not giving the nice guy a chance.
I met him online. He was at the bottom of my list in terms of people who had reached out to me on a website that was a bit racier than match but less tawdry than craigslist. If you've seen or been on either, you'll agree that's a pretty good description. If you haven't, then consider yourself blissfully ignorant. His initial email introduced himself as a journalist and then mentioned a professional trade magazine I had never heard of. I was dismissive, thinking that that's not a real journo and in his pictures he looked very young and very Jewish. Neither of those attributes whets my appetite.
We exchanged a few emails but my prohibitive night shift at work was hard to navigate logistically. In fact, I missed the boat on one guy, a sexy filmmaker, who after weeks of flirtatious texts and phone calls ended up hooking up with a good friend on the same site. The next guy I went out with was a great date but verbally dressed me down when he failed to physically do so.
Offline, I was excited by the prospect of a promising romance with a hot local news reporter who I couldn't quite figure out. Was he chasing me or just a determined networker? One night of drunken carousing downtown and I had my answer. Tall, dark, handsome with charm to spare. Too much charm. Overwhelmed, one day when I couldn't believe my luck, I gushed, "How is it possible that you don't have a girlfriend?!" Silence.
I sat up and stared at him. That's when he told me that they had an "understanding." She was traveling the world and he was a free man? I was dubious. So were my friends that I consulted. "Does his girlfriend know about this arrangement?" they wondered. My pesky conscience and belief in relationship karma forced me to end our fall fling.
My personal trainer who was privy to these mishaps in matchmaking was endlessly amused by what he perceived as a real-life Carrie Bradshaw... only with less success.
So next at bat was the nice guy who was casually persistent, following up every week to ten days asking when we were going to get that elusive drink. After canceling once, or was it twice? I forget. Anyway, I finally decided one Friday night after an ill-timed afternoon nap that I needed to get out. I texted him and asked if he wanted to meet up at 9:30. He was game.
My girlfriend, who had nabbed the filmmaker off the site and made out with him for four hours, suggested a South African wine bar near Hell's Kitchen. I was late as usual and found him at a table against a wall. He looked about 15. We talked for a while. I found out he was from Missouri and possessed the stereotypical Midwestern mild manners and niceties. My purse vibrated and lacking the social etiquette to resist my crackberry addiction, I looked at it. An IM from aforementioned girlfriend: "How's it going?"
I smiled apologetically as I tapped out a quick update: "Nice guy, no sparks."
And that should have been the end of it. Isn't that enough? Nah, I decided that I was going to give the nice guy another shot. Maybe I was destined to meet my soul mate through him, I reasoned. Plus, I enjoyed the fact that he was quick-witted and well, nice.
We met out for dinner and drinks again that same week. After several glasses of wine, he had yet to make a move. I was OK with that but more intrigued. His Charlie Rose impression was spot on and he was a gentleman. We went out on two more dates before he kissed me and I finally decided I liked him. We hit the ground running, spending an entire weekend together the following week. He told me he was falling in love with me. I was taken aback but lacking any knack for self-preservation, I took it in a stride. Actually, no that's not entirely true. I gave him a chance to recant. At dinner a few nights after our whirlwind weekend, I told him that things may have moved too fast and I understood if he needed to recalibrate. That’s when he reached across the table, took my face in his hands and said, “I think about you every minute of the day, why would I want to do that?” Sold.
The next few weeks we talked about religion, he was Atheist. How would we reconcile that with our kids? "Relax," my sister advised, "y'all are being crazy." Yet the premature questions kept surfacing- and he was asking them! How would my Muslim family react? To our surprise, my mother was supportive, if only because she ambitiously saw an Atheist as an empty canvas she could paint Moderate Muslim in flashy green and yellow (who was I to correct my mother?). Suddenly, we were an item, spending most of our week and weekends together. My girlfriend who had texted during the first date called him “insta boyfriend.” My friends loved him. They were so proud that I had finally fallen for a nice guy devoid of arrogance or the requisite head games that come with dating men in a city where the perception of unlimited options dwarfed the threat of dying alone.
And for the most part, he was a great boyfriend: reliable, considerate, funny, effortless company. I remember an elderly couple I interviewed years ago on their 50th wedding anniversary saying that you should “marry someone with whom you have great conversations.” And he was the smartest guy I had dated in a long time. Not the most ambitious, but that I possessed in spades. Not the best dressed. A lot of his clothes were tattered and frayed, a trait I attempted to remedy by buying him a Jack Spade Messenger bag to replace a shockingly ragged one that was inexplicably still in use despite his daily interaction with prominent lawyers, dressed to the nines. “Tell me it has sentimental value,” I remarked on our first date when he caught me glancing down at it. “Nope,” he laughed. One day I noticed that all of his shoes looked like Oliver Twist’s collection so I bought him a pair of Cole Haans, using a sale as an excuse. “You shouldn’t try to change him,” a guy friend cautioned. “I’m just sprucing him up, not changing his style,” I countered. I loved that he was brilliant but unpretentious and if that bled into his wardrobe, so be it. He never bought me flowers or whisked me off to fancy restaurants but he made me laugh and was supportive in the wake of my unexpected unemployment. My friends told me that he looked at me adoringly when I was in the midst of telling a story. It’s amazing how the relief and comfort that comes with a healthy relationship can so quickly make you forget the despair and loneliness that abounds when you’re single in this city.
Shortly after being laid off, I won a reporting fellowship to Africa and Turkey. I was so happy that my desperate need to escape New York during the oppressive negativity that loomed like a dark cloud over the city was going to be paid for by someone else. Two days into my trip, we had an IM exchange that my friends would refer to as the yellow post-it.
I’ll refrain from quoting it here but basically he expressed doubts about our relationship. I had chalked it up to cold feet that most guys get when they meet “the One.” I figured he was smitten but too scared to admit as much. I was pretty wrong. He broke up with me in an IM when I (jetlagged and stressed out about my reporting partner/camerawoman who made my crazy look normal) pushed an issue regarding his failure to email me and demanded to know if our relationship was in fact on a level playing field. “I guess I’m not that guy right now.” My sister would describe my next few remarks as schoolyard bully tactics. I lashed out as I do when hurt and sealed the deal. Instead of exploring beautiful Istanbul that night, I returned to the hotel and cried myself to sleep. I woke up and sent him an email. “Did I just dream that we broke up over IM?” His response was swift and sobering. “No, we broke up and I think it’s for the best.”
The rest of my trip was shit. I was on autopilot, doing my interviews, making the perfunctory appearances at seminars and once in Ethiopia, I completely unraveled under the strain of witnessing heartbreaking poverty and well, my own loss. We had a long conversation where he reassured me that he cared about me more than I knew and that “nothing has been decided.” I felt better. But upon the completion of a ten-hour flight back to New York, I spoke to him and said that my stomach had been in knots awaiting this momentous conversation. “I know, babe,” he said as I cradled the phone with my neck while getting my bag out of the overhead bin, “but I don’t think we should see each other anymore.” I couldn’t believe it. First he had broken up with me on IM while I was in a foreign country and now on the phone when I was in the same city?
I never really got a reason. I pushed and pushed and he said something about how you should want to spend every minute with someone when you’re in love but that he found himself craving space. When I reasoned that that was an unrealistic paradigm, he said he couldn’t account for his doubts. Then he told me that I was the perfect girlfriend who showered him with more affection and attention than anyone else and perhaps his own self-esteem issues couldn’t handle that. Immediately after offering this explanation, he dismissed it as a hunch and likely untrue. Then weeks later, when I was still trying to make sense of how the man who was falling in love with me one minute was suddenly fleeing, he told me that when I confronted him on IM about not emailing me, he began to wonder why he hadn’t and decided that he must not miss me and therefore wasn’t really into me. “I just didn’t think this was someone I wanted to get to know better or have romantic feelings for.” Ouch.
He wanted to be friends. Either to ease the guilt of breaking my spirit or because he genuinely liked me, just not enough to love me. I missed him so often and so much I agreed that I could do that and I wanted to do it quickly. But every time I’ve tried to ignite a friendship from the embers of our relationship, it’s blown up in my face. Granted, the deluge of tears that erupt when he acts distant and awkward only extinguishes my attempts to blaze a trail to that platonic place. And there’s no evidence of what we had when I see him. By that, I mean he has no discernible soft spot for me and a potent paranoia that I’m operating with a secret agenda to win him back. The former I feel and the latter he tells me. It’s evidence of a hubris I would have described as incongruent with the man I knew. And my anguish that he can’t rise to the occasion when it was his idea to end the relationship is met with an anger I also find uncharacteristic of my mild-mannered ex.
Are you still reading? Because wow, that all sounds so self-indulgent and boring. Anyway, the irony is that this was the nice guy who initially produced no sparks. And I’ve often wondered if this was my relationship karma coming home to roost. Maybe he was exacting revenge for all the other nice guys who I had dismissed without a second thought. Because it’s one thing to be dumped by an arrogant asshole, but it’s on a different plane of demoralization, when the nice guy turns into an arrogant asshole.
Epilogue:
I’m healing. Unexpectedly, a romance has developed with a good friend of mine. We’ve known each other for five years and have been there for each other to share the ups and downs of our lives. We used to see each other a couple of times a year, vowing to make time more often because it was so much fun. Then a few weeks ago, we met for our traditional dinner and a bad movie. An affinity for a genre our significant others typically detest, we became each other’s “scary movie buddy.” Since those are usually B movies, we drank a little and shelled out a lot for a flick undeserving of an audience. That was our tradition. “A Haunting in Connecticut” was where we connected again. But something was different. I was different, according to him, “hotter.” And. Heartbroken. Over nachos and beer, I blinked back tears as I explained how it had all come undone. As usual, he offered to kick the ass of the latest fool to let a good thing go. “I know some people,” he joked. But that wasn’t all that was different. When I sprained my foot and he came over to help with the cabin fever, he was different. Towards me. The energy had changed and when I asked him about it he told me that he loved me too much to risk our friendship. I was relieved because I was determined to make myself whole again… on my own. But we started spending more time together and now we’re dating..sort of. Fingers crossed that this new frontier doesn’t bankrupt the pioneers.
in a terrible funk. Happy to be getting out of town but really feeling the burden of uncertainty/unemployment. Will call you this week when I can talk without sounding like I'm channeling Eeyore.
This email was sent when I was in one of my healthiest relationships with someone I really liked and had just scored a timely fellowship that would take me to Africa and Turkey. Yet I was channeling Eeyore?
This account should serve to vindicate any woman who has ever chastised herself for not giving the nice guy a chance.
I met him online. He was at the bottom of my list in terms of people who had reached out to me on a website that was a bit racier than match but less tawdry than craigslist. If you've seen or been on either, you'll agree that's a pretty good description. If you haven't, then consider yourself blissfully ignorant. His initial email introduced himself as a journalist and then mentioned a professional trade magazine I had never heard of. I was dismissive, thinking that that's not a real journo and in his pictures he looked very young and very Jewish. Neither of those attributes whets my appetite.
We exchanged a few emails but my prohibitive night shift at work was hard to navigate logistically. In fact, I missed the boat on one guy, a sexy filmmaker, who after weeks of flirtatious texts and phone calls ended up hooking up with a good friend on the same site. The next guy I went out with was a great date but verbally dressed me down when he failed to physically do so.
Offline, I was excited by the prospect of a promising romance with a hot local news reporter who I couldn't quite figure out. Was he chasing me or just a determined networker? One night of drunken carousing downtown and I had my answer. Tall, dark, handsome with charm to spare. Too much charm. Overwhelmed, one day when I couldn't believe my luck, I gushed, "How is it possible that you don't have a girlfriend?!" Silence.
I sat up and stared at him. That's when he told me that they had an "understanding." She was traveling the world and he was a free man? I was dubious. So were my friends that I consulted. "Does his girlfriend know about this arrangement?" they wondered. My pesky conscience and belief in relationship karma forced me to end our fall fling.
My personal trainer who was privy to these mishaps in matchmaking was endlessly amused by what he perceived as a real-life Carrie Bradshaw... only with less success.
So next at bat was the nice guy who was casually persistent, following up every week to ten days asking when we were going to get that elusive drink. After canceling once, or was it twice? I forget. Anyway, I finally decided one Friday night after an ill-timed afternoon nap that I needed to get out. I texted him and asked if he wanted to meet up at 9:30. He was game.
My girlfriend, who had nabbed the filmmaker off the site and made out with him for four hours, suggested a South African wine bar near Hell's Kitchen. I was late as usual and found him at a table against a wall. He looked about 15. We talked for a while. I found out he was from Missouri and possessed the stereotypical Midwestern mild manners and niceties. My purse vibrated and lacking the social etiquette to resist my crackberry addiction, I looked at it. An IM from aforementioned girlfriend: "How's it going?"
I smiled apologetically as I tapped out a quick update: "Nice guy, no sparks."
And that should have been the end of it. Isn't that enough? Nah, I decided that I was going to give the nice guy another shot. Maybe I was destined to meet my soul mate through him, I reasoned. Plus, I enjoyed the fact that he was quick-witted and well, nice.
We met out for dinner and drinks again that same week. After several glasses of wine, he had yet to make a move. I was OK with that but more intrigued. His Charlie Rose impression was spot on and he was a gentleman. We went out on two more dates before he kissed me and I finally decided I liked him. We hit the ground running, spending an entire weekend together the following week. He told me he was falling in love with me. I was taken aback but lacking any knack for self-preservation, I took it in a stride. Actually, no that's not entirely true. I gave him a chance to recant. At dinner a few nights after our whirlwind weekend, I told him that things may have moved too fast and I understood if he needed to recalibrate. That’s when he reached across the table, took my face in his hands and said, “I think about you every minute of the day, why would I want to do that?” Sold.
The next few weeks we talked about religion, he was Atheist. How would we reconcile that with our kids? "Relax," my sister advised, "y'all are being crazy." Yet the premature questions kept surfacing- and he was asking them! How would my Muslim family react? To our surprise, my mother was supportive, if only because she ambitiously saw an Atheist as an empty canvas she could paint Moderate Muslim in flashy green and yellow (who was I to correct my mother?). Suddenly, we were an item, spending most of our week and weekends together. My girlfriend who had texted during the first date called him “insta boyfriend.” My friends loved him. They were so proud that I had finally fallen for a nice guy devoid of arrogance or the requisite head games that come with dating men in a city where the perception of unlimited options dwarfed the threat of dying alone.
And for the most part, he was a great boyfriend: reliable, considerate, funny, effortless company. I remember an elderly couple I interviewed years ago on their 50th wedding anniversary saying that you should “marry someone with whom you have great conversations.” And he was the smartest guy I had dated in a long time. Not the most ambitious, but that I possessed in spades. Not the best dressed. A lot of his clothes were tattered and frayed, a trait I attempted to remedy by buying him a Jack Spade Messenger bag to replace a shockingly ragged one that was inexplicably still in use despite his daily interaction with prominent lawyers, dressed to the nines. “Tell me it has sentimental value,” I remarked on our first date when he caught me glancing down at it. “Nope,” he laughed. One day I noticed that all of his shoes looked like Oliver Twist’s collection so I bought him a pair of Cole Haans, using a sale as an excuse. “You shouldn’t try to change him,” a guy friend cautioned. “I’m just sprucing him up, not changing his style,” I countered. I loved that he was brilliant but unpretentious and if that bled into his wardrobe, so be it. He never bought me flowers or whisked me off to fancy restaurants but he made me laugh and was supportive in the wake of my unexpected unemployment. My friends told me that he looked at me adoringly when I was in the midst of telling a story. It’s amazing how the relief and comfort that comes with a healthy relationship can so quickly make you forget the despair and loneliness that abounds when you’re single in this city.
Shortly after being laid off, I won a reporting fellowship to Africa and Turkey. I was so happy that my desperate need to escape New York during the oppressive negativity that loomed like a dark cloud over the city was going to be paid for by someone else. Two days into my trip, we had an IM exchange that my friends would refer to as the yellow post-it.
I’ll refrain from quoting it here but basically he expressed doubts about our relationship. I had chalked it up to cold feet that most guys get when they meet “the One.” I figured he was smitten but too scared to admit as much. I was pretty wrong. He broke up with me in an IM when I (jetlagged and stressed out about my reporting partner/camerawoman who made my crazy look normal) pushed an issue regarding his failure to email me and demanded to know if our relationship was in fact on a level playing field. “I guess I’m not that guy right now.” My sister would describe my next few remarks as schoolyard bully tactics. I lashed out as I do when hurt and sealed the deal. Instead of exploring beautiful Istanbul that night, I returned to the hotel and cried myself to sleep. I woke up and sent him an email. “Did I just dream that we broke up over IM?” His response was swift and sobering. “No, we broke up and I think it’s for the best.”
The rest of my trip was shit. I was on autopilot, doing my interviews, making the perfunctory appearances at seminars and once in Ethiopia, I completely unraveled under the strain of witnessing heartbreaking poverty and well, my own loss. We had a long conversation where he reassured me that he cared about me more than I knew and that “nothing has been decided.” I felt better. But upon the completion of a ten-hour flight back to New York, I spoke to him and said that my stomach had been in knots awaiting this momentous conversation. “I know, babe,” he said as I cradled the phone with my neck while getting my bag out of the overhead bin, “but I don’t think we should see each other anymore.” I couldn’t believe it. First he had broken up with me on IM while I was in a foreign country and now on the phone when I was in the same city?
I never really got a reason. I pushed and pushed and he said something about how you should want to spend every minute with someone when you’re in love but that he found himself craving space. When I reasoned that that was an unrealistic paradigm, he said he couldn’t account for his doubts. Then he told me that I was the perfect girlfriend who showered him with more affection and attention than anyone else and perhaps his own self-esteem issues couldn’t handle that. Immediately after offering this explanation, he dismissed it as a hunch and likely untrue. Then weeks later, when I was still trying to make sense of how the man who was falling in love with me one minute was suddenly fleeing, he told me that when I confronted him on IM about not emailing me, he began to wonder why he hadn’t and decided that he must not miss me and therefore wasn’t really into me. “I just didn’t think this was someone I wanted to get to know better or have romantic feelings for.” Ouch.
He wanted to be friends. Either to ease the guilt of breaking my spirit or because he genuinely liked me, just not enough to love me. I missed him so often and so much I agreed that I could do that and I wanted to do it quickly. But every time I’ve tried to ignite a friendship from the embers of our relationship, it’s blown up in my face. Granted, the deluge of tears that erupt when he acts distant and awkward only extinguishes my attempts to blaze a trail to that platonic place. And there’s no evidence of what we had when I see him. By that, I mean he has no discernible soft spot for me and a potent paranoia that I’m operating with a secret agenda to win him back. The former I feel and the latter he tells me. It’s evidence of a hubris I would have described as incongruent with the man I knew. And my anguish that he can’t rise to the occasion when it was his idea to end the relationship is met with an anger I also find uncharacteristic of my mild-mannered ex.
Are you still reading? Because wow, that all sounds so self-indulgent and boring. Anyway, the irony is that this was the nice guy who initially produced no sparks. And I’ve often wondered if this was my relationship karma coming home to roost. Maybe he was exacting revenge for all the other nice guys who I had dismissed without a second thought. Because it’s one thing to be dumped by an arrogant asshole, but it’s on a different plane of demoralization, when the nice guy turns into an arrogant asshole.
Epilogue:
I’m healing. Unexpectedly, a romance has developed with a good friend of mine. We’ve known each other for five years and have been there for each other to share the ups and downs of our lives. We used to see each other a couple of times a year, vowing to make time more often because it was so much fun. Then a few weeks ago, we met for our traditional dinner and a bad movie. An affinity for a genre our significant others typically detest, we became each other’s “scary movie buddy.” Since those are usually B movies, we drank a little and shelled out a lot for a flick undeserving of an audience. That was our tradition. “A Haunting in Connecticut” was where we connected again. But something was different. I was different, according to him, “hotter.” And. Heartbroken. Over nachos and beer, I blinked back tears as I explained how it had all come undone. As usual, he offered to kick the ass of the latest fool to let a good thing go. “I know some people,” he joked. But that wasn’t all that was different. When I sprained my foot and he came over to help with the cabin fever, he was different. Towards me. The energy had changed and when I asked him about it he told me that he loved me too much to risk our friendship. I was relieved because I was determined to make myself whole again… on my own. But we started spending more time together and now we’re dating..sort of. Fingers crossed that this new frontier doesn’t bankrupt the pioneers.
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
What NOT To Say When Someone Gets Laid Off
So by now most of you have seen the previous post in which I disclosed that I was losing my job and joining the ranks of the country's burgeoning class of unemployed workers. First, I want to thank everyone for their concern. Because this blog was always intended to be anonymous, there is a very short list of those who are alerted to new posts. Other passers-by in cyberspace may stop in and of course they are welcome but I'm still hopeful that they have no idea who I am. Basically, if you're on that list I'm fond of you. Got it?
But here's the thing. If someone tells you they've just been laid off, you're allowed to be shocked but I'm not sure it's helpful to register the extent of how stunned you are. Why? Because I am trying to stay calm, people! And when you freak the fuck out, it freaks me out even more. It's like when a toddler skins his knee, if you play it down, they get over it but if you scream bloody murder at the site of his blood, he may really lose his shit.
And so here, are the true responses some of my lovely friends sent. They have not been edited and if you recognize one as your own, know this. I ain't mad at ya, but your sensitivity chip may need some fine-tuning.
1. Are you going to look for another job??
(umm, no, I was planning on living under the Westside Highway, it's so lovely this time of year.)
2. So what's going on????
(were 4 question marks necessary? and the answer is in the blog entry.)
3. Are you going to be OK?
(You're supposed to TELL me that, not ask. Hello? I'm losing my job in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.)
I know. I'm a bitch but I'm bitter. I worked my ass of for a full year on a shift that deprived me of a social life because I was repeatedly told I was building something. And I'm grateful for the experience but I'm pissed that I was loyal to a job when I could have found a better one with better hours. But on a brighter note, I want to say that even my girls in the aforementioned list are very caring people and their questions, while rhetorical, redundant, or retarded.. not in that order, were well-intentioned.
I guess I'm catty. But that's why I'm very good at landing on my feet, just like a cat. And I'm also catty in the sense that I have nine lives. And now, I am going to go watch "The Wire" because McNulty is hot and he makes me forget that I'm about to be unemployed.
But here's the thing. If someone tells you they've just been laid off, you're allowed to be shocked but I'm not sure it's helpful to register the extent of how stunned you are. Why? Because I am trying to stay calm, people! And when you freak the fuck out, it freaks me out even more. It's like when a toddler skins his knee, if you play it down, they get over it but if you scream bloody murder at the site of his blood, he may really lose his shit.
And so here, are the true responses some of my lovely friends sent. They have not been edited and if you recognize one as your own, know this. I ain't mad at ya, but your sensitivity chip may need some fine-tuning.
1. Are you going to look for another job??
(umm, no, I was planning on living under the Westside Highway, it's so lovely this time of year.)
2. So what's going on????
(were 4 question marks necessary? and the answer is in the blog entry.)
3. Are you going to be OK?
(You're supposed to TELL me that, not ask. Hello? I'm losing my job in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.)
I know. I'm a bitch but I'm bitter. I worked my ass of for a full year on a shift that deprived me of a social life because I was repeatedly told I was building something. And I'm grateful for the experience but I'm pissed that I was loyal to a job when I could have found a better one with better hours. But on a brighter note, I want to say that even my girls in the aforementioned list are very caring people and their questions, while rhetorical, redundant, or retarded.. not in that order, were well-intentioned.
I guess I'm catty. But that's why I'm very good at landing on my feet, just like a cat. And I'm also catty in the sense that I have nine lives. And now, I am going to go watch "The Wire" because McNulty is hot and he makes me forget that I'm about to be unemployed.
Monday, February 02, 2009
The Love Pariah Gives Way to the Recessionista
I have good news and bad news. I'm going to lead with the good news. You're looking at it. I'm reigniting the blog. The reason for that is the bad news. After months of covering the recession, I have officially become a victim of it. I'm surprisingly calm about the idea of being unemployed at a time when it's easier to find Manolo Blahniks on sale than a job. But when I found out several weeks ago, I was, well let's just say I wasn't so zen about it all.
Like millions of employees in workplaces across the country, I was summoned to my boss' office with an email that appeared to casually ask, "Can we chat?" I knew better. Instantly, I broke into a cold sweat. "Fuck," I said staring at my computer. "What?" my office mate asked with the same dread assuming that the story we were working on together had taken an ugly turn that would require him to cancel dinner plans with his wife.. again. I told him our boss wanted to chat. That can't be good, I noted, stating the obvious. My coworker smiled half-heartedly. "Not necessarily," he offered.
I really like my boss. He gets me. He gets that I'm a good writer and very protective of my scripts, and that I get bent out of shape and yell when shit goes wrong during the wee hours of the morning before the story goes to air. He likes that. And for the most part, even though my altercations with editors and graphics artists over the past year have probably given him a few more gray hairs, he likes me. But the ripple effect of Wall Street's indiscretions was spreading more like a dam bursting than a "trickle" and suddenly yours truly was forced to rethink that Tory Burch trench coat she was eyeing.
The irony was twofold. For weeks, while working Christmas eve, Christmas Day and New Year's Day, I had been saying aloud how lucky I was to have a job. Secondly, I had been doing at least two lead stories on the recession a week and shaking my head at the poor schmuck who got canned after starting a new wing on his home. And in case I wasn't completely freaked out, my superiors were insensitive enough (post-layoff announcement) to keep assigning me those stories. Over and over again, I heard tape of a laid off PR guy, "I felt so undervalued and dispensible" Or the internet ad maven, "I had no savings, what was I going to do?" WHAT THE FUCK WAS I GOING TO DO?!
Fortunately, my parents were in DC when this news came crashing down and came up to New York to see me. My dad attempted to alleviate my anxiety. "You can come work for me," he said. "I will pay you $2,000 a month," he announced proudly. The idea of having my income cut to a fraction of what it was coupled with going back to Texas made me cry harder and my mother asked my dad to stop making it worse. "Then she should just get married," my dad said in defeat. He wasn't done dispensing advice though. The next morning he told me that I could collect unemployment. "The government will pay you for staying home." I remembered my sister had said the same thing and I felt a surge of hope.
And that's kind of where I've stayed. That plane where hope and unemployment insurance intersect. I have four more days at my job and I keep hearing whispers that someone is going to pull a miracle out of a hat saving me from the uncertainty that awaits me. But at this point, I think that I might be disappointed if my job is rescued. I mean where's the glory in that? At least a spell of unemployment will enable me to have some empathy for my fellow American. A recessionista battling it out in the big, gritty city. Doing her own nails, blowing out her own hair and recycling last season's fashions. There's a certain nobility to it. And if my back's not against the wall, how will I be forced to do my next documentary short? GASP! Dear reader, I just had a surge of inspiration for my next film. Stay tuned...
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