Loser

"She's a two-time loser," is the phrase he used to describe a twice-divorced member of his extended family. I was having a beer with a friend from high school, someone I hadn't seen in the intervening 1,000 years since graduation. That phrase hung in the air for a couple of seconds, as I deliberated over whether I should take it personally or not. I wondered if he -- happily married for many years -- automatically thought of *every* divorced person as a loser, me in particular.

We were having a nice easy time reconnecting, sharing both the good and bad bullet points of our adult lives. He knew I was divorced, and I had even shared with him some of the "why" details of the breakdown of my marriage. He certainly didn't treat me as if he thinks of me as a loser, hopelessly tainted by the stink of marital failure. I think "two-time loser" is something he just routinely says when asked about the marital status of this particular person, whose two divorces frankly seem like the least of her troubles.

But that phrase stuck in my craw (wherever the hell that is), and I have now regurgitated it up for your consumption. That phrase seems like it's a kind of shorthand I've heard used by other people -- notably all married. Instead of detailing *all* the f*ckups in someone's life to prove that this "loser" is fairly exiled in Loserville, one can long-story-short-it by just bringing up the fact that he/she is divorced. And the higher the divorce count, the easier it is to write someone off.

Even though I can see how my behavior contributed to my shitty marriage and that I stayed far, far too long in it, I don't think of myself as a loser. Unlucky? Perhaps. Emotionally unenlightened? Certainly. But a loser? Emphatically no. While my ex may not have valued any of my good qualities, I do. And I know others who do too.

Every divorce has its own story. Some are as simple and trite as The Bridges of Madison County, others as tragic as Sophie's Choice. Then there are the ones like mine, blacker than Catch-22.

Junking the Junk Food

A couple weeks ago I came across my list of goals for 2013. I found it underneath my dresser, where it must have fallen months ago, since it was blanketed by a mortifyingly thick layer of dust. I laughed when I noticed my number two goal for the year: become more organized. I assume I'm automatically disqualified from that goal, since I couldn't even be bothered to keep track of the index card listing my goals.

Although I didn't reach all my goals, I was happy to realize that I've met *some* of them. One of the biggest goals I met was avoiding junk food. I ate a lot of kale this year. A lot. In fact, if I were to suddenly snap and do something unfathomable or criminal, I think I'd have a good shot at dodging the consequences with "the kale defense," essentially the opposite of the Twinkie defense, which blamed some asshole's criminal behavior on his over-consumption of the poster child of junk food -- the Twinkie. I contend eating nothing except the highly nutritious, but slightly bitter, kale is enough to drive anyone to do desperate, crazy things. But I'm not a hardcore purist. I take my kale deliciously adulterated with lemon, apples, almonds, and parmesan cheese, in a modified version of the Waldorf salad.

Avoiding junk food wasn't just about improving my already pretty good eating habits. My bigger goal was harder: avoiding *emotional* junk food. In my case, emotional junk food is dating men who are inappropriate for me. Dating a guy who is too young is the equivalent of eating a deep-fried Twinkie. Sure, it might be momentarily appealing, but 15 minutes later, the nausea sets in. For me, dating a guy who's not looking for a long-term relationship is like eating french fries and pizza for dinner every night. I can't do that anymore. It makes me feel shitty.

Remember Bugles -- that tasteless corn-based snack in the shape of a horn? When I was a kid, I would eat one Bugle after another in a junk-food-zombie trance, even though I never really liked them! Kid logic compelled me to pick the shitty junk food I didn't even really like over apples or other healthy snack options. Dating Carny was like mindlessly eating a box of Bugles.    

Thanks to kale and Frenchy, I largely avoided junk food this year. Even if I didn't have the kale salad of relationships that I do, I feel capable of recognizing emotional junk food, which helps me take it out of my cart and put it back on the shelf before I buy it. My new goal -- besides getting more organized -- is to be able to automatically walk past the all junk food without even putting it in my cart.

50 and Unfiltered

A few weeks ago, I went to a new movie by a director whose previous films I've liked. I expected to like this movie too, but it spent a lot of time begging me to fall in love with it, which naturally is a recipe for me to hate it. Overall I found it "cringingly precious," as if this director had fallen and hit his head, and had instantly become an unlikely adoring fan of those horrible Thomas Kincaide paintings, the visual equivalent of eating a dozen heavily frosted cupcakes. As the credits were rolling, I turned to my friend and said something I normally would have left unspoken, reigned in by my filter of self consciousness. "She sure has a lot of moles," I said loudly in reference to the lead actress. It's the kind of thing I can only imagine a crotchety old lady would say after sitting through a movie she didn't really like.

This isn't the only time I've knowingly ignored my filter and just blurted out what I was thinking. But it's something I've been doing more frequently. I know the type of thing I *should* say, but I end up choosing to say the unfiltered thought instead, not just to be funny, but because it's the truth -- unvarnished, but honest. 

Like nudists and swingers, people without a filter are both fascinating and horrifying to me. Most of the filterless people I've known have been older women (think Kathie Lee Gifford), although I've known young people without filters too. For American women, middle age is often the first time we practice taking off the filter on a regular basis. Maybe all that practice without a filter in middle age is what leads to all the old women who've permanently lost theirs.

The older I get, the less tolerance I have for bullshit, which is why I've become so weary of politics and why I grew so weary of my marriage. Filtering oneself -- if you end up not saying what you really want to say -- is just another form of bullshit. Now having hit 50, I'm venturing into the second half of my life armed with a very limited capacity for bullshit and my big mouth.

Buckle up. It's going to be a bumpy ride.

A Lot Younger Than That

"Someone has a birthday coming up I see," she said as she handed back my driver's license to me. "Um, yes--a big one," I replied as I wondered how to avoid talking in cliches about birthdays and age. "Oh? What birthday is it?" she asked. "My fiftieth," I said in a normal speaking volume, not the hushed whisper often used when speaking about that particular age or cancer or something else as equally dreaded. No one was in the waiting room with me, so I was spared the admittedly ridiculous ritual of furtively looking around and lowering my voice before telling her what birthday I was soon going to mark.

She abruptly pulled her head up from the computer and stared at me for a few seconds before exclaiming, "Oh, you look a lot younger than that." I gave her a big smile and a quick thank-you, all the while praying she wouldn't get more specific. Please Lady, allow me to bask in the welcome sweet vagueness of "a lot younger than that." But she wanted to keep going. "You look like you're 42!" she gushed, as if she were giving me a great compliment. 'Aw f*ck -- there it is,' I thought.

At the risk of sounding like an ungrateful jerk, I find being tagged anywhere in my forties sounds old. Agewise, I'm now so advanced, even my age compliments sound old to me. Coming from a cute woman in her late 20s, it felt like she was really saying, 'You look like you're only *slightly* over the hill.'

I wish I could resolve my ambivalent feelings about turning the big 5 - 0. I often feel lucky when people occasionally think I look younger than my actual age. But almost as often, I feel embarrassed that I am not-so-reluctantly buying into the absurdity that it's just better to be younger -- as if one had a choice in the matter.

Are We There Yet?

"Loving him is like driving a new Maserati down a dead-end street," sang Taylor Swift right before I flipped the radio dial to another station. It's the only line of *any* of her songs that I like. Not that it relates to me and my life, but I appreciate a good simile when I hear it. If I were singing that song (or having that song sung about me), I would revise that line to: "Loving him is like driving an older, but well maintained, Volvo on a limited-access traffic-clogged toll road on a rain-soaked day." It's not catchy or poetic like the Maserati line, but such is my life. Twenty-five years from now, I imagine Taylor Swift's songs will be filled with similar turgid lyrics drawn from her middle-aged life.

Love -- the redux version -- is trickier in mid life. Not only do you have to go through the hard, often confusing work of finding someone with whom you might want to spend a big chunk of your future -- someone who "gets" you and won't bore or annoy the shit out of you over the long term -- but then you have the very complicated task of trying to weave together two lives already interwoven with the threads of children, making a living, and other responsibilities one accumulates as a middle-aged adult. All of these complications act as brakes on runaway love, and while that can be frustrating, it's probably a good thing.

Unlike falling in love in my 20s, second-time-around love at 49 is more cautious. It's like being a good driver who is tempted to go faster, but chooses to drive in the slower lane because it feels safer when you've got a kid or two in the Volvo with you. It'll take longer to get where I'm going, which is annoying, but that's the tradeoff -- feeling safely in control while enduring my own frequent irritating complaint, "Are we *there* yet?"

Listening to My Gut and Kim Basinger

"I feel there are two people inside me -- me and my intuition. If I go against her, she'll screw me every time, and if I follow her, we get along quite nicely." -- Kim Basinger

I think it's fair to say I'm a fair person. I've been told that I bend over backwards to be fair to other people. One might think that would be a good thing, but it's a quality that hasn't always served me well. When I was married, I always took my ex at his word, even when what he said was at odds with my nagging intuition. It felt like the "fair" thing to do, since only *he* would be able to explain the truth of *his* inner life. What I overlooked is that one must have the capability, the motivation, and the courage to be emotionally honest, and therein lies the rub. To be fair -- because it's hard *not* to be -- I don't believe that most of my ex's emotional dishonesty was deliberate, but it was a series of lies that stung me all the same. If a friend accidentally slams a car door on your hand, it still hurts like a mo-fo, even when it's not deliberate.

Education is expensive -- whether you pay in cash or in painful emotional regret. It's even more expensive if you keep taking a class and failing, as I did with Intuition 101. One of the biggest things I've learned from the breakup of my marriage is the importance of heeding my intuition. I will *never* take anyone at their word if my intuition is poking me in the stomach and telling me something else. Ignoring what my gut was telling me in favor of my ex's explanations that didn't add up was a very expensive lesson I only began to understand after we reached the fork in the road called Splitsville.

Truth reveals itself in behavior, not words. When someone's behavior and words diverge, intuition is the warning system that alerts you to that divide. If you're lucky like I am, you have at least one close friend who won't let you get away with *any* emotional bullshit created to ignore or deny the existence of that divide. But even if I weren't so fortunate, I now rely on my intuition to do the same thing. And I'm paying attention enough to be able to ace Intuition 101 this time around. Maybe I'll even go on to write the book Intuition for Dumbshits, since I lived that way most of my life. 

Bonfire of the Middle-Aged Vanities

A few days ago, I noticed a guy in his 40s in a Honda Civic with a rear spoiler. A Honda Civic! I can't even believe they *make* rear spoilers for Civics. Isn't that the same thing as stenciling a skull on your fanny pack? You can add whatever you want to your fanny pack, but you'll never change its fundamental essence. It'll always be that unflattering belly pouch worn by people *not* trying to bring sexy back.

It's hard to believe the guy with the rear spoiler bought it for anything other than cosmetic reasons. I am told a rear spoiler is not just a car decoration, but that it has aerodynamic properties that keep the back end of the car on the ground during high speeds and hard cornering. Okay, but the dude had a car seat in the back, so how fast does he drive and how much hard cornering is he doing with a baby on board? I rest my case.

As I had just started to enjoy my smug reverie about the poor guy's vanity, it was rudely interrupted by the unwelcome thought that I'm guilty of the same thing. The frosty pink lipstick that often adorns my lips is the rear spoiler and I am the Honda Civic. Lipstick, or indeed any noticeable makeup, seems like it's for young women -- not someone who is a month away from being able to join AARP. But I like it. Wearing frosty pink lipstick makes me *feel* good. Plus, I hear it's supposed to be helpful with the hard cornering of turning 50.

I just hope frosty pink lipstick is not a gateway drug to other more obvious vanities. I hope I don't turn into the 90-year-old woman who continues to dye her hair a jarringly unnatural dark brown because she thinks her real hair will make her look old. Or the 65-year-old lady with surgically enhanced perky breasts. As a woman, trying to figure out how to be appropriately sexy in middle age can be as confusing as it was as a teenager. Instead of being "too young" to be a certain kind of sexy, the confusing obstacle is being too old. I look forward to AARP sorting it all out for me. In the meantime, I will wear my frosty pink lipstick proudly as I continue to be entertained by the middle-aged vanities of myself and others.

A Small Bit of Parenting Genius

As a single mom, I rely on my resourcefulness, empathy, and quick thinking to navigate the tricky shoals of parenting a teenage girl. That's usually good for about five or ten minutes. After my resourcefulness, empathy, and quick thinking have been exhausted, I am not ashamed to say I reach for something more effective, such as bribery or appealing to her vanity. And when those fail, I know I can ultimately count on the biggest weapon of persuasion in my parenting arsenal -- the Judds. Yes, you read that right. My go-to badass parenting tool is the Judds, the superstar mother-daughter singing duo that dominated the country music charts in the 1980s and early 1990s.

If my daughter badgers me about something I cannot or do not want to tell her or buy for her, I bring up the Judds. If she litigates the hell out of a "no" she's received from me, I Judd it up. Specifically, I rave about how much fun it will be when *we're* on tour together like the Judds -- mother and daughter singing and touring the country in a bus as colorful as our loud costumes. She is simultaneously mesmerized and mortified by my daydream, which temporarily paralyzes her badgering tongue into silence. As an aspiring singer, she is fascinated by the idea of successfully living her dream. But as a 13-year-old girl, she is mortified at the thought that her mother -- her embarrassing mother -- could be so prominently featured in that success. For her, it's the middle-school equivalent of Apocalypse Now. The horror, the horror...

Even though I owe a debt of gratitude to the Judds, the funny thing is, I can't even name one of their many hit songs. I didn't start listening to country music until 2005, long after Naomi and Wynonna Judd stopped touring as a duo. Eight years ago, when I just couldn't bring myself to listen to progressive talk radio anymore, I started listening to a country music station instead. Hearing songs about being dumped or fired or sitting alone in a bar drinking before noon, or other typical country-song themes, was more uplifting to me than listening to the daily barrage of political and corporate bullshit going down in America.

I'm not sure how much shelf life the Judds have left as an effective parenting trick with my daughter. It's worked like magic for the past three years, but I fear its potency wears off the more I use it. When the magic is finally gone, I hope I can pull another surprising rabbit out of my parenting hat -- especially one as improbable as the Judds.

The Pickle Lady

The summer after high school, I worked at a Christmas ornament store in a small resort town in Wisconsin. Selling Christmas crap in the middle of summer is essentially the same as selling anything else that is gratuitously unneeded. The majority of our customers were middle-aged women, many of whom I suspect were shopping junkies trying to get their high on with an inexpensive hit to temporarily appease their addiction. With her milquetoast husband in tow, our typical customer would buy one or two ornaments and be on her way to the windsock store (not to be confused with the store selling windchimes). I may as well have been selling t-shirts or mugs that said, "I like to buy needless shit in my free time."

As you might imagine, it was a boring job -- the type of boring that waves a giant red flag in front of me, inducing mischief in a misguided attempt to stave off death by boredom. One of my favorite activities was spying on the Pickle Lady who worked in the deli at the supermarket next door. I was obsessed with her. Every day I would go to the deli during my lunch break and buy a pickle from her, just to see what she was wearing.

The Pickle Lady was probably in her late 40s, with white tortoise shell cat-eye glasses and a pin-curled hairdo right out of an episode of "I Love Lucy." Banishing the polyester pantsuit of the early 1980s to someone else's closet, she always wore skirts or dresses from the 1950s, including a navy A-line dress with white polka dots that I can picture even today. Her hair, makeup, and clothes were so jarringly old timey -- 25 years out of date in 1982 -- she could have been one of those historical reenactment park actors. Instead of a Revolutionary War woman demonstrating the butter churn at Sturbridge Village, she would have played the part of the greasy-spoon waitress at the 1950s Small Town America historical park. She was a living anachronism.

This is how my 13-year-old daughter sees me. I am her pickle lady, the one she delights in observing for her hopelessly unfashionable looks and manner. When she needs a laugh, she will ask me what I think certain current teen slang words mean. When I tell her I haven't heard that word used on Prairie Home Companion or Downton Abbey, so I don't know what it means, she rolls her eyes and looks at me with a mixture of bewilderment, pity, and exasperation. She doesn't understand my utter lack of giving-a-shit about maintaining an appearance of what passes for cool in middle school. When I remind her that I'm a middle-aged woman, and no, I don't want to wear skinny jeans and a lace peplum, instead of my bermuda shorts and a t-shirt, she looks at me as if I've just told her to put me on an ice floe and push me out to sea.

I find it funny that she hasn't figured out that we have different comfort zones. She has her middle-school comfort zone (surely "middle-school comfort zone" is the biggest oxymoron ever uttered), while I have my middle-aged zone of comfort that includes frosty pink lipstick, regularly dyeing the gray out of my hair, keeping my bra straps hidden at all times, and shunning skinny jeans. Although it's probably more accurate to say skinny jeans shun me.

The simple truth is, as a parent, I will never be cool, no matter what I look like or what I say. At first glance that might seem unfair or harsh, but it's really a gift. It gives you permission to live authentically, which is just Oprah-speak for dorking it up in a big way. Make sure you say "Howdy" if you bump into me at the windsock store as I go about my business living authentically. I'll be the one in the t-shirt that says, "I like to dork it up in my free time."

Huffing the Residue of Hopefulness

My boyfriend Frenchy has many good qualities, but the one I'm savoring today is his ability to recognize something good and stick with it, despite the hard work and the emotional ups and downs that go hand-in-hand with something about which he is so passionate. No, I'm not talking about "us." We're somewhere in the middle of our first draft, not the third major revision. After five years of blood, sweat, and tears, Frenchy got to see his creative baby come to life this past weekend.

Frenchy's musical, which he created with his two collaborators, was performed for the first time in a workshop production, a theatrical experience that is much more than a reading, but less than a full-scale production. A musical, which I've heard described as "a play on steroids," is so complicated to create, it's the theatrical version of writing a novel. It's inspiring for me to see Frenchy's diligence, creative talents, and belief in the project finally reap the reward of having other people experience it in 3D.

Frenchy is a polisher. He sees something that has potential, but is not anywhere near perfect, and he works on it until it's really good. To him, an obstacle isn't a stop sign, it's just a rough edge that needs to be reworked until you get it right. Besides being a quality I admire, Frenchy's "patient, but persistent drive to improve" seems like a good indication that he won't bolt at the first sign of relationship trouble because he's used to constantly reworking things, making little changes here and there. I like that. And I need that -- most of all for the residue of hopefulness created by all his patient, persistent polishing.

The Gilligan's Island of My Mind

I do not like waiting around for something to happen. Like most people, I want action. I want progress. I want efficiency. This is one of the reasons why online dating was so uncomfortable for me. And jury duty, which occupied my time recently.

Most of my day was spent waiting -- first for several hours in the jury service waiting room, then outside of a courtroom for a couple of hours. The waiting was so interminably long, I lost interest in reading and my mind started to play "Desert Island," this silly game I play whenever I'm stuck with a group of strangers for a while. The game is based on the farfetched idea that I and this particular group of strangers would have to reestablish some sort of civilization after surviving a catastrophic event that isolates us from the rest of what's left of humanity. Sort of like Gilligan's Island, but in the middle of LA.

I scan all the men in the group to try to figure out who would be my "husband" on Desert Island. The pickings are as slim as they were for Mary Ann and Ginger on Gilligan's Island. There's an olive-skinned foreign guy in his 30s sitting in the corner with his eyes closed, slowly swaying his head side to side, as he sings what can only be a funeral dirge in the land of his birth. This is America, babe. There is a time and place that is not now or here for that. Shut the f#ck up.

There are a dozen older men dressed in the standard retiree uniform of nondescript wire-framed glasses, a pastel-colored polo shirt, big-ass running shoes (usually white), and a pair of khakis two sizes too big. Bill Gates is not a fashion icon. Quit cloning his look. Well, unless you're *trying* to make yourself unattractive. Then, by all means, go ahead.

And then there's the chatty guy working the crowd with his well meant, but benignly insipid cliches belly-flopping out of his mouth every other sentence. He's in his late 50s, I would guess, and strikes me as the kind of guy who retires and becomes "The Waver" in his town. You know, that generically friendly, but inscrutable odd guy who stands on the same corner every day at the same time, robotically waving at the commuters driving to their boring jobs. That's his hobby -- waving at strangers. This guy gives me that same "what's-your-deal?" vibe.

It's surprisingly hard to "win" at Desert Island, and I more often end up in a draw, as I did a couple days ago when I gave up trying to find an adequate Desert Island husband within the juror pool. Instead, I looked around at the women among the prospective jurors, and decided I would be better off forming a platonic, supportive group with some of them, instead of trying to pair off with any of the guys.

Coincidentally, this echoes some recent conversations I've had with a few female friends, who have been thinking about what retirement will look like for them in 15 or 20 years. Some of my friends -- many of whom are single by circumstance, not choice -- extrapolate their current situation into the future and toy with the idea of living with, or very near, a group of their closest female friends when they finally retire. And even some of my married female friends joke about retiring within the immediate proximity of a circle of supportive, fun, and lively women, picturing themselves living in a women's-only dorm for retirees.

I'm not really sure what this means. At face value, it may mean single women in middle age have come to the realization that they may not ever meet Mr. (or Miss) Right, so if retirement with a romantic partner is not in the cards, what's an acceptable alternative to retiring alone?  Or it may mean that middle-aged women are recognizing the increasingly important emotional support role of their female friends as they age. One thing I *am* sure of is that retirement with a guy like "The Waver" would be as unacceptable as Ginger or Mary Ann settling for Gilligan.

Cruel Joke

"Smoking hot beauty is nature's way of making sure boring people get laid too. The rest of us have to be interesting," Mark Twain once wrote. Well, not really. *I* wrote that in a sardonic fit of dating pique once, and it's a joke I've made many times since.

I have this bias regarding insanely hot guys -- a bias I've held since midway through college. Hot guys have no personality. I am not referring to good-looking guys. I've known many good-looking guys with interesting minds and great personalities, and have even had the luck to date a few of them. I mean that infinitesimally small percentage of guys who are so damn hot, they never have to go out of their way to meet anyone. People just flock to the hot guy. So he's never really had to develop his personality in an interesting way. I'm talking about you, Brad Pitts of the world.

The hot guy is one of the Universe's favorite cruel jokes on us mere mortals. What could be funnier than a guy with an exquisitely perfect exterior, and a perfectly hollow interior? Before I realized the Universe was f*cking with me, I would develop a crush on some hot guy, preoccupy myself with clumsy machinations to loiter in his celestial orbit, then wait for him to notice me. After a string of failed attempts to grab his attention, my eager interest in the hot guy would turn to derogation, marinated by the sour grapes of his obvious disinterest in me. Half of my two-pronged strategy to get over Hot Crush would involve really focusing on his personality, not his abs. Perfect on the outside, Hot Crush was almost always disappointingly ordinary on the inside -- an Adonis with a doughy couch-potato brain. The other half of my "recovery" was falling for some other smoking hot guy. D'oh!

Physical beauty is a deceptive, tricky thing. When it comes to finding lasting love, there is nothing so over-hyped in value as beauty. It's not a particularly valuable asset, so much as it is a drug -- an intoxicating one that can distort your perception of others and yourself. Beauty is the fun-house mirror of dating. You can't trust it as a credible representation of reality, but it's hard not to pause and stare a while, mouth agape as your drool puddles below.

My Elusive, Fickle Friend

Confidence is to dating, what fire is to camping. Without a nice roaring campfire, you're just eating shitty food outdoors and sleeping on the ground. But with too much fire, you're cutting your vacation short because a wildfire is raging out of control. When you're dating, you must have *some* confidence, but not in excessive amounts. After all, if you can't sell yourself *to* yourself, how are you going to sell yourself to a near stranger you met online and are now meeting for the first time? Can there possibly be a more unreasonable time to expect self-confidence in a person than in the immediate aftermath of a life-changing breakup?

I have always found confidence to be so elusive, so fickle. Confidence is like that brilliant, beautiful, and utterly captivating friend -- the life of the party, the one everyone else is so eager to claim as their pal. She's so vivacious and energizing to be around, but you can never really count on her, because you can never be sure when she'll show up. Some days, confidence slums with me as I go about my daily life. Other days, confidence is whispering in Taylor Swift's ear that she has interesting things to say in a song, even though she's only 23.

Yeah, that pretty much sums up my relationship with confidence.

When I was in my mid-20s, I worked at a newspaper that exclusively covered horse racing, which has always been a very male-dominated sport. One of my coworkers was a woman about a dozen years older than me who was very knowledgeable in a specific area of horse racing, and in fact, held some rather unconventional views on that subject. I felt an immediate bond with her, because she was an expert in the same area that had first captured my obsessive interest in horse racing. I marveled at her ability to unequivocally state her opinion and then back it up with her exhaustive knowledge on the subject. She did not qualify her opinions with hedging statements, nor did she even slightly budge from what she said when she was challenged by male coworkers. She startled me with the self-assured way she expressed herself. She was the first women I admired for her confidence.

Every time she got into a discussion with a coworker about her area of expertise, I observed her as if she were a wild baby animal wandering through my backyard or a celebrity getting a latte at Starbucks. I was intrigued by the mystery of how she came to possess such unwavering, but fully warranted, confidence. By default, I chalked it up to her hard work and observational brilliance, but I knew there had to be something else in the mix that I just hadn't considered. Months later I got my answer, when I, along with the entire office, was surprised to find out that she was transgendered. She had made the gender switch to female years before when she was a young adult, after having been born and raised as a boy.

So, *that* was the missing penis-shaped piece of the puzzle. F*ck! Of course! The key to having unwavering self-confidence is to be born and raised as a male. It was a rueful tongue-in-cheek life lesson I've never forgotten.

Since then, I've met many other women I admire for their confidence. I've come to realize that confidence seems to manifest itself differently in women than men. Maybe I didn't admire a woman for her confidence until I was 27 years old because I didn't *recognize* it when I saw it. Women's confidence is usually quieter, and it's often less emotional than male confidence. (Unless it's confidence about physical appearance, in which case, both women and men are neurotic emotional wrecks.) And women's confidence always comes -- always -- after a lot of hard work, the paying-your-dues kind of work that takes years.

All of this is not to imply that men have it easy when it comes to confidence either. Confidence is elusive to many people of both sexes, often as maddeningly elusive as the middle-aged lifelong bachelor or a parking space at Costco the day before Thanksgiving. Since it's essential for success in so many areas, I will continue to woo my elusive, fickle friend back into my life on a more regular basis. Maybe we'll just be Facebook friends. Maybe she'll come over to my place once a week for coffee. Or maybe, just maybe, I will ignore my needy desire for confidence and just plod ahead one step at a time until my elusive, fickle friend automatically just starts showing up every day for a quiet walk together.

A Novel Idea

Writing a novel seems like such a demanding and complex undertaking, I've never seriously considered doing it. Where does a novelist start? How do you get from A to Z in an artful, or even interesting, way? How can you sustain interest in something for so long for both the reader and the writer? How can you make the daily commitment of breathing life into your novel without eventually getting bored and just shoving it in a drawer, never to see the light of day again? I have anxiety even making the commitment to watch a new tv show every week, much less taking on the daunting task of creating a novel.

I've come to believe that making a marriage or any long-term relationship work is as difficult as writing a novel. Admittedly, I haven't been successful at either one, which, I realize, makes me sound like I'm full of shit. And maybe I am. (As if *that's* ever stopped me from talking out of my ass.) If I *had* known marriage would be as hard and as complicated as writing a novel, I don't know if I would have actually gotten married. At the very least, I would have given the idea of marriage much more thought than the brief consideration that I did. Truth be told, my marriage was as ill-considered as the plot to a movie about high school cheerleaders trying to raise money by having a carwash.

If marriage is similar to writing a novel, then divorce is stopping in the middle and giving up on it. Or, as in my case, throwing the 400-page unfinished manuscript in the fireplace and burning the only copy of a story featuring two main characters I no longer liked. One of the most difficult aspects of writing a novel is going back and ruthlessly revising a story that isn't quite working. As my novelist friends have shared, it's brutal having to revise your work, because it's often the most cherished stuff you've written that needs to be cut. I think any long-term marriage needs that brutal, but necessary, revision in order to survive. Even then, the revision isn't always enough to make it worthwhile.  

I've heard that one of the big psychological "tricks" to successfully tackling a gigantic project like a novel, is to have a general idea of what you want to accomplish, but to be okay with not knowing exactly how you'll do it, and believing that you can get there by writing one page at a time. Serial double-digit novelist Orson Scott Card once said, "You can't write a novel all at once, any more than you can swallow a whale in one gulp. You do have to break it up into smaller chunks."

And that's how I'm trying to reframe my approach to long-term relationships. Instead of being hung up on whether I'm in a relationship that has the stuff to survive the next 30 years, I'm breaking it down into bite-sized pieces by looking at what I want and need in a relationship over the next year and the next five years. I'm banking on the idea that by paying close attention to the now and the soon, I will be in the best position to nurture a satisfying relationship that can survive merciless revision, as well as my own skittishness about marriage.

I don't know if that will work, but I do know that I will write a novel before I get married again. I can also state with equal certainty, I will be appointed the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan before I get married again. That's not to say I won't write a novel. I may, in fact, write one. I just won't be married when I do it.

How I Finally Made Peace With My Big Ass

I have a long-term relationship that has haunted me ever since I was a teenager. It's a love-hate relationship that has cast a long shadow over my dating history and has affected other parts of my life too. I am referring to my formerly ambivalent, often negative relationship with my body.

Since one of my longtime hobbies seems to be torturing myself, I would often compare my body to women who were born with a classic model physique: tall and statuesque, with long slender legs. With a short and stocky natural build, I *always* came up short in my impossible comparison with the classic tall, thin woman. Even though I liked certain things about my body -- my strong arms, for example -- I almost always felt ashamed of my curves, which I thought were too "excessive."  Too much ass and thigh, not enough leg.

My ass, in particular, was a near-constant source of embarrassment to me. It's always been "too much," sticking out and making a spectacle of itself like a well meaning, but mortifying aunt, who can't stop flirting with anyone and everyone, even when she's at church. I was so neurotic about it, I sometimes felt the urge to back out of a room, because I didn't want my ass -- exasperating in its excessive size and emphatically round shape -- to be the last thing people would see as I left the room.

As I got older, I became frustrated that no restrictive diet or amount of exercise could "sculpt" me into the body I thought I wanted, the body I assumed was automatically attractive to all men. I would occasionally hear that men were physically attracted to lots of different female body types, even though popular culture rarely reflects that idea. While intellectually I accepted that idea as fact, deep down emotionally, I never really believed it. I thought that any man would have his own specific body-type preferences, but in the event that a tall, thin model showed up in his life (because, you know, *that* happens all the time), he would automatically choose her, no matter what his "real-life" preference might be.

A few years ago, I had a realization that galloped into my head and finally put to rest my neurotic thoughts about my body (well, *most* of my neurotic thoughts). It was prompted by my lifelong love of horses, an obsession of mine for as long as I can remember. As a typical horse-crazy girl, I read everything I could about horses, drew them all the time, and rode whenever I had the chance. Even though I developed a great love for Thoroughbred race horses in particular, I have many favorite breeds of horse, not just Thoroughbreds. I love Clydesdales, those big draft horses strong enough to pull a plow through rock-hard ground, as well as the Icelandic horse, a small, but sturdy breed that thrives in the harsh climate of Iceland. I would not want the Clydesdale or the Icelandic horse to look more like the tall, statuesque Thoroughbred with skinny legs. I love the way they look just as they are.

And that's when I realized if *I* were a horse, I would be an Icelandic horse. I come from small, sturdy Scandinavian stock, who survived long cold winters, avalanches, wild moose, and bland food. I am not a Thoroughbred, but I am a small, beautiful Icelandic horse. With a big ass. And that's ok.

The Awkweirdness of DAD

"If anything ever happened to [my husband], I would have to date the UPS man--someone who came to my door," said my childhood friend thinking about the "unthinkable" prospect of trying to date again in the middle of middle age. I laughed, recognizing my own similar reaction right after my marriage imploded. The idea of going out into the world to actively look for someone to date who might turn out to be "for keeps," seemed as unlikely and overwhelming a prospect as the idea that any of those Kardashian princesses would be able to remain married to the same guy for any significant length of time. My house plants have lasted longer than their relationships.

Dating again after the Rumpelstiltskin nap of a long marriage is "awkweird," both awkward and weird at the same time. Humbling as well. After decades of believing my dating days were over and behind me, it's been surreal to jump in again. I am struck by the similarity of my experience to the blind man who, after years of living without the use of his eyes, miraculously gets his sight back. While the benefits of regaining one's sight are obvious to those of us who see, the transition to using your eyes to help navigate the world is almost always not smooth. Apparently, you have to retrain your brain to incorporate the data you receive from your eyes with the data from your other senses. It takes time and patience to readjust to your new reality.

And so it is with DAD (dating after divorce). As you learn to navigate the world of dating again, the real trick is not understanding the external changes in the dating scene. It's recognizing how *you've* changed, how your marriage changed you. Like the once-blind person struggling to make sense of the visual static in his brain, I work at recognizing my emotional static and deciphering what it really means.

Putting Myself in Their Shoes

I do not think of myself as the stereotypical shoe-obsessed female. I favor comfort over style (always). I do not own any shoes more than three inches in height. Call me overly practical, but I think shoes should be an aid to ambulation, not an obstacle. Naturally, I do not own a pair of Louboutins or Manolo Blahniks, the iconic high-fashion brand of shoe over which Sex and the City's Carrie waxed rhapsodic. In fact, I would be perfectly content to wear the same pair of comfortable black heels to work every day. Suffice to say, if I were the daughter of Imelda Marcos, I would be a huge disappointment to her.

So, it surprised me to discover that I own 41 pairs of shoes. I counted. I don’t know how that could have happened, but over the years, I’ve accumulated 41 pairs of shoes that I use on occasion (summer sandals, winter boots, hiking shoes, swimming shoes, work heels, special occasion heels, swing dancing shoes, riding boots, casual shoes, and running shoes). Some, more; many others, less. Some of these shoes I bought for a particular reason, while others were the result of being a cute pair of shoes on sale that I purchased on impulse. I didn’t need them, nor would I have bought them at full price, but the opportunity was there and I took it.

Men seem to have this same casual attitude about sex. Not all men, of course. Just most -- at least at some point in their lives. Young men often have this "if the opportunity presents itself, take it" attitude about sex. They’re not looking for a wife, or even, a girlfriend. It’s just sex. And many men just out of a long-term relationship have this casual mindset too.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not comparing the fabulous epic goddesses that we women are to something as mundane as shoes. No, no, no! I’m comparing men’s occasionally casual approach to dating to my casual approach to footwear. When I bought those cute pink suede clogs on sale, I wasn’t buying them as if they would be my *only* pair of shoes that I’d want to wear every day for the rest of my life. I bought them on a whim, because the opportunity was there and I took it. And to date, I’ve worn them exactly three times. 

When I was looking for a serious relationship, it was helpful to me to finally realize this about men. (Well, duh…) Sometimes you’re just the pair of cheap pink suede clogs he bought instinctively, without much thought as to how you’d fit into his daily life. That’s not a rejection of you as a potential girlfriend or as a person. It’s really a reflection of Mr. Casual’s mindset. If you’re looking for a long-term relationship, it would behoove you to avoid the guy whose approach to dating is as casual as my relationship to shoes. He may pursue you until you say yes, but after he sleeps with you, he’ll shove you in the back of his closet like a pair of ill-considered pink suede clogs bought for $20.

Feelin' It

There is this hidden grove next to the train tracks near the boat landing where I grew up that would turn into a free candy store once a year. It contained a raspberry patch that only my friends and I seemed to know about, where we would gorge ourselves on buckets of glorious ripe raspberries once every summer. I remember how exhilarating it was to discover a few weeks into summer that the raspberries had come in, and our annual berry bacchanal would begin right then and there. We would eat half our weight in raspberries in one gluttonous afternoon, eventually coming home with our hands and mouths stained blood red from the juice, looking like little vampires.

That’s kind of how it feels to be dating Frenchy. Instead of raspberries, I’m gorging myself on his appreciation. Buckets and buckets of appreciation. After having lived through the long appreciation drought more commonly referred to as "my shitty marriage," I am mainlining his appreciation like an emotional junkie. Being appreciated again by the man in my life is like getting oxygen when you're asthmatic, or hearing Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" after a week-long roadtrip with only Top 40 radio playing the same ten songs over and over in a relentless lobotomize-me-now loop. It's invigorating. Although it’s always nice to be appreciated for anything, it is *particularly* gratifying to feel appreciated for qualities I like and actively cultivate in myself. While it feels "nice" to be appreciated for, say, my good hygiene or my neat handwriting, I will swoon if you appreciate me for making you laugh.

It's not just about hearing those words though. Frenchy shows me his appreciation in other ways too. I feel it when he wants to spend more time with me than I have to give him. I feel it when he sends me a photo of the beautiful pond in the park where he walks his dog. I feel it when he wants to eat dinner with me every night. I feel it when he reaches for my hand and holds it for the rest of the play we're watching. I feel it when he asks for my opinion. I feel it when he touches my hair. I feel it when I remember a name he can't quite recall. I feel it when he looks at me and actually sees a flesh-and-blood woman, not just a piece of talking furniture that is so annoying when it asks questions and tries to start a conversation.

I’m digging it in a big way. If appreciation stained like raspberry juice, I would look redder than a chainsaw-wielding serial killer in a Quentin Tarantino film.

Shoving the Genie Back into the Bottle

I like being in a relationship. Let me qualify that: I like being in a *good* relationship, one characterized by respect, affection, mutual admiration and support, fun, and awesome sweaty sex. It doesn’t really feel natural for me to be "alone." I am the kind of person who probably *should* be married, which is ironic, since I've taken a vow of "I don't."

I grew up believing that when you got married, you stayed married for the rest of your life. I also grew up believing in Santa Claus, the equality of the American justice system, and other absurd myths adults love to pass on to the younger generation before the messiness of real life complicates everything with its more nuanced truths. It’s the way grownups *want* it to be, not necessarily how it is.

Remember what it felt like to discover that Santa Claus isn’t real? Divorce is the adult version of finding out about Santa. Both were hard kicks to the gut, while face-palming myself over and over with, 'How could you be so stupid?' Before I was married, I thought of divorce as something that befell careless people who lacked the discerning judgment to avoid a mismatch. (Although who’s to say I wasn't careless?) Now that I'm divorced, I think the messy truth is, it's a whole lot more than just that. I cringe when I think about my youthful hubris that led me to believe that reciting vows to stay married "till death do us part" was some sort of magical incantation that protected me against the possibility of ever splitting up. From this middle-aged divorcee’s jaded perspective, remaining happily married over the long haul seems as far-fetched as my childhood belief in a bearded fat guy who travels the globe by flying reindeer sleigh to deliver toys to all the children of the world on one single night every year.

My jaded side, which is overly sensitive to all the potential obstacles to a satisfying long-term relationship, is at war with my optimistic side, which wants to believe in the longevity of romantic relationships despite the cognitive dissonance of previous experience. "At war" probably overstates it. It’s more like my jaded side is the insecure eye-rolling middle-school bully who taunts my earnest optimistic side, which wants to believe that one big epic fail at marriage doesn't doom me to a lifetime of unsuccessful short-term relationships.

Now that I’m in a committed new relationship, I wonder how I can reconcile these conflicting views. Is it unrealistic to think that I could have a satisfying long-term romantic relationship without having to suspend my disbelief in marriage? Or do I have to figure out how to somehow shove the marriage genie back into the bottle and unknow what I already know?

A Meditation on the Possibility of Love at First Sight between Actor Ryan Reynolds and a Middle-Aged Frump in a Days Inn Parking Lot

There is this scene in the movie Sherman’s March: A Meditation on the Possibility of Romanic Love In the South During an Era of Nuclear Weapons Proliferation, that has resonated with me ever since I first saw it in 1986. A guy--who might be mistaken for Burt Reynolds by your mildly glaucomatous grandmother when she’s not wearing her glasses--is hanging around the parking lot of some Days Inn-type motel in Georgia, hoping to be hired on as a stand-in for the real Burt Reynolds, who is rumored to be filming in the area. Remember, this was shot back in the mid-1980s, when Burt Reynolds--in all his hairy-chested and mustachioed glory--was a national heartthrob, not a punchline – the George Clooney of his generation, if you will.

The scene culminates when a group of frumpy middle-aged ladies – in their pastel-colored polyester pantsuits, outdated beehive-ish hairdos and garish lipstick – swarm the Burt Reynolds look-alike, mistaking him for the famous actor himself. Excited by the chance to see a real-life A-list celebrity in person, the women wiggle and squeal “Buuuurrrrrrtttt! Oh Buuuurrrrrrrtttttt!” to get his attention while thrusting pen and paper at him for his autograph. At one point, it seems as if they might rip open his shirt to get a look at his hairy man-chest. They can hardly contain themselves in this scene that recalls the screaming girls of 1964 when the Beatles gobsmacked America. It’s hilarious – this juxtaposition of the always dowdy with the anachronistically cool – especially when you view the scene in your 20s, seemingly forever out of the clawing grasp of middle age.

After I turned 30-something, I stopped laughing at and started identifying with those wiggly, dowdy middle-aged ladies (picture a group of excitable Edith Bunkers with big hair), because that’s when it dawned on me that I have more in common with the group of frumps than I do with the “hot” guy. (I use the word “hot” here to reflect the consensus of the Edith Bunkers, not my own personal assessment.) If I ever stumble upon my beloved Ryan Reynolds in a Days Inn parking lot, that is how he’ll view me: just another excitable middle-aged frump with a preposterous crush.

Which leads me to the question,‘Why can’t I crush on a celebrity who’d be more “appropriate” as a crush for me?’ Over the years, I’ve had not-at-all-not-even-slightly embarrassing celebrity crushes on Henry Winkler when he was “Fonzie,” former CNN anchor Aaron Brown, British tv landscaper Alan Titchmarsh, comedian Patton Oswalt, and now on Ryan Reynolds. I know I *should* have better taste in celebrity crushes than pretty-boy actor Ryan Reynolds. He’s such an obvious and pedestrian choice as a crush with his soap-opera good looks, his “you’ve-got-to-be-f*cking-kidding-me” body, and his naturally funny talk-show-banter personality. I get it. It’s not cool for me to have a crush on someone so obviously and excessively attractive. I *should* have a crush on someone more socially acceptable like Steve Buscemi or that tv actor who plays the lead character in House -- actors who are excessively brilliant, if not excessively attractive in a mainstream sort of way.

But I don’t. And I wonder what this says about me – this silly notional crush on an impossibly beautiful celebrity I will almost certainly never meet, and if by chance I did, he’s married and is approximately a thousand years younger than me, not to mention the fact that I already have an awesome boyfriend. I shouldn’t waste my time thinking about such frivolities, when I could be doing something useful like learning to speak German or developing an app that helps determine the celebrities who are socially acceptable for you to crush on, based on your demographic group. On the other hand, it amuses me to think about how Ryan Reynolds would react if I told him, “You are the Burt Reynolds of your generation. Now let me get a looksie at that chest.”

The Third Wheel

I am not a fan of spending excessive amounts of time with my ex-husband. And when I use the word “excessive,” what I really mean is "any." Which is not to say I’m not civil with him -- indeed, I am. I just don’t want to hang out with him as if we're friends. I figure I wasted so much time with him when we were unhappily married, why should I squander even a moment with him now, unless it’s absolutely, unavoidably necessary. Last Saturday turned out to be absolutely, unavoidably necessary, since it was our daughter’s birthday party.

Birthday Girl invited a handful of friends to the Santa Monica Pier for the afternoon, because nothing says “Happy Birthday” like repeatedly waiting in long lines in the hot sun for a short-lived thrill aboard half-assed carnival rides that wouldn’t scare a baby. But it was the party she wanted, so I obliged against my more practical adult judgment. My ex kindly volunteered to help drive and supervise the girls at the always crowded Pier. And since his long-distance girlfriend was in town visiting, she came along too, which meant the three of us got to spend a lot of time together. Fan-f*cking-tastic.

I couldn’t help comparing this somewhat awkward afternoon with the somewhat awkward afternoon a few months ago when I went whale watching with my boyfriend Frenchy, our kids, and his estranged wife, who was visiting from France. This time around, *I* was ostensibly the third wheel – the discarded ex-wife forced by unfortunate circumstance to spend the afternoon with her ex and his shiny new girlfriend. But I didn’t really feel like a third wheel. Surprisingly, that role fell to my ex.

I happen to like my ex’s girlfriend. She’s warm and funny, and has been nothing less than kind to my daughter and me. I ended up chatting with her throughout the afternoon, while my ex buried himself in his phone, no doubt keeping himself company with the many political blogs he obsessively reads every day.

What’s interesting is my similar reaction to both Frenchy’s estranged wife and my ex’s girlfriend. I feel sorry for them, albeit in distinctly different ways. The sympathy I feel for Frenchy’s wife is rooted in the loss not of Frenchy himself, but in the grievous loss of giving up on being a family with the father of her children. Unless you’ve gone through it, you might not realize how deeply painful it is to let go of that dream. I feel sorry for my ex’s girlfriend because she’s stuck with him, and I know how lonely that feels. If not now, I expect she will come to feel like an unwelcome third wheel in her relationship with my ex, just as I did.

Of course, both of them may feel sorry for me too in those very same ways. But no matter--I don’t. I feel pretty good about my life, even though it’s still very much a work in progress. I may not have more than a vague sense of what my future holds, but at least I’m no longer the third wheel in my own life. And that truly feels fan-f*cking-tastic.

Why Dating a New Boyfriend is Like Training for a Marathon

Taking on a new boyfriend is kind of like training to run a marathon, or at least what I imagine it’s like to train for a marathon. Yes, there’s *that* comparison – the obvious one involving the sheer physical exertion of both long-distance running and marathon sessions in bed. Tellingly, men always assume I’m referring to that whenever I make that comparison. But I wouldn’t really know, since I can barely run a mile, much less 26. Although this does give me a more charitable explanation for my tendency to carbo-load the night before a big date, instead of my usual explanation, which quickly degenerates into a self-loathing internal monologue along the lines of ‘Isn’t your ass huge enough as it is? Do you really need to eat like a bear about to hibernate for the winter? You are *not* a Green Bay Packer, therefore you cannot *eat* like a Green Bay Packer.’

But I digress. The comparison between dating a new boyfriend and training for a marathon rings most true for me in reference to time. Both require a major time investment every day, in addition to all of the other activities of your regular life. Although Frenchy and I live in the same huge city, we are separated by a not insignificant number of miles of jammed highways and surface streets that are often just as busy. Sometimes it feels as if I’ve committed to a regular *second* commute, in addition to the one I make for work. And on those nights we don’t spend together, we usually chat on the phone or facetime for a while.

But the time commitment isn’t the only similarity. My runner friends--who actually do run marathons--tell me they get antsy if they can’t run every day. They crave the runner’s high they get from a good daily run. Seems similar to the “dater’s high” one gets during and after a great date. Kind of the opposite of many of my dates before Frenchy came along. Those dates induced "dater's panic," an attractive combination of flop sweat and PTSD.

Finally, there’s the lure of the costume. Sure, I could train for a marathon in regular sweats and a t-shirt, just as I could go out on a date in the same old regular clothes. But it’s that desire to dress up for the occasion, of looking the part – whether it’s that of a serious long-distance runner or a sexy date who is making an effort – that is similar. Oddly, both often involve spandex. At least if you’re doing it right.

And Such Small Portions

Just after my ex-husband and I split up, several friends -- all of whom, not coincidentally, are writers -- advised me to start a "divorce journal" to write down all of the chaos in my life. Perhaps they envisioned a book that would rise up like an angry, spiteful phoenix from the embers of my shitty dead marriage -- an anti-coffee table book full of harsh invective and scathing expose. More likely, they were just sick of hearing me uselessly and endlessly bitch about how my ex didn't appreciate me, blah, blah, blah..., hoping I'd exorcise myself of the need to complain by writing all that shit down.

Much of it *was* useless, because what's the point of complaining about someone who doesn't appreciate you, when you've already decided to be done with him? It reminds me of that old joke about two Jewish grandmothers going on about a bad restaurant. "The food was just terrible," one of them complains. "And such small portions," irrelevantly piles on the other. Who would want to eat large portions of terrible food?! And yet, I could not stop complaining about not feeling appreciated by the guy I didn't want anymore.

I recently paged through my old divorce journal, a euphemism which extracts any whiff of untamed, raw emotion and makes it sound much more civilized and antiseptic than it is. "Bitch Book" is a better name for it, since it's mostly filled with my pissing and moaning during that very turbulent period in my life, the first six months after my ex and I broke up. Most of it would not be interesting to anyone other than me, the same way someone else's vivid dream combining the oddly random with the mundane is only interesting to the dreamer. But I did come across two things worth mentioning. 

One was the title of my divorce journal, "F*ck You, NPR," which I hope to use as the title of a book I write some day -- even a cookbook. Especially a cookbook. I remember how annoyed I was after listening to some overly earnest, overly educated NPR newscaster trying to sound folksy to take the edge off the latest dismal news about the wretched job market in America -- the worst since the Great Depression. As an unemployed stay-at-home mother facing an already uphill battle to elbow my way back into an unforgiving job market, that was the last thing I wanted to hear. Thus was born "F*ck You, NPR," a phrase that *still* delights me whenever I say it.

The other notable thing was a list of all the qualities I was looking for in a guy. Over the course of a few weeks, I came up with 85 things I wanted in "my next boyfriend." Some of them were inspired (e.g. someone who smiles at me when he sees me), others prosaic (e.g. someone who likes to watch crappy tv with me). Most were things I felt were missing from my failed marriage.

Out of curiosity, I went through the list and discovered that my boyfriend has 82(!) of the 85 qualities I wanted back then in my next boyfriend. Not even my beloved crush Ryan Reynolds would be able to outscore Frenchy. When I told him that he had scored so highly (96%) on my 85-item wish list, Frenchy pointed out to me that I had creatively visualized him by writing down very specifically the kind of man I wanted in my life. In essence, I thought about him, and the Universe delivered.

Powerful stuff or magical thinking? Not really sure, so I'm going to try it again. This time I'll write down the 85 things I want in a career and see what the Universe provides. I'm crossing my fingers I won't end up working as a televangelist, a rodeo clown or an unctuous newscaster on NPR.

The Candy-Coated Misery of Dating Middle-Aged Bachelors

Even though I’m blissfully, disgustingly happy with Frenchy, who still has that “new boyfriend smell” at not quite four months, I want to share one of the important lessons I’ve learned over the many months I went on a shitload of dates. I have, in fact, assembled a “Do-Not-Date” list for myself that serves as a warning about certain types of ultimately undateable guys. At the top of my list are the guys who have hit 40 and have never been married.

I’m not talking about the middle-aged guys with the big obvious flaws that would render them automatically undateable (e.g. raging alcoholics, drug/gambling/porn addicts, pedophiles and/or Rush Limbaugh fans). I’m referring to the middle-aged guys who seem to have so many good qualities, yet oddly, have never been married. These are the guys who often seem to be too good to be true, the kind who elicit questions like, “Why hasn’t some lucky woman snatched him up yet?” They are snatch-resistant, which is not -- despite how it sounds-- a crude double entendre referring to the dozen middle-aged gay guys in America who are still huddled in the closet. Let me be clear. I’m talking about the kind of guy with a lot of good things going on who has never settled down with a woman, even though he is very much attracted to women. How does *that* happen?

Many middle-aged bachelors claim to want to get married, but complain that they just haven’t had any luck meeting “the right one.” But the problem is, there *isn’t* a “right one.” She doesn’t exist, because deep down, the perennial bachelor really doesn’t want to be married. The idea of being in such a close relationship makes him deeply uncomfortable. I finally gave up on middle-aged bachelors after dating at least three guys like this and being endlessly frustrated by their hot-and-cold behavior toward me. Carny was the worst, as I’ve documented ad nauseum.

I believe this is why things didn’t work out with Penpal and Easy To Talk To as well, although I had the good sense to bail before I spent too much time dating them, or, to put it more accurately, banging my head against the wall trying to figure out what the hell was going on. It sucks when you realize that this great guy you’ve started dating doesn’t want to get close to you. And I don’t mean the great guy you like who doesn’t like you back. Even I’m not egotistical enough to think every guy would want to date me. I realize I’m an acquired taste – like brussels sprouts or Louis C.K.

I’m talking about the great guy who takes you on an amazing date and clicks with you and the whole thing seems to go remarkably well. You both laugh a lot and the conversation flows naturally without too many awkward pauses. You have such a great time that the date goes on and on, until you realize you’ve spend the past six hours together, even though it feels like it just started. The next day or two, you’re so excited about what’s next. Until you realize he’s not contacting you. He seems to disappear for a while. You start second-guessing yourself. ‘I thought he had a great time too. Was I just projecting my own enthusiasm onto him?’ you wonder. He is non-committal about your next date, perhaps claiming to be really busy for the next week or two. 

The truth is he really did have a great time on your date. But instead of getting closer to you, he withdraws, because it’s just too uncomfortable for him to get close to someone. Even someone as fantastic as you. And don’t fool yourself. Even though he’s attracted to you, he’s not going to ignore his deep feelings of discomfort that an intimate relationship stirs up in him. He can’t. Allowing himself to get close to someone is as counter-intuitive to him as running into a building that’s on fire. Or the idea of eating raw fish to the unfortunate, deprived soul who’s never had his taste buds turned on by sushi before.  

He’s had many dates over the years with women as lovely and amazing as you. Why wouldn’t he have found one awesome enough to want to marry? Because deep down he just doesn’t *want* to be married. It’s that simple. And kind of tragic really, because many of them (and there are women like this too) would be such good boyfriends or spouses, if they could somehow get past their feelings of discomfort and panic precipitated by a budding serious romance. I concede it’s possible that there are a handful of unmarried middle-aged guys in existence who really have had bad dating luck, but don’t bet that you’re attracted to one of them. The middle-aged bachelor who is truly open to being in a close relationship, but is a victim of bad dating circumstance, is as rare as the 22-year-old bombshell who falls in love with the rich old geezer for his personality, not his fat wallet. Sure, it’s *possible.* Just not bloody likely.

Date the guy who has proven he can be in the kind of close relationship that marriage entails. Those guys aren’t hot and cold. They’re either hot for you or not. You won’t waste a lot of time trying to decipher the confusing mixed signals that the middle-aged bachelor is so adept at sending. You’ll save yourself the heartache and frustration of trying to get close to someone who is uncomfortable being in an intimate relationship. Would you choose to go to a dentist who is grossed out by teeth? Would you pick a nanny who hates children to care for your kid? If you’re dating to find someone with whom to build a serious relationship, don’t date the guy who *can’t* be in a serious relationship. To steal a phrase from wise philosopher Carrie Underwood, “He’s candy-coated misery.”

Unrecognizable

Who’s that? he asked as he pointed to the photo of me and my daughter taken five years ago.

“That’s the kid,” I said, puzzled that he was having trouble recognizing her.

“Not her. Who’s that? She’s beautiful,” he clarified.

“What?! That’s me!” I said as I laughed at the fact that my boyfriend didn’t recognize the me of a few years and a few pounds more ago. It was a photo of me from another life, when I was still married. Unhappily so.

I’m delighted and relieved he can’t recognize that me. I can’t recognize that me either – the me who was so weary and lifeless from the Bataan death march that my marriage had become. Ok, perhaps my hyperbole is a bit over the top – I *do* still recognize that me. In fact, every time I get a glimpse of her, she makes me wince and cringe and shake my head in disbelief. On a few occasions, after having thought long and hard about her, I may have lost consciousness and spoken in tongues.

But she also makes me very grateful that that part of my life is behind me, getting smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror as I push the gas pedal to the floor, racing toward my new life faintly visible in the distant horizon, but still miles away. When I think about whom I was then and who I am now, I feel confident I will never allow myself to feel that “stuck” again. Oh, don't get me wrong. I guarantee I will continue to f*ck up in forehead-slapping ways and struggle to get my shit together on a regular basis, because life is messy and full of inviting wrong turns, and I need material to keep feeding this hungry blog.

I just mean that getting a second chance at something as big as L-O-V-E is a gift I can’t imagine taking for granted. It's like being the lucky recipient of a kidney transplant or the person whose heart stopped for ten minutes, but lived to tell about it. Something that monumental. Something that huge. What kind of a dick would you have to be to take a second chance like that for granted?

Anything But That

“WHAT???!!! YOU’RE GOING TO DIE ALONE????!!!” blurted out my tweenaged daughter after I told her that I don’t want to get married again. I didn’t mean to shock her. I was just absent-mindedly answering her question about when I thought I would get remarried, which she took as a given as certain as the presumption that all people would choose to be thin or rich, if either opportunity presented itself.

“Of course not!” I replied. ‘I’ll be surrounded by my devoted dogs and a sarcastic, foul-mouthed cockatoo after being crushed to death by my massive collection of Ryan Reynolds memorabilia, acquired over the course of four decades,’ I thought to myself, but did not say out loud because I’m not always a f*ckup as a parent.

Like many recently divorced people, I can’t even fathom getting married again. It’s like asking the puke-soaked still-queasy person who just vomited his guts out all over the compartment of the Zipper, 'Hey, when are you going to get back on that crazy carnival ride again? And here, eat this big tub of caramel corn. You look hungry.' Hmmm…let me think. How about never?

Even though I have a wonderful boyfriend with whom I have just settled into a committed relationship, I can’t imagine saying ‘I do’ to the idea of “forever” again. It seems reckless and foolhardy, as if I were tempting fate to bitchslap me with *both* hands this time, along with 25 spinning hook kicks to the head and a few Three Stooges eye pokes for good measure.

I just don’t see the benefits of marriage for me at this time in my life. As a way of ensuring commitment in a relationship, marriage is about as effective as abstinence is as a form of birth control. They both work great. Right up to the day they don’t. When both people are on the same page, marriage or abstinence can work just fine, until one person starts to question his/her commitment to the marriage or abstinence.

So, ask me for anything but that. You want me to go halfsies on a timeshare in Arkansas? No problem! You want me to co-sign a loan to open a store that sells nothing but greeting cards because you think snailmail is going to make a comeback? You bet! You want me to donate a kidney? You got it! You want my hand in marriage? Um…sure. You can have it right after I amputate it like that rock-climbing dude in 127 Hours who amputated his own hand when it became pinned underneath a boulder.

Anything but that.

Spending Most Nights Curled Up With a Good Book

It startled me when I realized I didn’t know the names of his two sisters, even though it only *feels* as if I’ve known him a long time. We’ve been dating for less than three months, so it shouldn’t be surprising to me that there is so much more to learn about my boyfriend, even important stuff such as the names of his sisters or his favorite episode of The Twilight Zone. What I do find surprising is my more relaxed approach for getting to know him. When I was in my teens and 20s, I wanted to find out everything about a boyfriend, as fast as possible–as if I were pulling an all-nighter to cram for a make-or-break interview with an incredulous hardcore immigration official, who--skeptical of my professed love--would rigorously question me to measure the breadth and depth of my knowledge of my boyfriend. As if my love were provable because I could correctly name his favorite class in high school or the name of his childhood pet raccoon.

Instead of trying to learn everything about my boyfriend all at once, I now prefer to learn about Frenchy little by little, as we share stories about our lives organically, when the context is right. For me, the difference is as dramatic as the difference between reading an exciting thriller I can’t put down until finishing the last sentence on the last page, and slowly enjoying a classic novel for the first time. It’s as if I’ve just started reading a wonderful life-changing book, savoring each paragraph I read, and hoping I never reach the end.

The Wife

“Is she going to try to kill you, Mom?” was the calm, measured response of my middle-school-aged daughter when I told her we would be going whale watching with my boyfriend Frenchy, his two kids AND his estranged wife, who is visiting from France.

“Probably not,” was my less-than-reassuring reply. “My life is usually not as exciting as a Mexican soap opera,” I added.

“How do you know?” she asked skeptically.

I reassured her that I didn’t think it would be dangerous, or even unfriendly, because Frenchy and his wife both want to be divorced and I had nothing to do with their split, which happened years before I met him. She shrugged her shoulders, disappointed that the possibility of melodrama seemed so remote.

“What are you going to wear, Mom?” she asked.

“I’m not sure. Warm, sensible clothes,” I replied. “We’ll be on a boat for a couple of hours.”

“NO! Not your ugly clothes! You need to look fashionable. You need to look better than her,” she complained.

“Oh geez. It’s not a competition. Frenchy likes me even when I’m not dressed up,” I responded, trying to cut her off at the pass.

“Oh, Mom,” she said with resignation and a huge eye roll. “You’re hopeless!”

The truth was, though I thought it unlikely Frenchy’s estranged wife would be uncivil with me, I wasn’t really sure how she would treat me. She’s nearing the end of a divorce, an experience that often brings out the worst in people -- like siblings dividing up a large estate or shopping at Walmart on the day after Thanksgiving. Divorce is a hellish experience, even when you have the luxury of knowing, as I did, that it’s the only way to have a chance at a happy life again.

Later that night, Frenchy told me “the Wife” had brought us gifts from France: candy for my daughter and handmade lotion for me – lotion for my face that she had made just for me with her own hands. What a sweet gesture and not at all suspicious. WTF?! How could Frenchy’s ex not think that giving homemade facial lotion to her estranged husband’s girlfriend might strain the limits of credulity? I pictured myself receiving her gift and being forced by the situation to try on the lotion that would subsequently eat away at my skin, turning me into a burn victim with open, oozing sores.

I told Frenchy that while I wasn’t afraid she would try to kill me, I thought burning off my face with homemade acid-laced lotion was certainly within the realm of possibility. We laughed ourselves silly about the idea, and tried to come up with a more inappropriate gift, given my relationship to his estranged wife. It’s sort of like a parent -- desperate to be a grandparent -- giving “homemade condoms” to his/her married son, who wants to remain childless.

When we arrived at Frenchy’s house, his wife greeted us warmly and gave us our gifts. As she handed me the bottle of facial lotion, she explained it contained Moroccan argan oil, then grabbed it back and poured some into her hand. ‘Oh f*ck, F*ck, F*CK! She’s going to put it on my face,’ I thought. I braced myself for a handful of hot burning acid lotion – my eyes as wide as bagels -- only to watch her put it on her face and rub it in, without wincing, apparent pain or screaming. Awesome. Face still here. We were off to a good start.

The whole crazy lot of us – a contemporary version of The Brady Bunch, if the Lifetime Channel did the remake – climbed into the minivan and carpooled together to the whale-watching boat. Luckily the kids monopolized the conversation in the car, which helped me ignore the awkwardness of being trapped in a vehicle with Frenchy’s wife. For once in my life, I appreciated how lively and self-absorbed the kids were during what *could* have been the longest 45-minute car ride in history.

We arrived early, then stood in line together for another 45 minutes, waiting to board the boat. Surprisingly, there’s nothing like the boredom of waiting in line together to smother most of my feelings of awkwardness around Frenchy’s wife. We chatted a little, and discovered a few things we had in common, including a love of standup comedy. But mostly it was my annoyance at having to waste a lot of time standing in line JUST WAITING that distracted me from the awkwardness of the situation. I love it when my crotchety disposition unexpectedly helps me out.

Once we were aboard, we were free to wander about; our temporary diaspora limited only by the confines of the boat. As we were looking for seats, my daughter whispered to me, “Don’t let your guard down, Mom. She seems nice, but she could still try to push you in the water.”

“I can’t believe the candy she gave you didn’t buy out your skepticism,” I joked. “Don’t worry. The dolphins will save me.”

“That only happens in a Disney movie,” she warned. “Be careful.”

The rest of the trip was relatively uneventful. I saw a lot of dolphins, some sea lions, and a couple of whales, but did not notice any attempts on my life by a disgruntled estranged wife. I do have to admit though, that the bottle of handmade facial lotion sits on my bedroom dresser like a flashing red police light, untouched by me as if it contained an odious mixture of phlegm, small pox and schadenfreude.

Call Me Ishmael

I like to think of myself as being open to new experiences, new things. While overall this trait has led to many positive interactions in my life, it has, as you know, often backfired on me in the form of inappropriate men, outrageous dates, and ridiculous dating situations. This is partly why I’ve found myself on first dates with an avuncular pear-shaped man, a man who talked about himself non-stop for the entire four hours of our Titanic of a date, and the first date with my boyfriend that included his father.

All this pales in comparison to what's in store for me on Sunday. Frenchy and I will be going whale watching with our kids. And his ex, who is not officially his ex yet, but soon, if the French legal system doesn’t come to a complete halt this summer, when Europe hangs a "gone fishing" sign on its door for a couple of months.

Yes -- just to be very clear -- I’ll be going on a date with my boyfriend, our kids and his French wife, who is coming along because she’ll be here in LA for a visit to spend time with her kids. On Sunday I will be living the cinematic version of Moby-Dick, if Woody Allen were the director. It’s potentially such a rich mix of French sophistication and American awkwardness, how can it not be funny and messy and weird and emotional, all at the same time?

Call me Ishmael. Ishmael Rubinowitz.

What a Difference a Year Makes

Yesterday we made plans for a short vacation this summer. With our kids. Two months into “us” and it feels perfectly natural to make plans four months down the road. I marvel at how different it feels to be dating Frenchy, especially compared to “Perfect Timing,” the guy I was dating a year ago at this time. Even though I saw Perfect Timing almost every week for 6 months, I never knew when, or even if, I’d see him again. It kind of felt like I was dating a carny, who, at any moment, might pack up his Tilt-a-Whirl and be on his way to the next town, the next date.

Perfect Timing, who henceforth shall be known as “Carny,” was not one for making plans with me--even plans only a week in advance--which didn’t help me figure out where I stood with him. It was as if every date, after the first three dates, was the fourth date. He liked it that way – being able to behave as if we had just started dating, so the question of what we were to each other was never asked. At least out loud. It’s remarkable to me now that I could have thought so little would have been enough for me, but I had deluded myself into believing a weekly ride on the Tilt-a-Whirl was all I really needed. Or, perhaps, deserved. It wasn’t, of course, but I wasted six months pretending it was, until I finally got sick of his boring ride to nowhere, and quit going to the carnival.

And now Carny has returned, trying to text his way back into my life, it would seem. After not hearing from him since September, he recently texted me the name of a book he said I might be interested in reading, which I suspect is just a lazy pretext to start chatting with me again. After asking him who was texting me (because I deleted his number after I vowed to never go out with him again), I texted back with the most perfunctory of thank-yous, hoping he’d read between the lines that I’m not at all interested in getting back on his Tilt-a-Whirl. Ever.  

How Not to Pick Up a Woman at Blockbuster on a Saturday Night

We were both seeing what Blockbuster had to offer one recent Saturday night, except I was checking out the newer movies, while he was checking out me. He kept looking in my direction, then held up two movies and declared to me (because I was the only one within earshot), "I just can't decide which movie to rent," as if it were as big a dilemma as where to go to college or what kind of sushi to order at a great sushi place.

"Oh," was the original, witty response I lobed back at him. It is my default response when saying anything that would reflect what I'm really thinking is as unacceptable as *not* responding to a stranger obviously trying to engage me in a conversation. Then my inner Midwestern Politeness Battle-ax took over my mouth and I quickly added, "I haven't seen either one of them. Sorry."

He elaborated that one of the movies was something he had wanted to see, but that he was hesitating because the director had a reputation for making very violent movies. The other one was by a director he loved, but he had never heard of this movie until tonight when he had accidentally stumbled upon it while browsing.

This time I managed to muster an impressive "Oh," as if he had told me he likes pretzels or that he once had a goldfish named Bill. It was my "Oh" that said, ‘Whatevs. I don't really give a shit. Why are you still talking to me?' Then, appalled by my bitchy near-non-response, my inner Midwestern Politeness Battle-ax again commandeered my mouth and I heard it tell him, "I always love it when serendipity leads me to a good movie I have never heard of."

He put the violent movie back on the shelf and wished me a good evening, then wandered up front to rent the serendipitous movie by the director he loved. A few minutes later, he came back, explaining he had changed his mind. “Oh. I do that all the time. I’ve actually been here since noon because I can’t pick a movie,” I joked. “What made you change your mind?” I asked.

“I wanted to talk to you again,” he said.

“Oh…,” I said as my mind slipped into panic mode. It was my “Oh” that really meant, ‘Oh f*ck. Why the hell did I have to open my big fat mouth again? Why can’t I just let go of the opportunity to tell a joke? Why do I have to try to make every stranger like me? Why am I so needy? Holy crap, I need to go back to therapy. Every day. Jeez…how the hell am I going to get out of this?’

He apparently took my “Oh” as interest on my part, and with the artful subtlety of a double-decker bus at a Mini Cooper rally, he started to tell me about his job as an Executive Producer of a children’s movie “complete with big musical production numbers.” He emphasized how stressful he found it to produce a children’s movie.

“Besides being incredibly physically fit,” he bragged, “I am also incredibly patient. Those two things have saved me during this movie. It only makes me cry a few times a week.”

“Oh,” I replied yet again. This time it was my “Oh” that meant ‘I don’t have a f*cking clue what to say to you in response. And you obviously have no f*cking clue that bragging is as big a turn-off for most women as crapping your pants. And yet you chose to metaphorically crap your pants right in front of me, loudly and proudly. Why do men do that?! Does bragging *EVER* work as a pick-up strategy?’

“Yes, I’ve heard making a movie is very stressful,” I replied with deliberate nonchalance. I grabbed a movie off the shelf and looked around to find my daughter, who was wandering the aisles with her friend. When I turned back around, he was next to me leaning in. “You have amazing eyes,” he half-whispered.

“Oh,” I said as I lowered my eyes and looked at the floor, “Thanks.” This was the “Oh” that signified my exhaustion with him. As in ‘Oh crap…just go away. I have no interest in you. I have a boyfriend. I just want to rent a movie in peace and go home. Is that so much to ask?!’

Then, my daughter approached me while rolling her eyes. “Mom, can we *GO* now?” she said in an impatient manner that only a middle-school girl would use with her parent in public. “Yes!” I replied, happy to be granted this deus ex machina from Braggy McCrapPants by my obnoxious daughter.

No Shawarma for You!

The weirdest thing happened last Friday night. I was jonesing for chicken shawarma, so I stopped at my favorite neighborhood Mediterranean restaurant. I've been getting takeout here at least 2 to 3 times a month for the past year, so I know the owners who usually take my order, a Lebanese father and his two adult sons. If the place isn't too busy, the father and one of the sons will engage in polite small talk with me. But the other son has always treated me and everyone else with the brusque impatience of a middle school P.E. teacher who can't fathom how he wound up teaching volleyball to a bunch of punk-ass public school snots when he should have been coaching college ball for a division one school. He always seems so annoyed having to deal with customers politely ordering food that I have come to think of him as the "Shawarma Nazi," because his manner reminds me of the Soup Nazi, the fabled character from Seinfeld.

When I walked in last Friday, my stomach tightened a little when I realized that Shawarma Nazi was the guy taking everyone's orders. But instead of being greeted with his usual impatient glare, he smiled at me and started talking to me in a very animated way, complete with Italian hand gestures. He asked me if I wanted my usual, the chicken shawarma, then winked at me. What the... What?! Then he told me about how he hates going to other restaurants because he "knows how much everything really costs," except when he's on a date. Then he'll happily take her to any fancy restaurant she chooses. It was disconcerting--this out-of-the-blue flirtation. I wondered what powerful anti-depressant he was taking and how I might casually get him to spill the name of it, so I could invest all of my savings in the pharmaceutical company that makes this new wonder drug. Powerful stuff. Let's just say, had Sylvia Plath taken this drug, she would have gone on to be known for her hilarious children's stories and silly parody songs, instead of a depressing book that foreshadowed her tragic death.

He surprised me with a glass of iced tea while I waited at a nearby table for my takeout order. He pulled up a chair and told me I wouldn't believe what kind of life he's had. I asked him if he had his own reality tv show, the modern-day apotheosis of America's larger-than-life characters. Not yet, he joked. When he told me he didn't trust people who were superficially nice in a chit-chatty sort of way, I told him he must not have grown up where I did in Wisconsin, where people don't trust you if you're *not* chatty and friendly with strangers. He gushed that he was a huge fan of the Green Bay Packers, especially of former quarterback Brett Favre. WTF? I'm having a conversation about my beloved childhood football team with the Shawarma Nazi?!

His interest in me was odd, given how he has ALWAYS treated me with the same disdain he treats every other customer in the joint. Aside from a powerful new anti-depressant, the only other explanation for his abrupt change in behavior toward me is that he was boogie boarding on the waves of positive emotional energy I am emanating these days, no doubt a wonderful side effect of having a new boyfriend(!). Frenchy, the new beau, has noticed a distinct difference in how women are reacting toward him too. Funny how once you're in a meaningful relationship, other people seem to be drawn to you when you could care less. But when you're actively looking for a significant other, it feels as if people relate to you like the Soup Nazi to his customers.

I was relieved when my order was up, because if I lingered for another five minutes, I think he might have asked for my number. I'm not sure what I'll do the next time I need a shawarma fix. If I go back there and he asks me out, I risk having to turn down Shawarma Nazi and the possible public humiliation of being loudly chastised with "No shawarma for you!" On the other hand, it's the *best* chicken shawarma I've had in LA, so going to another place isn't really an option. On the scale of life problems, I concede that this one ranks somewhere between not being able to dvr all of this evening's episodes of Happily Divorced and making the irksome discovery that Target is all out of your favorite tissue (the softest kind with lotion) when your allergies are on the warpath.