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.