The Taming of the Shrew

So, I got to celebrate my birthday properly, giving black Friday a new meaning.

Sometimes, it feels like there is a little animal in my heart or soul.  Sometimes it feels like a bird, beating her wings against a cage, or a little shrew, running around, desperate for direction.

When a man, say Nate, grabs my hair and whispers in my ear, my soul calms.  It is like this giant sigh of recognition of where I am, and I breathe deeper and the tension of all my life just melts.

Nate and I were fooling around, and he grabbed my hair and I whispered: "I need to be tamed."  And he said "I will tame you. Do you need to be broken?" And I said "NO!" And then asked, later, when we weren't fooling around, if 'breaking' was something that he wanted and he enthusiastically proclaimed that he was not looking for someone to break.

Last night, he read his daughter to sleep with The Little Prince." When I woke up this morning, this was waiting in my e-mail. 

What does that mean-- 'tame'?""It is an act too often neglected," said the fox. "It means to establish ties.""'To establish ties'?""Just that," said the fox. "To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world..."   

This taming thing has promise

 Wow.  Did I melt!!!  How absolutely lovely!  How well he understood what it meant to me.

And I realized, we've started to establish ties.

Black Friday

I couldn't bring myself to go shopping today.  Mostly because I hate it and add in that many crowds and I hate it even more   But I had friends going and it made me think about the transactional nature of Christmas and presents.

Nate keeps wanting to take me shopping; he wants to buy me shoes.  I keep saying "I have enough shoes; but if there is something you fantasize about me wearing, I'll wear whatever you like."  And he isn't taking me up on it as something for him.  He keeps saying "women love shoes; let me buy you a pair you'll like."  I've told him my feet are an odd size, so I pretty much only buy my shoes off the internet.  I've told him I have more shoes than I'll wear in the next decade.  I've told him I don't need him to buy me things.  But it is odd to me.

The irony, of course, is that there is a pair of shoes I really, really want.  And, of course, I want the pedals and cleats that match them.  I doubt, however, that he would include biking cleats in his desire to buy me a pair of shoes.

He keeps wanting to buy me something that women supposedly want, rather than what I want, which is to talk about introspective stuff. To read Joan Didion's new book and talk about it.  To fly to Massachusetts and volunteer for Elisabeth Warren.  To go see The Artist and be enraptured (I hope--I haven't seen it yet).  To talk about things besides sex and small talk.

It's funny.  I'm giving Nate a Christmas gift that is very similar to the one that I gave Bobby for his birthday (although even better, because I'm giving his daughter a matching one from 'Santa').  I tend to give pretty similar gifts: something I make myself, monogrammed.

Bobby seemed to really appreciate the one I gave him.  He seemed to understand why it was a lovely gift.  He thought I was talented.

I'm kind of scared Nate won't understand the gift well enough; I think he would be just as happy with monogrammed cuff links.  And then I wonder if I should give him something else, so I'm not comparing him to Bobby.

I don't think I could love someone whom I only give store bought gifts to.  Some store-bought gifts are fine; I always buy my mom Aveda hand lotion because she loves it and while she could afford to buy it, she never would.  I love Crabtree and Evelyn's "Evelyn Rose" bubble bath and I only use maybe 2 bottles a year because it is expensive; my dad gave me a bottle once and that was so thoughtful. So many store-bought gifts are fine.  They just need to be thoughtful and combined with home-made things.

I have these cousins I kind of despise and when I have to give them a gift, it comes from Tiffany's.  I must be the only person in the world that thinks that a Tiffany's present is a huge put-down.  But to me, it is a way of saying: "you are shallow and easily bought.  The name on the box is really all that matters to you.  Here is our commercial transaction."  They are very, very, very rich; perhaps they look down on me for shopping at such a low-class store, but I've noticed they always do what I want when I give them a Tiffany's gift.  When our grandfather was sick in the hospital and they didn't visit, I sent them a Tiffany's gift from him and they were visiting the next week.  My father was shocked I bothered to send them an expensive gift from Grandpa; and even more chocked they visited.  They are easily bought. And I think it meant something to him that they visited.  It was worth $500 to me for him to see all his grand-kids one last time before he died.  Tiffany's is what you buy for people who won't visit their dying grandfather unless you bribe them.

I'm sure Nate will appreciate my non-Tiffany's gift.  I hope so!  But I feel like it will be a generic appreciation of a nice gift. I might as well go to Tiffany's.  I don't think he's appreciate one or the other any more or less.

Breaking up (with dad) is hard (or impossible) to do

So, I'm still trying to figure out the dad-situation.

I'm writing him a long e-mail that basically has an ultimatum at the end:  shut the fuck up about being 'genuine' and balance that with kindness, or else I don't want to have much of a relationship with you.

I'm saying it nicer than that.  But it is incredibly scary.

I've been talking with the family-shrink about this and she said "why don't you say what you want instead of what you don't want"  and I couldn't say what I want to him, because what I want from him seems so unlikely.  And I'm not going to give him an ultimatum for what I want, but I will set boundaries for what is not acceptable.

But what I want from him:  I want him to cherish me.  I want him to take my feelings into account and try not to hurt me.

And that makes me cry because it doesn't seem like such a crazy thing for a girl to want from her daddy.  Or even a woman to want from her dad.  And yet, it seems crazy.

Wanting Cherishing

I am having real issues with my dad.  It seems I'm not the only one.  (My parents are using the D word, which they haven't for 20 years.  And what is scary is before I was on the side of 'work it out,' this time I'm on the side of 'how the hell did mom put up with this for so long?') But I realized when talking with the family shrink (of course my family has a resident shrink that is our go-to person when my parents are having trouble with each other or the kids are having problems with on of our parents) that my standards for my dad are so very low.  The shrink wanted me to phrase what I wanted from my dad, rather than what I didn't want.  And I was like, 'well, what I want may not be realistic and I'm not going to cut down on relatedness to my dad because he won't give me what I want.'  But he had me work on what I wanted:  my dad to have kindness and empathy for me and to cherish me.  Yup.  That's the big thing this girl would like more than anything else: her dad to cherish her.  And I don't think he will.  He is too busy being 'genuine' (and he tries to make it sound like he is a better person than other people for being 'genuine') to worry about being kind.  He is genuinely an asshole right now.

Nate cherishes me, but he is so fucking busy!  I found myself cutting back on seeing other people (even though we have neither slept together, nor had a conversation about not seeing other people) and now I'm really wondering if I can have a relationship where I get to see someone once a week and have text messages in between but not even phone calls.

There are 2 men who are pursuing (does anyone else spell that as persue and then have spell check change that to peruse?  Oy--I'm too tired to be blogging) me pretty hard, and I'm kind of exhausted by each one.  I e-mailed both (whom I've avoided contacting for several days) and said "I'm just too overwhelmed to meet right now" and they both got "no you're not" and I'm like Annie Oakley (Yes I am!).

I keep trying to sleep and keep getting woken up by my angst around my dad.  I keep wishing I could say the thing that would make him decide he genuinely wants his family in his life and he will want to be aware of their needs too.

Birthday, Part 2.

So, I'm a little embarrassed, but my best friend and I flew to NYC for the weekend for my birthday, because I wanted to see Hugh Jackman.

Jackman was amazing.  Funny, sexy, charismatic, charming, with a great voice.  He does it all effortlessly (and even does his own tap-dancing).

And it made me sad.  Made me sad that a highlight of my birthday is seeing someone else perform.  I would rather have had someone to spank me.

That said, Nate and I have been seeing more and more of each other.  Maybe we'll celebrate my birthday next week.

I say it's my birthday...

And I'm really rather blue about it.  42.  What is the big deal?  And yet, somehow, this year, it is hitting me.  I'm 42 and I'm single.

And, I went to John's memorial on what would have been his 42nd birthday.  I am now older than John was.  Maybe that is why this one is hitting me.

I do feel like it will affects how men view me.  42.  I don't look it.  I really don't.  At the 'scene' party, the one guy I talked to thought I was in my 20s.  But the lighting wasn't that great.  But even when the lighting is, everyone seems to think I look 32.  I have had 1 grey hair, total.  It was in my right eyebrow.  I plucked it out in 1994 and it never reappeared.  I notice that under my eyes there are very faint wrinkles from smiling, but you can only see them in my 12x, lighted magnifying mirror.

But I moisturize like crazy.  And when I don't moisturize, I can really see the difference in my skin.  That wasn't true when I was younger.

42.  Supposedly, my body is less fertile by the hour.  42.  How did that happen?

I seem to have wasted my youth on an education, when I should have been partying, drinking and fucking.  42. I have now been able to drink more of my life (legally) than I haven't.  42.  Not only am I out of it when it comes to most popular culture (who is this Kardasian?  And why do people care?  I assume she is gorgeous, tall, with long hair and big breasts, but I couldn't pick her out of a Maxim line-up.  A group of clients were talking about Jersey Shore and I asked them what they liked about it because I honestly couldn't imagine why it was popular.  It felt like 'when I was their age' people had to at least have a little talent to be a C-list celebrity.)

I actually feel like my life is pretty good.  At 42.  But I feel like what I feel isn't nearly as important to the dating game as how men view me.  And with internet dating, age is the very first thing they view.  And 42 is old for a single woman.  Most men assume there is something wrong with me, for never having been married.  I'm happy to date men who are 10 years older than me (if they are taking care of themselves), but not 20 years older than me.  And right now, I get a lot more 57 year olds making passes at me than 47 year olds.  And half the men who claim they are 47 years old seem closer to 60.

Well, I'm still interested in Nate.  And he is 5 years older than I and seems very fine with my age.

Adoption and Acceptance

I can't help but notice that the ex, Bobby and the vanilla Republican from last year were all adopted.  John was in and out of foster homes and his mother kicked him out when he was 14.  Nate has adopted a child.

This seems statistically anomalous, and so I wonder if there is a pattern.

Clearly, the sense of not fitting in resonates deeply with me, which is odd because I had what, from the outside, should have seemed like a story-book home.  It wasn't, of course.  But it certainly had more stability and I had a lot of love from the first day I was born until I was 4 years old and became "the problem child."  And even at that point, I still had a stability and continuity.  I have an acquaintance who's mother died in childbirth and she was put up for adoption and adopted within a month, and she feels that loss incredibly strongly.  It is a defining even in her life.  I don't have any reason to feel that way.

It's just that I'm a freak who didn't fit in.

Clearly, something in me is attracted to, or draws in men that didn't stick with their origin family.  I don't know what that is, but I think it links to seeing the pain in a soul.

Nate wasn't adopted.  Nate didn't feel like a freak and didn't struggle to find a family or create an identity.  And Nate found it in his heart to adopt a baby girl.

He and I have been fooling around. Almost enough to make me wish I'd be in town for my birthday this weekend.  It would be nice to be spanked on my birthday.

But here's the thing:  I like Nate.  My body likes Nate.  I can totally enjoy fooling around with him.  And then I'm totally OK if he goes.  I'd totally go out with him again (and I assume he'll call--he texted me after he left last night to tell me what a wonderful time he had), but while I enjoy him when I'm with him, it isn't changing how I view life.  It isn't making me turned on all the time.  (After Bobby and I went out, I felt turned on all day long.)  It isn't making me grin.  I enjoy him when I'm with him.  But I'm not looking forward to the prospect of seeing him.

I hope that will come. I do think if we have sex, I'll begin to like him more. Intellectually, it would be lovely to be with someone who wanted to make a home for others, rather than search for the home he had lost.