Daffy Doormat

Wow. Merry Christmas from a dirtbag.

In the spirit of all things Christmas-y, here's a story that will freeze your heart. From a Greenpoint blogger comes a tale of betrayal, that makes this the season to be furious. Read it and weep. Then go drink some alcohol.

Merry Christmas!!!

I hate Christmas. Even more so this year.

 

Could not have said it better...

...yet never took this advice myself.

My friend Judy McGuire's column on rebounding after getting hurt:

After The Rebound - Seattle Weekly

When exes read your blog.

The other day I received an email from someone I once dated, commenting on my musings here. The email was actually kind of sweet; he wanted me to know that he never thought of me as a doormat. That's nice. Thanks! Truth of the matter, though: I knew that. He was one of the men in my life who treated me nicely. Once in a while someone did come along who unabashedly adored me and still managed to get my attention. For good reasons I had to pass on this man, but now I can't tell you what those are because... Hello!... he reads this blog. The big issue at hand: when you write a blog, do you edit yourself, consciously or not, because people whom you know (and perhaps slept with) might stop by for a read? When I began this site, no one knew about it and no one read it. Since then, I have come out to my friends and now it's all not so anonymous anymore. So I feel self-conscious writing about, you know, the size of a guy's pecker. Unless, of course, it was enormous and they'll take it as a HUGE compliment. Get it? Huge. Haha. What? No, I don't mean YOU! I'm being hypothetical here. Seriously though, I was reminded by my ex how easy it is to overshare and sometimes results can be a bit embarrassing. Or hurtful.

While I try to navigate my way between the pitfalls of blogging, I want to assure you exes-of-mine, you need not fret. Readers of these pages know it's not penile measurements I typically write about (though I'd gain a bigger audience, I'm sure). I just try to answer the age-old question "What were you thinking?" with a few sweet 'n' salty anecdotes from my life. If you're in any of them — and I've known you in the biblical sense — just take it lightly and remember that a certain tongue-in-cheekiness applies to everything that's written here. And take it as a compliment. A HUGE one.

This one even I haven't done.

Traveling for work today, so I must keep it short. I came across this short from Slate's funny "What Was I Thinking?" series. Dating a porn star... sounds like something I could've done. But I didn't.

Why dating a famous guy can suck.

Some years back, I went on a date with a well-known politico/TV personality. I met him on the job. I was working in TV then and we both attended the same political function. Exchanging phone numbers led to phone calls and witty email exchanges, swooned over by my office colleagues, who wet their panties with every "ping" coming from my mailbox. "Is it from him?" they'd call out. I tend to overshare, I know. It gets worse.

After days of furious emailing, email-checking and general obsessing, I went on a date with this man. He was, according to the tabloids, shopping around for a wife in those days, gallivanting through New York's nightlife, basking in the glow of his own, fabulous eligibility. His usual diet consisted of semi-famous starlets with careers in decline, so I was not a natural pick. A news producer who gets maybe one hit if you google her? Not exactly his type.

On the night of the date he took the subway to Brooklyn. He actually came to my neighborhood, which I though was nice. It seemed unpretentious. Then again, I live in one of the most pretentious neighborhoods in Brooklyn, so my assumption may have been too kind. I took him to a local place for dinner and we had a reasonably nice time. The waitress nearly fainted when she saw him and tripped all over herself to be extra-charming. I was beginning to second-guess my choice of venue. I got through my food without choking, was all smiles and seemed to reasonably charm him. After dinner, we went to yet another local hangout, where everyone was stealing glances. His celebrity status distracted me. I kept checking my own behavior, wondering if what I was doing (sitting there) is what I should be doing (stand, suck it in, look cool, pose, pout, whatever). My anxiety-level rising, I suggested we leave. Then, I walked hand in hand with him down the main street of my hood. Big mistake.

We ended up listening to music, making out and then some at my place, and he left in the wee hours of the morning, because, you know, he was a busy man. I would be lying if I said that I didn't hope for him to call. I'd be lying even more if I said that I actually thought he would. Something about his demeanor, his nonchalance gave me that hint. I think he was used to dating and sleeping with a slew of attractive New York girls and was just going through the motions of someone who has too many chicks available to him. His hype, by the way, way outshone his actual personality or performance. That just as an aside.

But the real kicker in this story is that I had shat where I ate, as they say. The next day I ran into several acquaintances, who greeted me with some version of "Hey, I heard you were walking hand in hand with XYZ down Bedford Avenue last night? So-and-so said so!" Crap. It was only Saturday. I still had to deal with the expectant faces of my colleagues on Monday and was not looking forward to it. It would be hard to hide the absence of a constantly pinging mailbox. That Sunday I curled up in bed, watched TV and felt bad. I had put myself in this position of weakness. It was pretty clear what he had wanted and my expectations should never have been anything beyond that. I knew, despite the assurances of my salivating girlfriends, that he wasn't going to call. And now I'd have to walk the walk of shame. Just as my misery was peaking, I switched TV channels and... there he was. Coiffed, suave and grinning, and surely thinking not a moment of me. I turned off the TV, dreaded Monday morning and cried myself to sleep.

The man with no name.

After only writing down daily laments for a while now, I should really get back to disclosing some of the finer moments of my love life's checkered past. As luck would have it, I just remembered an episode the other day, which even I couldn't believe actually happened. It seems so random and crazy now, when viewed with the accumulated wisdom of 20 years of hindsight.

In 1988, my best friend and I took a road trip to Southern Hungary, where my great-grandmother lived. When I say road trip, I mean road trip. No, we didn't drive up through Canada and the North Pole to come down on the other side (I don't think that's even possible, is it?). We started off in Germany, where we were both living then. The plan was to hang out with my great-grandma in her dust speck of a town for a few days and then drive north to Budapest, the (even then) exciting capital of communist Hungary. Remember, this was 1988. The Hungarians had not opened the floodgates of their borders yet. The wall in Berlin was still a wall. Nutella and bananas had not made it past the Iron Curtain at that time. Hungary was still the deprived, yet strangely jolly country of goulash communism. So we hung out in the Southern plains of this pretty and very rural land, and drank ourselves silly every day with the neighbors' homemade wine. The liters of rocket fuel schnapps, the unpaved roads, the geese running around, the petroleum lamps, the outhouses.... it was all very romantic then. Which would explain my general disposition to get romantically involved with a real Magyar.

 A few days into our trip, inspired by the cultural whiplash and thinking "Who needs democracy anyway" we arrived in Budapest. Once there, it didn't take long until a young gent caught my eye. He, whose name now escapes me, was hanging out with a buddy in the restaurant we were eating in. I honestly can't fully remember the details (my memory has occasional pity on me), but somehow we began to talk. Not. Fact is, he spoke zero German or English. My Hungarian is beyond rudimentary, and was even worse at the time. I don't know what we "talked" about, but he and his friend ended up meeting us several times over the course of those few days. We went sightseeing, we had lunch, we took photos. The one I liked was a DJ and we went to some euro-trash disco he was working in. I may have spent the night at his apartment, but... I am honestly not even sure anymore. My best friend will remember. Nothing slips by her, and she reads this blog. Did I or didn't I? I think I did. So anyway, the day we had to drive back home I was still feeling the reverberations of my Eastern bloc romance. Before my friend and I took the turn off onto the highway, I told her to stop. I got out, walked to the car behind us, in which my Hungarian man was sitting to see us off, and gave him a piece of paper, onto which I had written "I want to see you again!" He smiled, I smiled, I got back in the car, my best friend smirked and said "Oh no, you didn't!" 

What followed where countless expensive phone calls from Germany to Hungary, that my parents grudgingly paid for. My father thought I was a lunatic, my mother — ever the believer in doomed love — encouraged me. The obvious problem: without a common language or the ability to see one's gestures, a phone conversation is pretty much impossible. My mom sometimes stepped in. As the resident Hungarian in our family she played interpreter to my cause. I'd call her over to the phone and ask her to tell him something borderline silly or intimate. He'd respond and she would translate it back to me. (Oh mom, the hell I put you through. I am sorry...) Knowing that our "thing" wasn't going to work like this, I told him (god...what was his name again? I am wracking my brain..) to drive up to Germany. NOT an easy undertaking when you are a Hungarian living in Eastern Europe in 1988. My family had to write official invitation letters so he could get a visa. It took a month or so. Finally, he got into his old Lada or whatever tin can he drove, and sputtered away, making the 10-hour trip to a foreign land. 

Once he got to our house, he was greeted by me and my mom, who was by now the official chaperone of our commie tryst. She had cooked dinner for us and sat at the table, chatting away with this young fellow countryman of hers, obviously trying to figure out whether he was worth the pain in the ass that he had caused her. Once in a while she'd repeat to me what he said. I got the feeling she was interviewing him. She raised her eyebrows when he spoke and once in a while gave him a long, drawn out "Jaaaa?" It sounded as if she didn't believe him. I think under my mother's withering stare he was trying to come off as more interesting than he may actually have been. But how would I know? I didn't understand a word he was saying! The whole thing began to unravel when he excused himself to go to the bathroom. My mom had a look of unimpressed irritation on her face. She turned to me and said "Dear heavens, that guy is an idiot!" 

Oh god. Here I was, with a man who drove 10 hours into hostile territory just to see me, and I was being told that he was a dimwit. She said all he talked about was himself and how fantastically great he was. She said he bragged and bragged, then bragged some more. She said he was one of those "typical Hungarian macho chauvinists", who think they know and own the world (and the women therein), but really have no clue. I guess she met the type before. She was, after all, the expert on all things Hungarian. At some point what's-his-name came back to the table. I managed an insincere smile. I knew this wasn't good. Frankly, I had doubted the decision to have him come to Germany before he even got there. I knew the language barrier and the fact that we lived worlds apart was working against me. I also knew that I was having major second thoughts about him in general. It had all been a gamble. I was hoping for some big, romantic whirlwind to sweep me away. 

The next day I took him to see some sights around town. By mid-day I was hardly able to stand his company. He must have noticed, because he tried very hard to be silly and make me laugh. I was deflated. I couldn't believe what a stupid choice I had made. Even if he was borderline obnoxious, he still had driven a long way to come and see me — and now I was overwhelmed by guilt. I couldn't ignore what my mother had said about him. Instinctively, I knew it was probably true, or maybe I wanted it to be. I had seen his behavior and watched his interactions, remembered how even I thought he came off as pompous here and there. With our complete lack of understandable verbal communication, I couldn't even give him the benefit of the doubt. Now I had to find a way to extract myself from this very awkward situation and I was embarrassed as hell.

That night he slept on the other end of the bed. The next morning he left back to Hungary. My mother made him sandwiches for the road. Hey, she's not completely heartless! After his car pulled away and our front door fell shut, she said "So much for the Hungarian experiment." Yeah, so much for that. I went upstairs to my room like a chastened 10-year-old, ashamed of what I had done. I felt I had hurt somebody, albeit a jerk. I had outed my own immaturity in the process. Most disturbingly, I had given my mother a huge opportunity to meddle — and I couldn't even prove her wrong. 

What had I been thinking? And WHAT THE DEUCE was his name??

My mom's affair with that cheesy singer.

Today I rummaged through old photos. I came across one that made me gasp. It's a picture of me, age 10, next to... let's just say a then very famous and very cheesy crooner. Can I say who it is? What if his peeps read this and they sue me? Well, they can go ahead, my mom will vouch for me. She's actually not shy about this story anymore. So, you want to know who it is? Hm. For now, let's just call him E.

In the swinging seventies, my mom had a big thing for E., whose songs just made her weak in the knees. They made me nauseous, but I had no choice. She cranked his audio cassettes up in the car, his LPs at the house, she sang along and danced, in her platforms, at parties. He made her swoon. My mom has no taste in music, never had. When you hear who it is, you may barf. I must warn you.

So then, in 1977, she forced my dad to go see this guy live in Las Vegas. Las Vegas...that alone should tell you something. During the show, E. was choosing women from the audience to bring on stage and give a sweaty kiss. My mom's blond hair and puckered pout must have screamed "Pick me!", since E. actually lifted her out of the crowd. Then, true to form, he bent her backwards, seriously, like the women on the covers of romance novels and made out with her on stage. Oh, yes, there was tongue! My father was so proud. The photos depicting this momentous occasion hung in my parents bedroom until the nineties, until my dad eventually took them down, quite a while after my mom had moved out. I remember often looking at them, thinking why my dad would have pix of his wife, making out with someone other than him, over the bed.

Neither my father nor I knew then that my mother somehow at that very first concert managed to get in touch with the E.'s management. And she made plans to fly and see him in another state. I was told at the time that my mom was going to a concert and would be away for the weekend. My father..I don't know what he thought. Maybe he really did believe that his wife was just a crazed fan. And she was. She was, let's face it, a star fucker, leaving her husband and young child at home eating Spaghetti-O's in her adulterous absence.

Fast forward. When my mom turned 50 in 1997, I took her to the Caribbean. The night of her birthday she told me the story. How she went to see E. at his various tour stops, telling my dad she was going there with friends. How my dad accepted it, apparently not understanding what was going on. How she somewhat enjoyed pulling the wool over his eyes. She even took me to meet the singing douche backstage one night, that's when the photo was taken.

Me: Mom, really?? You were kind of a .. groupie-whore?  Holy fucking shit! MOM! Cool...

No, that's not how I reacted. I was kind and understanding about it. Amused. She was actually a bit embarrassed. Yeah, I'd be, too, if I had slept with this guy, for sure. Secretly, though, I thought how sad it was, that at age 31 my mom was going off into groupie land, completely alienated by her husband, who had so little interest he couldn't even fathom she's actually doing it with this married singer-dude. I remember missing her when she was gone, longing for her return. I felt alone and helpless with my dad.

My mom. She's made some odd, screwed up choices in her life. She's certainly not an innocent bystander to my doormat history. For now, I just have to get over the photo of me with that pathetic smile of excitement on my face, cause, you know, it was E. after all.

Daddy Dearest

Good morning, world! I wrote yesterday's post late in the day. By this morning, my miniscule audience had doubled. You might say two times zero is still zero, yes. Haha. But even though I can't divulge how many readers I have (lest you feel bad for reading this blog at all), I can tell you the stats increased two-fold overnight. Does that mean politics outshine sex? Naw, it just means my recent posts prior to last night were lacking in juiciness. And I think it means we're all obsessed about this election to the point where it hurts. One more day, baby! (Or shall I says "babies", since you are, I promise, more than one reader?) What a ride it has been. Finally, we can get back to what really matters on Wednesday, so let me start you out with something not involving Barack Obama or John McCain.

Daddy Dearest... I presume you know where this one is going? It all starts with daddy, doesn't it? When I was young, really young, in fact a toddler still, I remember running towards my father one evening as he came through the door, home from work. The memory is actually pretty exact, even in the correct perspective, seen through the eyes of a small child. I remember his gray, flannelly suit pants. My father looked huge to me, and handsome. He had a bit of that Robert-Wagner-in-the-seventies-or-early-eighties-Hart-to-Hart look back then. He was, then, a very good looking man and my affection for him was surely helped by his pretty face, but he could have looked like a mole and I would have darted into his arms regardless. He was "daddy", one out of the twosome of people who took care of me and whom I loved and was dependent on.

As I ran for him I wanted to be picked up and hugged and swooned over, like any daddy's girl. I buried my face in the fabric of his pants, then stood there, looking up. I remember he said something to my mom. Knowing him, he probably asked about dinner. He then shook me off like a dog humping his leg and walked past me into the kitchen. Now you may think it's impossible to recall something so clearly that happened when I was so very young. Perhaps it is unusual, perhaps it remains in my memory only because it was the first memorable traumatic experience I had with a man, ever.

Over the last decade I thought back to this moment a lot. I often feel that these were a pivotal few seconds in my emotional development. I can still remember the sinking feeling of being ignored and dismissed. I wanted to cry, and maybe I did. I wasn't worth bending down for, I wasn't worth the energy to be lifted, swirled and made to laugh. Now my question is: does that deep sense of worthlessness ever go away? Of course my father didn't screw me up through the power of that one incidence. Years, decades of disinterest followed. He is the sort of man who should never have had kids. He simply cannot give. He is stingy in every way, emotionally, intellectually, financially, and he saw me as a burden. I've worked extraordinarily hard to get away from his view of me. As a young girl I excelled in school. I tried to be extra-pretty, which was especially hard during my pimple-riddled, flat-chested puberty. I moved across an ocean at the age of 21, to prove that I can make it there and make it anywhere. I tried everything to get approval and acknowledgement. What I achieved was a string of relationships that differed from that first, face-buried-in-his-pant-leg experience only in that these adult relationships involved sex. Ah, here we go! 

How crazy I was. I let certain boyfriends treat me with such indifference, yet I was always willing and ready when they needed to get off. One of those men (quite frankly, one I thought I would never get over) had a thing for kink. He liked sex that involved any and all orifices. Not that there's anything wrong with that! But his objective was to degrade me, it never felt quite right. There was no love, no tenderness, not even just good, jolly old fun. It was the price to pay in order for him to stay, and I paid it, gladly...sadly. He was a photographer, a fairly well-known one, too. He took pictures of the most beautiful women, the most successful supermodels. I wasn't jealous, not really. I didn't think he cheated, although he probably did. What really got to me, though, was that he never took a photo of me. Never once. Can you imagine? In two years he never pointed his lens at me. Hey! People say I'm photogenic! I take good pics! WTF? But I was chopped liver to him, invisible and insignificant. Yet I stayed. His generally hateful way of treating women was the ying to my self-loathing yang, and I didn't understand that I had picked him because I knew no better.

Today I often feel like I hate my father, but most days I am just very clear on the fact that I don't love him. I really don't, I'm not just saying that. Love, the real kind, is something that happens when another person sees the best, the very best in you and makes that the platform for everything else to be built on. Whatever you do, good or bad, you are first seen as good and worthy and lovable. This makes it next to impossible for you to be treated like a doormat. If you don't experience that love early on, you miss it forever. You get a therapist. You're told that you now must give that love to yourself, because no one else can. You think you'll never be able to do that. You wonder if anyone has ever succeeded in doing that, before going broke from paying a therapist. You briefly think you should have become a therapist! Then you start a blog and wonder if there are more like you out there. And you hope for the best.