Ingredients for this My Time: Barbeque chips (the diet CANCEROUS-BUT-WHO-CARES-YOU-CAN-EAT-MORE kind), vodka, listing, and humor that straighter men won’t find funny.
After something called a “Progressive Dinner Party” that people who eat delicious food LIKE IT DOESN’T HAVE CALORIES in it invited me to—a lovely affair of the most civil, dignified kind, where the women’s lipstick and shoes were above par from other social gatherings I’ve endured—then, a later look around the bar for a swarthy yet religious man that might be pillaged for his credit cards and body… (I do love the look of religious garb.)
Never a not-hot Hassid have I seen, or as I like to call then, “Ortho’s,” short for “orthodox,” of course. Which reminds me. Being in an airport in the Middle East or in the Eurasia area always allows an elegant woman from the West to peruse men in all kinds of indigenous and/or religious garb and wonder what they do and do not “allow” in their intimate lives with women, as if we’d let them choose, anyway! Oh, they are precious with their morals and rules, but really, it’s the reverence for life and treating belief as an action—as believing—that I find most sexual.
But. As I was saying. “Progressive Dinner Party”. Search for swarthy yet religious man to pillage. Then. After this search proves unsuccesful, I ended up at a lavish home having something called a “key party” where a gorgeous blonde woman in a large hat…
It’s always important to not let people see the brightness of your eyes, or how it has dimmed over the years from the work in elegance a woman must engage in to be presentable to the world—a woman in a large hat told me that she in fact was employed as a home decorator for my ex as well as his ex. What a small web we weave in this country I’ve been exiled to known as “Missouri.” I laughed and laughed and laughed at how peculiar it was to know that this mysterious woman with the beauty of a Ukrainian spy in shoulder pads—and all the while side-eying the key bowl. WHY IS NO ONE TAKING MY ‘UAR KEYS? I DRIVE A JAGUAR CLEARLY I’M RICH AND THEREFORE GOOD ENOUGH TO BED—this woman had her hands all over the things I once held so dear. His pillows. His towels. His toothbrush. “My” “relationship”. Well, if not a relationship, it was an arrangement, anyway, from the beginning, a union of sophisticated understandings of the self and an on-going discourse with which to inflict each other and those others at important social gatherings of Society Folks. Sadly, I could not keep up such discourse, as I’ve supposedly “lost myself” and therefore was tossed aside. I digress again! Oh my, it is so hard to keep focused when I have lost who I am. I just laugh and laugh and laugh like a gaslight.
I excused myself to use the restroom while others fornicated around me, seeing as how no fornication would be coming my way—it must have been the tiger skin I wore as a tube top—so much elegance can be intimidating to fornicate on. I had been in this elegant home before, and happened to have hidden a bottle of Stoli in the toilet tank. As I sat with pal Stan, my vanilla Stoli bottle, and the barbeque DIET-SO-IT’S-FINE chips I brought in my tassled leathah handbag, I remembered all the words ex-lovers have spoken to me, whether through print, song, speeches (I’ve dated many dignitaries and am able to clearly identify when one of these dignitaries is making a speech about a war crime that AT THE SAME TIME they are also clearly apologizing to me for their brute, manly behavior ON THE INSIDE), or in person.
Then I came up with a brilliant idea. That I might construct a new me out of these men’s words, the most authoritative evidence of selfhood, obviously. Here is a list of some of the wonderful things men have said to me, in complete confidence, and with incredible pride.
Ladies, I suggest that you too make a list of the words proud men have used against you, and take them as your own to use, repeat, address with, and write out. If they have been spoken to you, they are yours, and no amount of upper-class “privacy about doing stupid shit is more important than actually not doing stupid shit or talking about how we’ve done stupid shit” attitude, I assure you as a member of this class, can get in your way. I’ll give a quick 30 I can think of off the top of my head. Also, tell me, what have you heard that bears repeating? Meaning, what have bears told you between wandering in and out of their forest (I mean hearts)?
1. You have the back of a linebacker! (Obviously, right after our first intercourse, while I lay on my stomach to avoid showing him the disappointment on my face evidenced by a lack of even a bead of sweat on my brow, while he managed to look like this:)
2. I’m sorry if you feel that I…(Just fill this in with many ending phrases that circle back around to the main point: he’s sorry THAT YOU FEEL.)
3. I see you losing yourself and that makes me sad, especially if there’s a chance I might have had something to do with this. (Notice how much knowledge he has, the most important thing that keeps him going, and the agency to take the non-physical parts of you, and yet notice his ability to empathize. Oh wait. I mean to simplify you and then tell you that simplifying you is an act that causes him suffering, and then rhetorically remove his own part in a mess with “if there’s a chance.” Chances are, Sir. And I might know that because I have a self and it has opinions, even if they are dulled by “mommy’s medicine.” A simple, clear “Sorry, woman” is too base, it seems, or really, beside the point.)
4. It’s not my job to… (because that’s what interpersonal, committed relationships are, right? Manual labor. And those from the upper echelons of society [the only men I date, naturally] know what it’s like to do manual labor, right? They’ve tarred roofs, fixed cars, and climbed electricity poles at 3 am, all in-between waiting in line at the church free food giveaway and dumpster diving to feed your child. Oh no, wait, that was my family. [I do have a sordid past. It’s a part of my intrigue as a rich, established, elegant woman now. And why I get invited to key parties and progressive dinner parties: I bring the color.])
5. Like a dance, I was drawn to you from the road.
6. Your distant gunfire creates distant light.
7. Are you a witch?
8. I think I’m like in love with you.
9. Take me back. (That’s right, it’s not even a question!)
10. I knew from the first second I saw you that I’d have you.
11. [Inhales deeply near a crevice]
12. You’re not wearing any underwear!
13. You’ve inflicted thousands of words on me.
14. No.
15. I couldn’t predict that I would feel this way. (Because, Honies, clearly a lover being a PSYCHIC is what you are demanding from him.)
16. You’re bigger than other women I’ve dated. I like it.
17. I like bigger women. (While embracing you. While you embrace DIET BBQ CHIPS and get CANCER.)
18. You getting along with my family makes it hard for me to view you as a lover.
19. Why are you so mean to your mother? (Naturally, at first I thought this was a rhetorical question.)
20. I feel proud for knowing my own limitations.
21. Can you watch my children?
22. No one is above suspicion with my children, even you.
23. Today was the first day I spoke at an AA meeting and it was very hard for me. You’re not supporting me. (On my birthday, ladies, naturally, while I’m trying to numb hearing about Our Failing Relationship by drinking alcohol! The rudeness)
24. I actually think you might be smarter than me. (He thinks it’s a compliment, ladies, and that it makes him look progressive for going outside the norm and liking smarter women!)
25. You’re acting your age. (Well, I was 19 and he 33! Maybe he was acting my age, too!)
26. You don’t understand. (Oh, that one gets me laughing every time.)
27. [In response to the question, “why didn’t you make amends to me,” he puts fingers in ears, closes eyes, and screams LALALALALA to avoid hearing you—this one was my father, and a few days before he died, an accident which I drove past at the time and didn’t know was him, confirming for me at the time, of course, that there is no such thing as mystical or genetic connection. A wonderful memory I return to often in the night when I haven’t drank or popped enough “medicine”. Oh, how fun it is to conflate fathers and lovers! Men, they provide us so much fodder!]
28. I love spending time with you.
29. You’ve taught me so much.
30. …But…
So, ladies, and male homosexuals, what have our men of the world told you? That French boyfriend? That beach boy you took home who stole your wallet? Tell me. Anger is a powerfully uncomfortable and healing feeling, and after writing some of these phrases out, I was able to laugh and laugh and laugh like I do. So perhaps it’s anger (one thing, anyway) that truly brings humor, and then, reverence for life and its possibilities. Let us exorcise. I am a witch, after all, so the gods know how many men have to exorcise me after I’ve had them in my clutches. A priest should line them up.
