Breakfast -- The Big Lie

At some point in every Shadow Relationship, there comes a point where the guy will say, "I would love to make you breakfast."

In hindsight, I realize now, this is the point where every sane woman should hold up her hand like a traffic cop and say, "Whoa, whoa, whoa! Stop right there, buddy. There'll be none of THAT kind of talk!"

For some reason, men love to talk about making you breakfast. The implication is, of course, that they have spent the last eight hours fucking you silly and in every orifice of your body, and now they want to continue proving their manliness, their all-around what-a-guyness -- with a plate of eggs.

They will brag about their egg-making skills. They will interrogate you about what type of knivery and cookware you possess, to make sure it's all up to their world-class egg-making prowess. They will go into reveries and musings about what kind of spices and cheeses they will put into these ambrosial eggs.

I tell you, ladies, at the first mention of eggs, flee. Run as if all the hounds of hell are at your heels! Because breakfast is where it all turns into a lie.

When they start talking about eggs, or French toast, or pancakes, that's when they've gone *completely* over the edge from getting a little piece of tail on the side and into the world of full-blown fantasy, and I mean, "now I'm just makin' shit up to keep you on the line" stuff. To them, it's the most UNlikely thing that's ever going to happen, as much a flight of imagination as them having a threesome with you and your super-hot best friend. They *know* it ain't ever happening, and so it's safe for them to fantasize about it.

What these men don't understand is that "breakfast" is a code word to us. In this code, "breakfast" says to us, "I am looking forward to doing the everyday, the quotidian, with you. I am planning to be the person who wakes up next to you and kisses your warm, sleepy neck, and brings you coffee in bed, and shares the Sunday Times with you." We get the gooshies when we think of these things, and we hug ourselves secretly and whisper, "Oh, he's really *mine* if he's talking like that!"

Maybe I overstate myself. Maybe "breakfast" isn't a lie so much as it's a *huge* miscommunication. I dunno.
But I do know one thing.

Unless the man is standing in my kitchen in his boxer shorts wielding a spatula, calling into the bedroom where I am awakening from a sex coma with bite marks on my shoulders and thighs like overstretched rubberbands, I won't ever let him utter the word "breakfast" to me again.

Email Trail: 5/31/10, 9:40pm

Cleaning out emails, and here's one from the beginning of the end. He was trying to extricate himself, and "let me down easy," (meaning, he said he was going away, but then kept sniffing around, and wouldn't actually go away, which in hindsight makes me a little pissy) and I decided to give him reasons to get the fuck away from me.

I'll make it easy for you.

Herewith, the list of things that make me wrong:

I'm a woman of a certain age who has never been married. So that must mean there is *something* wrong with me, right? My intellect is self-acquired and shaky. On the other hand, I'm never afraid to say, "I don't know what that is." I am funny. (I don't think men actually like this quality, no matter what they say) I am extricating myself from money problems of my own making. I know a little bit about a lot of things. I have opinions. I have a hard time asking for help; I fall to pieces if I have to do it. I forget birthdays. I cry at those Sarah MacLachlan ASPCA comercials. I do the NYTimes Sunday puzzle on the subway, in pen. Not because I can get every answer right, but because I am secretly showing off. I have a bottomless appreciation for pop music. I don't like fights. If someone attacks me, I go into a fetal curl; if someone attacks my friends, I turn into a wild animal. I can't hold a grudge no matter how hard I try. I don't get mad when people cancel plans. I don't believe in god. I hate having too many plans. I am impolitic and blurty. I am so easygoing about some things that people think I don't care. I have abnormally large thumbs. I hate the first half hour of exercising so much that I rarely do it at all. I love hockey. I love being by myself. I don't like to speak for the first two hours I am awake. I drink the same cup of coffee all day long. I like to fix things. I sing when I'm walking down the street. I hate to shop. My favorite boots are as old as my cat. I talk to strangers wherever I go. I am painfully shy. I hate the way people here look at me when I tell them my brothers are auto mechanics. I laugh too loudly. I think fat people *can* help it. I don't care if people like me or not. I am always looking for the funny. I made jokes at my father's funeral. If you asked me what superpower I'd choose to have for one day, I'd answer "being beautiful." When someone hurts my feelings, I tell them they hurt my feelings. When I screw up I always admit it (this is un-American). In my secret heart, I wish I could inspire devotion in someone. I am unable to hide it when my bullshit detector needle hits red. I don't suffer fools -- at all. I have kept my heart on lockdown for so long that I don't have enough sense to snatch it back when someone jimmies their way in and starts to steal it.

Is that enough to make it easier for you to walk away?

Actually, now that I read through that, I realize that instead of making myself sound "wrong," I actually made myself sound kind of awesome. If someone used those words to describe a stranger to me, I'd ask for her phone number and try to date her.

In Which I Am Moved to Tears -- AGAIN

Updated a couple of hours after originally posting, to change the post title to something a little less obnoxious but the rest is untouched..

Oh, my Great Good God of the Redwoods, or as I once said to somebody, by the bloody hands of Jesus!

Miss Midwesterly wrote an entire blog post about me that I had no idea existed.  Proving that I have been entirely too wrapped up in my narcissism and suffering to pay attention to what the fuck is going on around me.

I'm fucking crying AGAIN, only this time it's because I'm so unfuckingbelievably blown away.

I don't know what to say.

I just don't, except, wow, well, um, errr, jeez, um.

Thanks, 'eesh.

Off to cry some more now!

What I Did On My Mini-Vacation

You know we have come to a sad state of affairs in this country when people have to be told, "Don't shit in our swimming pool."

Ummmmm, these people probably shouldn't leave the house, much less go to a pool.

Fleurs. I love hydrangeas.

Miss Midwesterly and me, next to the pool, after trying to do handstands.  Apparently my center of gravity has shifted, even under water.  And yes, Miss M DOES have a tiny little blonde woman growing out of the top of her head.

When you go to Miss Midwesterly's apartment, you have to name one of the frogs.  I did.  Good luck finding mine.  Do you think I'm dumb enough to put Tom Hagen's name on the WEB?

Ace Rothstein and I rode the Cyclone. Twice. Without getting off in between.  Because you can do that.  Primal scream therapy, baby.  Primal scream.  I love this time of day. The light is so Hopper-esque.  And I'm not talkin' about Dennis.

Sunset over Keyspan Park, home of the Brooklyn Cyclones, aka the Brooklyn Mets. Watch a ballgame in a beautiful little ballpark, overlooking the ocean, with the Cyclone and the Wonder Wheel in the distance.  Feel like you're in a movie. A really good one.

Ace and me, in (where else) Ruby's, post-Cyclone.  The great thing about vacations and old friends is  you don't need to put on makeup for either.

Just wondering who the Hole family is.

Ace at Beer Island. Yes, there is a bar called "Beer Island."  We like it there.

Wonderful

Throckey inadvertently started a meme with an offhanded comment on one of my posts about something being "easy like Sunday morning."

This got the song "Easy" going in an endless groove in my brain (children, that's a reference to vinyl record albums, which had grooves that the needle rode along in, creating the music we elders listened to in our youth. The double album covers made excellent trays for sorting the seeds from the weed. Open enough double albums in a used-record store and you could probably roll yourself a fine -- though stale -- joint. Though the pot from back then didn't have the most excellent quality that we can get today) and I had to get out the old Commodores CD (another antiquated music format from your parents' era, cutting-edge in the 80's and leading to the unwarranted popularity of Sting's "Dream of the Blue Turtles," not because it was great but because it was the only thing available on CD for three years. Then Dire Straits' "Money for Nothing" came out and we all listened to that for another five years until "Achtung Baby" came out) to hear that old funk
classic. If only to hear that old familiar piano intro and sing along to "Why in the world would anybody put chains on me?/I paid my dues to make it/Ev'rybody wants me to be what they want me to be/I'm not happy when I try to fake it."

It also got the comments thread going on the Commodores, Lionel Richie, Stevie Wonder, and led to Paula posting about a single Lionel Richie song that had sad memories for her but doesn't affect her at all now.

Which got me thinking about "Wonderful," by Adam Ant. So I dug out that CD, too, and put it on. (Ok, "dug out" isn't really the right word, since my cd's are alphabetized by artist. I'm a little anal-retentive about that because when I want to hear a specific song, I want to hear it NOW and don't want to have to search through 800 cds for ten minutes until I find it. It also makes DJ nights at my house a whole lot easier.)

Without getting into the whole story, which features Matt deciding at the top of Pike's Peak on Tuesday that he had to get back to me as SOON as was humanly possible, driving like a bat out of hell to do it, and ringing my buzzer at 7am two days later, cut to a few months later to us dancing to the song and him saying, I miss you looking at me like that and I DO want to spend the rest of my life with you, cut again to present day and me playing the CD and thinking, wow, that was AWESOME what he did, and AWESOME what we had, and now I'm teaching myself to play that song, badly but with great enthusiasm, on my crappy Fender that I just restrung.

It's the one really great pop song on a mediocre and unmemorable album, with really great memories attached to it, and it makes me smile to remember them, and him.

But isn't that all life is, really? The occasional moment when someone misses you so much he'll drive all night to get to you, or a really great song that floats by on the sea of ordinary music that is our day-to-day existence? If we don't stop and listen, we might not hear it at all.