Visiting Debbie, 3

It's almost exactly a year (within a week) since the last time I visited Debbie, and here I am again.

I had another week working at the plant in Sticksville, a very tiring and difficult week. And then another 3-4 hour drive down here. And now it's bedtime and I'm going to sleep in the guest room.

But it seems like each time my visit gets a little longer. The first time I spent one night. The second ... I forget, but I think it was two nights. This will be three nights: Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, flying home on Monday.

We cooked dinner together, did dishes together, and went out to buy groceries for the weekend together. We talked about the troubles at our respective works. As we sat down to eat she said she was really grateful for my visit — well sure, I'm grateful for it too — and then added that it's special because I'm the only one who has ever come to visit her and stay here. Late this evening she opened up a volume of Walt Whitman that she had bought because today is his 200th birthday, and we took turns reading stanzas to each other ... all about his nakedness and his "man root" and how much he loves for his friend to kiss his chest near the heart.

But there's no more sexual undertone between Debbie and me, of course.

I'm expecting a quiet visit. After a week like this last one, I look forward to it.

It's time for sleep. Debbie was about to turn in too, and then got an emergency call from work. (She's on-call 24x7.)

Night night.


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Another six-word memoir

"Sooner endure than confront or change."

I thought of it this morning and it summarizes neatly a lot of the things I've talked about.

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If failure is freedom, then freedom is failure

You've heard me argue that failure means freedom.

It works the other way too. Freedom means failure. More exactly, getting things done requires focus; focus requires constraint -- looking here and not over there. Freedom means a lack of constraint, … which easily devolves into a lack of focus, … which means getting nothing done. Which means failure.

This was the pattern of my father's life, once he got out of the family business. He had lots of great ideas of stuff he was going to do, and he accomplished almost none of them … because he didn't have to, because nobody was making him do it. So it was easy for him to plan to do it tomorrow.

And largely it's how my life is going these days.

I've been thinking about this since last week, when I went to a meeting of the local chapter of my professional association (which I only joined last year, after two decades in the profession). One of the other members was giving a talk about an aspect of the field about which I know nothing. And one of his first slides introduced himself: his academic background, his jobs in the field, and all his professional accreditations. He's got a slew of them from this association itself; he's also got a lot of continuing education, including degrees earned while he was working. All in all it was an impressive list. And of course I've got nothing like it. I've taken a lot of internal training classes here at work, but I've done nothing on my own time.

Why not? It never occurred to me. Maybe because I never took my profession seriously enough. Years ago I would have said that I was too busy keeping the family together, parenting two school-aged kids, and acting as a buffer between Wife's craziness and the world; but obviously none of that is true any more. But no, I'm 57 going on 58 this year and I have none of that admirable stack of professional development to brag of.

Maybe I've accomplished other things? Well … there's this blog, though it's not under my real name and for exactly that reason I can't show it off in real life. I've had ideas for a number of things that I'd like to read if somebody else wanted to write them, but I've never gotten the actual writing done on my own. Last year I was actually discussing one of them with Marie for a couple of months, and got quite a few notes written … before I just stopped. God knows why. Maybe it was because I was going to write a book about an innovation I developed at work a couple years ago. Never did that either.

Then there was the time back in September when I asked Marie to keep me accountable for a project to clean up the stacks of paper I've accumulated over years. That one lasted some months, at least until Son 1 moved in with me after Christmas. But it has been hard to keep at it since then. Also I needed to buy a car. Haven't done that either. Son 1 has a car now, but that's because Wife called him one day and made it happen the next. See, when other people make you do things you really can get them done.

Maybe that's why we praise the Great Achievers of the world so highly -- because it's so bloody rare to make yourself do anything at all. Or maybe it's just me who is that sluggish.

Anyway, if A=B then B=A. If failure is freedom, then freedom is failure. Nice to know, huh?
  

On inspiration

It's truly said the Muses will not speak 

To those who will not listen — that's to say

The ones who cannot trouble to attend, 

Who're mindful only of the mindless World.

It used to be a trope, back years ago,

Romantic poets sighing would bemoan

The loss of their inspired poetic gifts

That left them mumbling prose like mortal men.

So maybe this is just what poets do,

To grouse when they have nothing else to say,

To strut and preen and pose like mannequins 

And puff their nothings full of empty wind.

If that's, then, all it takes, why every dog 

Can call himself a poet — even I!

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Distrust

It all started a few days ago when Marie sent out a funny email to several of us: that's me, Schmidt, and her sister Cuñada. As follows:

https://triblive.com/news/roman-numerals-anyone-poll-suggests-bias-against-arabic-numerals/

No comment needed, really!

I read the article -- feel free to go do so as well, it may be more entertaining than anything I write here -- and then replied at somewhat greater length.

Huge smile. 

Actually my first thought is that there are at least two factors at work here.One is simple ignorance, of course: the people surveyed don’t know that the numerals we use every day are called “Arabic”. And that’s not a shock. People forget a lot of what they hear in school unless they need it for something, and most people can get through the day without knowing what to call our standard set of numerals. Yes, it’s the kind of thing that is easy for people like us to learn and remember, but maybe we’re not a majority. :-) 

The second, though, is a kind of guilelessness. I suspect that most people who answer surveys do not start by assuming that the motivation behind the survey is to make fun of them; in the same way, I suspect that most people who answer surveys assume that the question “Should we teach X in the schools?” implies that we aren’t already doing it. Note the qualifier “people who answer surveys”. I, for example, never answer surveys because I assume that every survey has a malign hidden purpose. Sometimes I can tell that the point of the survey is to sell me something, and I’m not interested. Other times I can’t see an obvious ulterior motive, but in that case I assume that the true motive is so horrible that the people behind it have gone to great lengths to hide it.  

You could argue that I am unduly suspicious. There are probably 12-step programs for people like me. My only point is that people who willingly answer surveys are a lot less suspicious than I am.

Cuñada thought this was very funny, and chimed in:

LOL!  Hosea, I can see why Marie "kinda likes" you-on a Likert Scale, you'd be at least a 3 on "does she like you?"  -but you would not answer it, so you might not get the results of that survey!  The news made me laugh, since it was less than a month ago that my middle schoolers read about Muslim contributions to society (and numerals and Algebra figured prominently).

__________

So far, so good.

But then I started to think about it a little more. I really don't trust people much. I don't take surveys, but then I don't discuss my opinions even with people I know. That is to say, I've got strong opinions about how things should be done at work, and I'm not shy about those. But I don't discuss politics, not even with friends. I don't discuss religion. I don't discuss what I want out of a job, that might help me find another one rather than just drifting. I don't discuss what I want out of a car, that might lead to somebody helping me out with good advice the way that Wife just helped out Son 1.

Instead of talking about what is going on with me, I keep myself to myself.

Do I want to change?

I don't know. In the abstract, I think trusting more people sounds like a good thing to do. In the practical and particular, I don't know what it would look like.
   

Son 1 has a car

No sooner did Son 1 get back to my place after driving Wife around all weekend — swearing loudly he wasn't going back for at least a month — than she called him again. Someone in her church owns a car dealership, and was getting a car in that might suit him well. If he bought it he could give her back her second car that he is borrowing.

He went up, looked at it, and ended up buying it. Or rather, she bought it for him out of her savings, listing the two of them as co-owners, and he's going to buy her out over time plus 3%. He is insured through her and he's going to pay her the extra increment that he will cost her. They haven't settled on payment terms yet, but it sounds like car payment + insurance + student loan payment will be close to $1000 a month. And he hasn't actually started working yet.

On the other hand he's got a car, while I still don't. Am I ashamed of that? Yes, kind of. To be sure, he wouldn't have it without Wife's intervention. And she used to play that role for me too ... the spur that got me off my ass to get something done.

On the other hand that's kind of an excuse. I'm supposed to be the adult here, right.

Sigh.

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Frigidity

I've been having a more entertaining conversation with Marie over the concept of "frigidity". You may remember that once upon a time that was a concept Marie applied to herself. Anyway, it came up again when I saw the recent biopic of Dr. Ruth.

Hey love.

There's a movie theater right next to my office, so at 5:00 pm I walked over from work to see a new documentary that I recommend. It's about the life and work of Ruth Westheimer, and it's called "Ask Dr. Ruth." And really — if you get a chance to see it, do.

One scene I loved for what will be obvious polemical reasons when I describe it.

The documentary made a big deal about how Dr. Ruth went on radio and television saying things that nobody was saying back then — things that nobody thought they were allowed to say on the air. Nobody said "clitoris", almost nobody said "orgasm", and all the rest of it. Saying the unsayable.

So they showed one clip when she was on TV in the 1980’s, where a man starts by asking her, “Dr. Ruth, tell me, when you have a woman who is frigid ....”

And right away she interrupted him, “NO! Stop! You may NOT use that word on my show!” And then went on to explain what she meant, that sometimes a woman has to learn what works for her and there are different ways to do that etc etc etc. And I just wanted to cheer but it would have been disruptive to the rest of the audience.

There was a lot more. It explains how she got to be the personality she became, and traces her life back ... to the Kindertransport that took her and a lot of other Jewish children from Frankfurt to Switzerland in 1938 when she was 10, at the same time her parents were sent to labor camps. Oh. Right. That. And more like that too. So it’s a rounded picture.

Really it’s worth seeing, and the theater broke into applause when it was over.

Know that I love you, now and ever, my poet, my water sprite, my Sunlight on the Water,
Your Hosea

She answered back:

Hey sweetness!

It's showing at the indy/arts theatre [in such-and-such a neighborhood], so I can't exactly walk over after work myself.  It does sound worth seeing, however!

And yes, I can see why that one scene would particularly catch your notice.

BTW, I don't think I ever asked, when and how did you come to decide that the term frigid (applied to anything but Sticksville weather) was both, well, inapplicable and insulting? I remember that your feelings were quite decided against the word (and your analysis proved correct in my case) the first time it came up in conversation between us, but I don't think you described how you came to the conclusions you did....

Loving you always,
Your Marie

My reply:

“Conclusions”? Hell, I don’t know. It wasn’t the result of a process of ratiocination. It’s just a word that has always made me clench up inside. I know it used to be commonly used in the 50’s and 60’s, but it just felt like it belonged on the same list with all the racial, ethnic, and religious slurs people used so casually then too. And the fact that you used it against yourself didn’t inoculate it any. If Dean Martin had ever made scurrilous jokes about food with too much garlic, or if Mel Brooks had ever made a joke about lending money to his friends at interest ... would that have made those jokes OK? If they had used the nouns usually associated with those jokes, would it have been OK because they were talking about themselves? If Sammy Davis, Jr., had ... no, dear God, let’s not even go there, not even as an illustrative example.

And it felt like a word associated with that kind of a man — with the Frank Sinatras and Dean Martins and Sammy Davis Jrs of the world, arrogant, cocksure men who treat dames (never “women”) purely as little children to be alternately pampered and scolded, as ornaments for their tables and toys for their beds, but never, NEVER, as adult human beings.

So when I heard such a word out of your mouth, a word that would have shocked me a little bit even coming from Anita Bryant or Phyllis Schlaffley, ... it was like you were channeling some alien intelligence. It was like hearing Eldridge Cleaver deliver a speech written by David Duke. I wanted to shake you and ask, “Who are you and what have you done with Marie?” I wanted to object, “You’re a feminist, for God’s sake! How can you use language that is so demeaning and self-hating?”

Except of course, yeah. That’s exactly how.

So I didn’t shout at you (IIRC) but I did figure that had to change.

Time to leave for my volunteer work, even though I’ve gotten nothing more than the dishes done today.

Know that I love you ever,
Your Hosea

And finally hers again:

Hey sweetness.

Yes, of course, calling myself frigid was expressing self-hatred, or more precisely hatred of that aspect of myself.  And unlike words like slut or queer, I haven't heard of anyone trying to reclaim that word as a badge of honor:  Asexuals unite!  Frigid and proud!  (Though there is an asexual pride movement; one slang term I've seen used is "Ace.") 

(Though also, of course, I don't think I ever thought of myself as asexual, as not interested:  just as incompetent, and very profoundly discouraged.  It's very liberating to be shed of that baggage--as I may possibly have expressed before, but it bears repeating.  My love.)

And yeah, "frigid" belongs to the same group of concepts as "slut," and you're right, not just to judgments passed on women by men who felt entitled to have opinions, but also to various ethnic slurs that were considered funny when I was a kid.  (I can still remember some of the Polack jokes my parents' friends told....)  (Venn diagrams:  misogyny intersecting with racism/ethnocentrism with a particular set of odd views of sex....)

Now I'm curious about something else--did it strike you that way the first time I used it of myself to you, in 1983?  As Eldridge Cleaver channeling--well, couldn't have been David Duke then; Strom Thurmond, maybe?

By the way, I laughed in enjoyment, reading your email; and I am laughing again now, re-reading your conclusion, and thinking of a riposte.

I mean, seriously, love, if you were just worried about my using language that was demeaning and self-hating, denigratory to women and our sexuality, unworthy of a feminist, you COULD have just corrected my choice of words.

But no, Mr. Overachiever, you ensured I can never again use the term with any pretensions of accuracy (which, by the way, was my self-excuse for using the label:  it was simply descriptive), by blowing out of the water the underlying fallacy:  by establishing that I was, indeed, entirely capable of enjoying orgasms.  More than one.  In quick succession, even.

But you realize, love, having chosen initially to attack my use of that term for myself on factual rather than ideological grounds, there's nothing in principle to prevent me from using the term for other women who consider themselves anorgasmic....

(Except that, aside from the fact that you've persuaded me the term is offensive, you've also pretty much persuaded me it's guaranteed to be inaccurate, more or less logically inconceivable... I mean, if I could be brought to orgasm so easily* after YEARS of sincerely believing that to be impossible [*"easily"--not to underrate your achievement, but you may have devoted considerable attention to inducing my first orgasm since I was fourteen, but not that bloody much TIME], I'd have a hard time convincing myself that any other woman, possessed of any reasonable proportion of her sensual apparatus, could be less susceptible of registering ecstasy than you proved me to be....)

Okay, so maybe I won't use that term of anyone.  But really, love, you could have just ASKED me to find a different term, if that was your main concern!  Not brought me repeatedly to peaks of ecstasy.... those peaks were entirely redundant!  Egregious.  Unnecessary.

Now that we've got that established.

Mmm...  dwelling on certain entirely unnecessary sensations.  Damn I wish my tactile memory were as easy to control as my verbal! 

(Goodness.  It occurs to me: verbal memory is TRAINABLE.  Are the others, too?)

Loving you always,
Your Marie

Making myself crazy

The story from a couple nights ago continues. Friday, Son 1 drove Wife the three hours to where Mother lives, to do Wife's taxes. Apparently they spent the night. And in the middle of this afternoon Son 1 called me to say they hadn't left yet so he wouldn't be back to my apartment until tomorrow.

On the one hand, I'm enjoying the time alone. On the other hand, I started spinning all kinds of stories in my head.

See, I was really startled to hear that Wife would be spending the night at Mother's in the first place. Wife is so unpleasant that, well, why would Mother ever allow it? Of course the answer is that Wife probably asked ("You know, the drive is so far and with my illnesses I'm just not strong enough to make that long a drive both directions the same day.") and my mother is a gentle-enough soul that she hates telling anybody No. So she probably agreed just to keep the peace. And probably the real reason that they were still there by mid-afternoon is that Wife couldn't get her shit together to get out, and Mother was too sweet and gentle to throw her out. Or perhaps Brother and SIL decided to come over for a visit -- God knows that could stretch things out. Brother is always late. When I get together with the extended family for Thanksgiving, people make it a sport to guess how late he'll be, not whether.

But at the same time I know that Wife wants to be invited to spend Christmas with us. That's her end game. And if people don't stand up to tell her No, I start to worry that she will be able to get her way simply by pushing her way in. And this in turn led me to imagine all kinds of melodramatic fantasies where she becomes a permanent fixture in my family's Christmases, which in turn means that I never show up there at all and in fact become completely alienated from them. Melodramatic, overheated, and intensely self-centered. But yes, I guess that's my fantasy life when it slips its leash. Or maybe it's just that Wife still frightens me even after these years apart, so that I overreact to her as a threat.

Because I am still afraid of her in some ways. But this too figured into the fantasies. I pictured myself saying, "No, don't invite her over. I lived with her abuse for 30 years, don't make me endure more of it," ... and then Brother asking, "Did she hit you?" Well no. "Did she jail you or starve you?" Not that either. "Then what do you mean by 'abuse'?"

And I have trouble answering that. I feel some reassurance when I read victim advocates say that it's really not up to outsiders to decide if what the victim suffered was bad enough to "count" as abuse, with the implication that otherwise she [spousal abuse victims seem always to be iconically she] is just being hysterical and over-emotional ... or else that she's trying to trap her spouse with some kind of non-objective complaint for nefarious reasons of her own. [Sorry, where was I?] Oh right ... that it's not up to outsiders to decide if something "counts" as abuse -- in fact if it shows up for the victim as abuse then that's enough to count. So the fact that I was afraid every single day when I came home from work and opened the front door, that I always felt trepidation over what kind of shape she was going to be in that day, and over how bad it was going to be that night -- my living in a constant state of fear is enough to call it abuse. Even if it was emotional rather than physical ... even if so much of the time her weapon against me was just her own unhappiness and rage and refusal to be reconciled with things, all phenomena that made her suffer as much as they made me suffer ... it still wore me down. It still made me afraid to be around her. It still made me fantasize about escape or death (mine or hers but mostly mine) every goddamned day, even when I still believed that divorce was unthinkable. And then the crazy financial irresponsibility, the serial infidelity, the actual fighting, all those were icing on the cake.

Wow, how did I get here? You see what I mean, though? My mind wanders into terrible places when I start thinking about Wife more than superficially. And all this anxiety informed fantasies of failure, despair, isolation, and estrangement. What if Wife pushes her way back into my family and I have to cut all ties with them ever? What will that look like?

Overheated. Self-centered. Melodramatic.

Later this evening I got a text from Son 1 (by now they were back at Wife's place): "I'm not coming back here for a month minimum. I need to be anywhere else."

So Wife was being horrible, at least from Son 1's perspective. That makes it likely that she was being horrible from everybody else's perspective too. So maybe nobody's going to invite her for Christmas.

Maybe I can settle the fuck down now. Sheesh. Making myself crazy.
   

Talking?

Have you ever had the experience of meeting a stranger for the first time, and you find in a matter of minutes that you can talk meaningfully about important things?

And then have you also had the experience of seeing someone you have known for many years and realizing that you have only ever been able to talk about the blandest trivialities — the weather, say, or what’s on television?

What causes the difference?

That’s a real question, by the way, not the lead-in to an essay. Frankly I don’t know the answer. But I wish I did.

Whenever Brother and I are together, the only thing we can find to talk about is old television shows from 45 years ago, when we were kids.

On the other hand when I first met Debbie way back when we worked together, we became friends instantly, because we found we could discuss meaningful, important things with each other right away.

So the difference is not just in how well you know someone. But what is it?

I assume nobody is reading this blog anymore, so nobody will answer. But feel free to prove me wrong. I genuinely wish I knew the answer.
   

Late night

Son 1 drove to Wife’s place after dinner tonight. He was pretty clear about not looking forward to it, but it has been several years since she filed her taxes, and she has an appointment in the Big City three hours from here to get them done. Of course she probably owes nothing, but according to our separation agreement we are supposed to exchange tax returns every year. So every year I make an extra copy of mine, and I tell her “I’ll show you mine when you show me yours.”

She doesn’t think she can drive that far, so Son 1 is going to drive her. So far, so good. Only ... the tax preparer is my mother, and Son 1 says they are planning to stay with her overnight.

Now, Mother asked me years ago whether it’s OK for me if she does Wife’s taxes, and I said it’s fine. That’s just professional. But I admit I’m a little rattled at the idea that Wife is spending the night. I honestly didn’t think Mother liked her that well. Of course, I also know that Mother hates to say No. So if Wife asked, Mother is likely to have said Yes for the sake of being nice.

I really shouldn’t have wasted any time on this after Son 1 left. I should have gone to bed, whacked off vigorously (which I feel inhibited about when he’s in the next room), and fallen fast asleep.

Fine, I did the first two. But I couldn’t fall asleep. I kept thinking about Wife’s request months ago to come to our Christmas (because she has poisoned her relationship with all of her own family) ... and about my mother’s easygoing nature and my brother’s existing on a plane that seems to render the two of us mutually incomprehensible. I kept imagining these long arguments with my own family over whether to invite Wife to Christmas.

Also maybe it didn’t help that I was out of alcohol, and I didn’t buy any on the way home from work because I felt self-conscious about it. Son 1 has already remarked about how much we drink — although if it is in the house he drinks as much as I.

In the end I got out of bed at almost 10:00, walked down to the corner shop, and bought a handful of single-serving (tiny) bottles of vodka. I drank them over an hour while reading the paper, and now feel much better. Maybe I have a problem.

Maybe I can get some sleep.

Night-night.
 

I want out

[To be clear, I am writing and posting this in late June, 2020. I was looking through some old notes of mine, found this -- with its date -- and wondered why I'd never posted it here. So here goes.]    

I'm putting on weight again. Drinking too much and eating too much. Often tired. More and more, I want out. Why?

The food and drink is at least partly because by the end of the day I just think, Fuck it. I'm tired, and the food and alcohol are energizing for a little while. I could just go to bed early, but somehow I don't.

And I want out. What does that mean?

Out of my job -- because I am tired of looking for what's wrong and then arguing with people over nickel and dime shit.

Out of big companies -- because I'm tired of the recurrent stupidities, the regulations that have to be met even when they make no damned sense, and the short-term targets that drive objectively bad behavior.

Out of my fantasies -- because of course I always fantasize about doing something else but never actually do it. (Compare, for example, this post here.)

Out of the Internet -- because I binge on reading Twitter until I'm sick of reading about other people's problems, but I'd rather do that than do anything productive in my own life.

Out of the country -- because I really have no idea what is going on in the world, but all I hear are two sides bitterly arguing over whether basic things are really facts or not. Not arguing over what to do about the facts, but over the actual facts themselves! And that's embarrassing, and depressing. And maybe things are getting worse, ... or better, ... or could get worse or better if only this or that Important Change were made. But maybe not. Shit happens, and sometimes countries just fail. And sometimes Great Powers can be ruined by stupid, short-term, short-sighted little shit. Sometimes the Important Changes happen ... and nothing changes. The Bad Guys leave and the Good Guys take over and do the exact same stupid, short-sighted things. (Sorry, I usually try to avoid thinking about politics, much less talking about it here. Oh hell, whatever.)

Out. Just fucking out.