The Weird Kid

I get nervous around people with any sort of affliction. I met a woman with a lazy eye two days ago and I panicked, slightly. And the neighborhood dwarf paralyzes me, not just because he is a dwarf but he's also kind of crazy, and walks through the Bi-Mart shouting that he's going into the bathroom to meet Greg Brady. In my head I can say, "And god speed to you, sir!" but face to face, I look frightened.

I freak out because of that moment. That second when they are watching me realize that they're different, and they're waiting to see my reaction. I flash on every lousy TV show from my childhood that had stupid characters being insensitive and prejudiced to the girl in the wheelchair, the boy with the stutter, and I am so desperate not to be a stupid character.

So I freeze. Then I try to get away.

Fantastic.

I'd rather just say, "I see you have no hands. But you work that cash register flawlessly. How'd you do it?"

But that's assholic in its own way.

While we were dating, I told Sean, a political science BA, and I didn't care much about politics. This might have been our last conversation ever, because Sean, 26, fresh from his mother's basement at the time, (before he bloomed into the remarkable husband he is now, of course) responded by snorting over the phone, and saying "Did you know that the original meaning of the word "idiot" means 'one who is ignorant of politics?'"

I think a much more clever definition of idiot is "saying something stupid enough to give your wife ammunition against you for the rest of her life."

"Honey, I don't want to spend our 50th anniversary in Antarctica."
"Really? That's interesting. I guess I'm an idiot for suggesting it. Remember that time you called me an idiot?"

But today I have something of political import.

Why can't you just like your political candidate? Why are Americans in the grip of this pulsing blood-lust to make the opposing candidate look like an evil slobbering retard? Stop sending me hi-larious email forwards about how dumb Sarah Palin is or how crooked Obama is.

Fact is, I will not believe either is evil or either is stupid. Stop insisting one is. I don't care if Alaska has tiny population and she was only Governor for 20 months, you still can't get to that position by being a vacant retard. And if Obama says the country has turned him into their great beautiful hope, maybe he has a god complex but, well, his supporters..I've met them and they want to wash the man's feet with their hair. Have you seen all those posters?

And in the big picture, I don't think they're all that different. Neither one is going to do their damnedest to destroy our country, neither will end useless foreign wars, both will be at the mercy of many blessed checks and balances, and both are the slightly creepy kind of people who want to be in charge of other people.

So what's with all the anger and smugitude?



*And for the record, I'm still voting Ron Paul. He's different. Too different, I guess.

I'm going to drog this morning, which is a word I made up. Drunk blogging, though I am not drunk, only sleep deprived and hepped out on cold medicine. And prescription tranquilizers but HEY, we all do what we need to get by.

I can not believe the QUALITY of the people who attend and comment on my blog. The realism running through you, the intelligence. Your comments are so...well you care about your world, the tiny place my thoughts have in it, and you think. It is so rare to find a pat little catch-all in my comment section, a LOL ur so funny! Thank you. You offer sensible, thought out advice and observations. I want you all to have my bone marrow should you need it.

Now I am the drunk girl at the party, weeping pouring her heart forth, "You guys, I love you sooooo much you guys....say we'll be friends after graduation?"

I can't talk to real people about this shit. I squeeze shut like when an old cartoon character accidentally drinks a bottle of alum. I don't talk, only write.

This post is ugly.
This post will be deleted, eventually. But, its at least four years before she can read, so, no hurry.

Listen.

I'm not having any fun. Seriously. I'm not enjoying being a mother. I'm bored, I'm put upon, I'm tired even though I do so very little.

"Oh....poor Imez! Being a mommy is work!? Well that's no fair! Oh! You have to stop doing every thing you want when you want it? You have to tend to the needs of a helpless baby that you brought into the world, on purpose? You don't get to be the baby anymore? Tsk tsk oh that's too bad."

I know.

I fully expected to not want my old life back. Motherhood a permanent drug, enlightened and delighted, forever. But no. I want my life back, still. Or a chance to build an even better one.

I spend the better part of every damn day waiting for the hours to pass. I sit on my couch and try to keep Smudge from screaming. That's my day, my whole day. And they are slipping away. Sometimes I'll come to, out of my own head, from staring out the window and realize Smudge has been holding her sippy out to me asking for a refill, ("Uhh? Uhh?). I'm dreading when she realizes, Mama is bored and trying to escape.

She's only sweet sometimes. When she's sweet, my head clears, and all I can see is her and she's all I want to see. But, it is only sometimes. And she's not often fun. Too little to talk to.

Sean, he's tired too. He says, "I'm happy to leave work every day, and I'm always a little surprised and disappointed to get home and realize it's no fun here." We bargain hours with each other. "Let me go on the computer and then I'll take her when I go on my walk." The person stuck watching, tired, relenting, "Fine. Whatever." Duty, all duty, very little joy.

Don't console me. Tell me, what are we doing wrong? I'm ready to hear it. I can feel it. I can read it in other blogs, how contented all the mommies are. I'm doing something wrong. Maybe expecting too much. Maybe not engaging her enough, my natural laziness.

She's going to wake up any minute, and then I'll have to be half-asleep again.

The last fight I had with my dad. And by last, I mean...well, he's dead. Which is why I can talk about him.

I was 21, I'm 30 now. It was after Christmas, the last Christmas Sean and I would spend unmarried. He spent it with his family, I with mine. My mother and I were going to drive out to the airport that day and pick him up.

I was acting girly and romantic, little dances and sing-songs. Mostly performing, I guess, though I was so excited to see Sean again. I announced I was going to sit in the back seat with Sean after we got him, the whole way back to our house.

And from the corner of the room my dad erupted. Rage I could never have predicted, hurting all the more because in the back of my head I thought I was pleasing my folks, having a nice man, getting married like a normal girl, not a being a weirdo.

He repeated my sentence nasty and whining with his tongue hanging out, making it as ugly and retarded as he could. "'I'm going to sit in the back, nyeah nyeah.' Is your mother your nigger? Huh?" I was shocked, like ice-water bath shock.

I have always been a cry-baby, (I call it, 'low emotional thresh-hold', but I know what it really is) so I started to cry. He walked half ways across the floor to me and bent down toward me, face all twisted up in anger, and spoke louder. "What? You gonna cry now? Gonna fucking cry?"

I went out into the snow. Mom was half-heartedly interceding as I went, Dad was shouting her down about how I deserved it, acting like she was my nigger. And I ended up not sitting in the back seat.

Two days later, as I drove away with Sean, I realized, this was likely the last. For the simple fact that Sean and I were going to get married. And Dad's twisted propriety would prevent him from fighting another man's wife, or at least make him more nervous about doing it.

I was right, it was the last time. But why do I think of them as "fights"?

I remember, when I was 12, seeing a dirty magazine and feeling absolutely dizzy from the presence of sex. It was a good feeling.

As soon as I threw off the belief that sex and my desire for it was sinful, I proudly embraced pornography. This was necessary as I have only ever been with Sean and only want to be with Sean. Pornographies are travel brochures of places you won't go but still like to know about.

I have seen dirty movies from every decade since the 1920's. I have seen dirty photographs dating from the Civil War, have a collection of dirty Victorian books, and met my limit with the Marquis De Sade because pooping and dead children just aren't sexy. My husband set me up folders on the computer containing snippets of internet porn I selected. Group sex, gay sex, playful bondage, hairy retro porn. There was so much to see.

Yesterday I watched a video of a fat woman, looking confused, masturbating for the camera on her computer. She wasn't doing it to pleasure herself. She was doing it because someone told her to. And now hundreds of people were logging in to laugh at her every day. I felt so goddamn sorry for her. And that was it. I realized.

I hate porn.

I HATE PORN.

I have been looking for that same rush I got from the idea of sex, the same I felt when I was 15. So I kept searching and collecting. But....I just hate it.

-I hate semi-professional porn, with it's harsh lighting and shaved genitals marked with pimples and ingrown hairs.

-I hate the penis' that are stiff but still flop because the man had his tendon's cut.

- I hate close-ups of penetration. It is ugly and clinical.

-I hate how painful fake breasts look.

- I hate that smearing a girl with ejaculate is supposed to be the best part.

-I hate how BORING it all is.

-I hate amateur porn posted by exhibitionists; their wanting everyone to see takes away it's eroticism.

-I hate soft-core Cinemax porn, ugly bodies popped out of plastic mold, bumping around in an expensive bed. Nothing about that is entertaining.

-I hate I HATE that it is so obvious the women in porn aren't having fun. They're doing their job, or they're trying to make a man happy. And the men who make it and watch it, don't care. It doesn't turn men off, not even my own dear husband. They don't care that it's likely she's disgusted by a stranger's ejaculate on her face and in her mouth, or too doped up to mind.

How could this happen? What happened? When did my sex drive leave the arena it was so comfortable in?

So now what is sexy?

My therapist is a pretty lesbian, cute like an 11-year-old tomboy with a leather couch and $110-an-hour price on her time. I think she is brilliant, but I tend to deify.

I complain, I yank out the story of my trip, quoting my own blog liberally because it's much smoother in print. I say, I felt fat. I felt useless. I don't like my family. I'm a failure.

And she looks, undeniably, bored. For the first time in 2 years.

"Mez, are any of those thoughts helping? Or are you just addicted to, enjoying, feeling lousy?"

I slide down the couch to the floor, and press my head to the seat cushions. I knew this was coming. She and I have said all there is to say. Now she's just waiting for me to decide to stop. To decide the pain of change hurts less than the pain of still being me every day. I speak through my armpit to her.

"I'm emotionally masturbating, aren't I?"

She perks up. "What an excellent term for it!"

Thanks.

I have chosen not to talk much about my family on this blog. Because, frankly, no one wants to hear it anymore. Not even me. As much as I want to tell it, by god, I don't want to hear it.

And so, suffice it to say, my mother and sister went with me, on my own invitation, to central Oregon, to camp on the river I grew up next to. I had asked them because I was intimidated to do it alone, in the woods with dog and baby. And I was a miserable companion, because I swallowed down all the things I wanted to say, or scream, at them, and the mess was a bubbly poison in my stomach. I looked for any reason to be angry, to feel mistreated, to bleed the poison out on little things that didn't matter since the real stuff wasn't going to come out. And if I could not find a reason to be mad, I fell silent, and glowered.

But it wasn't just them. I was so tired. Smudge, my baby...oh god she was terrible. We hadn't been home in over a week by that point, her dad was gone, driving his grandparent's Mercedes across the country, and she was a little messed up because I had left her for a week. She was suspicious of my mother and sister and wouldn't go two whining, screaming paces from my side, unless it was toward the river, fire, or road.

The nights were 35 degrees and there was no difference in temperature inside the tent or out. I could feel my dog shivering at my feet. I didn't sleep well; the ground was hard and full of tree roots and I was never content with Smudge's warmth, trying to sleep while holding blankets around her ever-moving little body, whining even in sleep.

My only break came when my sister's friends came to visit. Chaz is a normal guy, but his boyfriend Flip, he's a cartoon. A near perfect imitation of the Hank Azaria gay housekeeper character from "The Birdcage." I once pulled into my sister's driveway to find him doing yard-work in tiny green short-shorts and a yellow mesh tank top.

He and Smudge sat in Chaz's convertible, the one Flip will never drive because his license was revoked (simply glorious gobs of DUI's) for half an hour, pushing buttons and giggling together. Afterwards he skipped around chanting "Pinata, Pinata!" while encouraging Smudge to hit him with a stick. A forty-eight year old Mexican who leaves fire in this footsteps (I think Leon gave me that expression) and his kindred spirit, enclosed in a 21-month-old girl. I should have kissed Flip for the break he gave me.

I want to go back, though. My soul does, my brain doesn't. But they've been doing their own things for years now.

My neighbor cut my weeds behind my house and behind my back. They were aggravating her.

Not because they were hedging onto her property. Not because she has to look at them while she has her morning coffee. There is a low fence and a high hedge between her and the long grass of my side yard. She had her son cross the fence and hedge, with a weed-eater, and cut down all my grass.

The side yard is dominated by two enormous misplaced pine trees, so nothing will grow there but tawny field grass. I don't think of it as part of my lawn, but as sort of a small field beside my lawn.

Trying to ask her why she did it took effort, because she didn't want to talk about it. Her eyes swam around; she wanted to talk about why my car was gone two weeks, and why there was an old Mercedes with Pennsylvania plates parked in front of my house. This is the way of passive-aggression, even polite confrontation is uncomfortable.

Better to weed-wack under cover of night.

I prodded and her voice slipped from polite to a frustrated whining that revealed a real emotion. An 11-year-old's words and tone coming out of a stocky, middle-aged body. "Every time I go by there it aggravates me! You see how I keep my lawn! And I asked you if you wanted help! I offered to give you weed killer! But you didn't seem interested!"

I wasn't interested. So...it was up to her.

I want to be a good neighbor, and I told her so. I said it was more important to me than weeds. Then I asked her patience, that she would just have to wait it out with us, we're planning to re-sod and so forth in the spring. We've only been here a few months.

I don't know if I said everything right. I don't think it matters, because it will re-settle in her brain however she wants to re-settle it. In her memory I probably thanked her heartily, or screamed at her.

It's not that she cut weeds, that is bad. It's that now, I'm looking at the dirty dishes in my sink, and remembering that I need to change Smudge's crib sheet. Wondering what the neighbor would think if she saw those things. Wonder how much it would take for her to decide it was up to her, up to her to call the city, call child protective services.

How much aggrevation can she be expected to withstand?

Okay. Back on the road.

They all became such fancy-pants. My old friends, the new ones I met in D.C. Alison and Sara, both spokespeople, one for a government bureau, one for an evil lobbying association. Kara, veterinarian. Leon, artist, dentist. Ron, showing me the two architectural magazines his designs are featured in this month. Andra, who is also a trained architect but changed lanes to open a doggy dress designer business in New Orleans. All under 35, some under 30.

After my speech at the wedding I disappeared. Leon said people came up and asked him about me, about what I did.

"I told them you were a huge literary critic for a major newspaper".
"But I'm not," I said, a little shocked. I'm a housewife. I've got a toddler. I write play reviews for a small paper in a small city.

With Leon, there is no point trying to make him feel sorry, trying to force an 80's family sitcom moment with him. No point in, "But Leon, don't you see? By lying, you're saying I'm not good enough just being me!"

It wouldn't work, because dear Leon would just be so happy that I'd finally gotten it.

"Yes! Jesus, thank you. You get it. Of course you're not good enough. Now stop squandering yourself and go be someone I can brag about without lying."

I wouldn't be telling the truth, anyway. I don't believe I'm okay just being me. This isn't me. I'm not supposed to be fat and confused and tense and unheard. I feel squandered.

Read tonight, "Nobody changes. They just get revealed."

Lets all take a little break from my tireless self involvement (and boy howdy do I have more!).

Question.

If the Catholic church has so much money, why does their TV network suck so bad? With the kind of money they have, they could beam the love of Jesus directly into people's brains. Instead their shows are beige people talking in front of potted plants. Unless...that's what they want me to think.

Also- I wonder if the current pope took a vow of poverty. Does it still apply when you are pope? Or maybe because you are the Vicar of Christ you can pretty much like like...well, a god. Actually, the pope probably owns like, four things, that are really his. I wonder how good his dinners are.

And one more thing. I think it may be unconstitutional to make kids pay taxes. They can't vote as to what is to be done with their money, so it is taxation without representation. Also, they can't serve on a jury (which is good, but still) so it is impossible for them to be judged by a jury of their peers. The suffergettes went to prison for protesting that kind of treatment. Can children legally own land?

I have now, maybe always, an emotional thresh-hold low enough for a mouse to trip over. Four days ago I was Absolutely. Gutted. By. Dumbo. I started crying a little when poor Mrs. Jumbo (sweet and pink-capped, not like those vicious feather-wearing elephant whores she shared a train car with) kept hoping one of the stork bundles falling from the sky were hers, by they weren't. And kept crying at various times all the way through, sobbing during the last scene, where Mrs. Jumbo has a sleek private caboose and her perfect little flying baby slides into her arms. My only real break came from the shuffle and jive crows, those racist caricatured darlings, god bless 'em.

I had to keep from crying at Alison's wedding ceremony. So I stood next to her but tried to ignore her completely. Because that's the stellar maid-of-honor performance you get when you have Imez on your team. When she handed her bouquet to me to hold so she could take her husband's hands the whole room watched me give her a "Wha...what the fuck, what do you want? What?" look. See, my secret to not crying in any indoor situation is to find a light bulb, stare at it, and tell myself The Aristocrats joke. Don't break my concentration.

It wasn't just the wedding. Start with the jet lag of a week prior, and the heat, and start removing an asphalt chunk from the soul dam for my kid gone, my husband gone, my weight, my lack of success, my friends who I haven't seen in a decade and won't see for more, and take a supporting beam for when I walked across the reception foyer with my dress in my underwear. Kara's father, who performed the ceremony, tackled me like a crazed lover and threw me against the wall, to save me further embarrassment.

Turned out it wasn't my own strength holding me together that day. Pure tension, the stress of having to give a bridal toast at dinner. A toast that had to be perfect, because it is the only kind of thing I do well. Everyone else has a smaller waist and a bigger income, but this, this I can be the best at. And it was perfect. I was proud. And I sat back down. And the tension supports were gone.

And...I couldn't get hold. Started to cry and couldn't stop. Ran out during Alison's spotlight dance with her dad. In the bathroom it was hopeless.

The woman who does the make-up for Fox News did the bridesmaid's faces, Alison had hired her during one of her TV appearances. I told that pushy little spitfire I had a crying problem, but she still went with the Nefertiti look. "I just want your eyes to POP!"

So I looked ridiculous, black eyed like a Lil Rascal's sketch involving trick binoculars. When I tried to collect my stuff from the table my friends tried to pull me onto the dance floor. I resisted playfully, but they wouldn't stop, so I yanked my hands away very nastily. I wasn't playing. I was done. I was gone. I was empty and overflowing. I had to get away.

I missed so much that night by not being able to control myself. My friends laughed and enjoyed in each other until four in the morning, hanging out together in the Hilton's Presidential Suite. I didn't even get to say goodbye to half of them, the ones that had an early flight. I cried in my room for over an hour, pouring and pouring.

My trip wasn't even half over and I was all used up.

When it was just thin Leon in his $200 jeans, I was joking about being the only fattie on the eastern seaboard. I don't even know what exactly the eastern seaboard encompasses; I may not have even been on it. But wherever I was, there were no other fat people.

In Washington DC, where me met up with Alison and her/our other friends, I stopped laughing.

It wasn't just that Alison had wended and willowed her way out of high-school plain and chubby, and now looked like Grace Kelly. And that Kara had added beautiful and stylish to her thinness. That Andra had lost twenty pounds and dressed exclusively in crazy boutique styles, and that Sara, the plump one, had my own personal perfect figure, curved and solid and healthy.

The night of the bridal party/dinner. When Alison said, "It's about eight blocks. We can totally walk it."

The worst part wasn't that I couldn't keep up. That they were laughing and talking and I started to fall behind the group, pace by pace. After two blocks every step hurt, hurt all over. My under-wire began to bite a rash into my skin, and the material in the thighs of my jeans were chafing thinner with every rubbing step.

The worst was when they all noticed, though I guess was waiting for them to. I'm not such a brave little solider, you see. So they noticed that I was behind them. Stopped, concerned. Pretended they liked walking slow, that they needed to rest, too. Kept an eye on me, made sure I was making it ok. Reminded me of the rare days in grade school when we all decided to be nice to the special-ed kid.

Then I was in pain, sweating in the pre-tropical storm heat, and trying not to cry. Under the weight of their pity, my own self-pity.

It didn't get better, that part.

I decided I did not need to see Gettysburg, because it was a field, and I can use my imagination on any field for much the same result. So Leon arranged a day for us, and was congenial when Sean called to thwart it. My plan had been to basically drop Smudge's accidentally-absconded bag off at a neutral spot, and not see my husband and daughter. I had been successfully ignoring the wound I had made by leaving them at the airport, and didn't want to look at it now.

Sean had been one day and night at his grandparents. One the phone,
"Hon, can we just, can we see each other and just, hang out a little? I mean I know you guys have plans but, could we?" He sounded desperate like thirst.

So Leon and I drove and hour north and Sean and Smudge drove an hour south and we met at a greasy spoon offering all-you-can-eat sirloin for $3.99. Leon refused to eat, and was horrified when the waitress put a free bucket of pickles in the center of the table. I ordered a dessert made of canned peaches and corn syrup, that I couldn't eat so much as marvel at. That cook must have balls of steel to call that a Peach Melba Delight.

Sean ate his hamburger quick and thoughtless, stress-eating.

"Everyone. Everyone in that house is dying. Literally. If any of them didn't wake up tomorrow I wouldn't be surprised. Grandma, Grandpa, Great Aunt Sukes and Aunt Rhonda. Cancer, diabetes, Grandma doesn't have a left hip!!"

His grandparent's house was the closest thing he had to a happy childhood home. Now it was neglected, hot and fetid with sickness and depression.

"They left a ham out to thaw on the counter for days! They keep saying, 'Don't you and Smudge want some ham?'" He shuddered and disappeared a handful of fries.

He did not feel he could leave Smudge under their attention for even a moment, timing his bowel moments with the baby's naps. Smudge wouldn't eat and had blistering diaper rash. And his family. Angry at each other when they thought he was out of earshot, giving him orders on how to attend his child when he was.

"It's like they're not even mine. They're like, something that happened to someone else, a long time ago."

I conceived a sloppy rescue plan for my husband. I tried to picture he and Smudge trailing me from Philadelphia to Washington DC, them sitting on the other side of the restaurant while I had the bridesmaid dinner, him trying to wrestle her quiet as I walked the aisle in my blue dress, reimbursing Leon for the halvsies I would no longer be paying.

In the end I didn't rescue him. I strapped the baby in the back of the car and hugged him again. They went back, and I went on.

I don't know if it was the right thing to do.

I am a camel. I have filled my hump. Two weeks of experience to sustain me. But it is not a thorough analogy. Water refreshes a camel through a burning trek, and my life is not a hell like that. And I don't feel refreshed. I just feel filled up, heavy and sagging like a rotten biblical wineskin.

I have enough to blog myself into oblivion. Miserable stuff and incredible stuff that made my pupils dilate. Of course you're more likely to hear the miserable, because it needs telling more. For every whine, please understand there were three deep laughs and one "wow, this is amazing."

Jump right in.

Part the First "Imez leaves the Shire."

Smudge fell asleep 15 minutes before the plane landed in Pennsylvania, so I didn't have to see her questioning look dissolve into panic as I ran, truly ran, away from her. Sean walked beside me down the corridor, toward our different receptions, and because I knew I would not see him for 2 weeks I could not look at him then. I kissed my sleeping kid in her stroller, grabbed Sean's neck as a goodbye, and ran away with my bags. And Smudge's bag. Didn't find that out till about 80 miles later. Anyway.

My friendship with Leon is my deepest, and he may read this now, so you won't know all about him you might otherwise. That's just the way it is. He kept me for the first week of my journey. He goes to dental school, and lives in an apartment that is so perfect you won't see the like of it in movies. A set director would worry that the arched style and severe cleanliness would be inauthentic.

Leon builds strategic beauty around himself, a environment of stone and clean art. He had three red apples in his kitchen, sitting where they sat on purpose. They could be eaten, but that's not why they were put out. His bathroom shows no sign of messy, sweating life, nothing un-beautiful, nothing plastic but an electronic toothbrush, a tiny tower to future greatness.

The perfection, the heights in which he dwells, is a fortification. An irreproachability in a world that has spent every moment examining him for flaws and stabbing him where they were found. He unrolled what appeared to be an expensive micro-fiber faux-lambskin blanket for me the first night, from it's original packaging. Even his throw blankets were higher than necessary quality.

I said, "My god. Have you ever even been in a Wal-Mart?"
"Yes. I have. And it was awful."




Oh, look what I have poured out, already. I'll stop for tonight. But it's gotta come out sometime.