5/23/00
I was just thinking how odd it is that I date these with the current date when I'm usually writing about events of the day before. Maybe I'm the only person in the world strange enough to notice this...
"I was scared when you came into my room, the walls became the sea, your voice was the moon...when you rocked me in your arms..."
The plot stickens, as they say.
Megan was a complete rag-and-a-half yesterday. (This is a tongue-in-cheek reference to an e-mail from our friend Erik's "God Squad" cousin who is on a missionary trip in Ecuador, in which she refers to God as "RAD-and-a-HALF." The girl scares me.) I don't know if it was the heat or what, but she was damn cranky. So she calls me up at 4:30 and says "I'm stopping by McDonald's and then going to the gym." Well, I had planned on actually cooking, so I'm like, "are you still eating dinner?" and she gets totally pissy. So I'm like "fuck it" and decide to just do my own thing and let her do hers.
Now this is becoming a real problem for me. I know it's important for couples (particularly those who have been totally and disgustingly enmeshed like we were) to "find their own selves" and have their own lives and interests separate from the other. But lately it seems like we're so involved in doing our own thing and finding ourselves that we're like, misplacing each other. I have this fear that some night we're going to sit down in the living room, look across the room at each other, and I'll point at her and say "Megan, right?" and she'll say "Angie? My God, how long has it been...?" or some other conversation I've had with people I haven't seen in centuries.
So I get home from work and change clothes...it was hotter than hell yesterday (it's not the heat, it's the humidity--98 degree heat index) so I opted for a rather loose-fitting pair of shorts (yes I still have some) and this flimsy little white "camisole" (I hate that word, to me it will always be a fucking "tank top") and my Keds (I can ruin any outfit by putting on my shoes). The reason for this detail is to simply say, I looked like a ho, albeit a hot, bronzed, slightly blond and very clean ho. And I kind of did it on purpose because I knew a certain strange man would be walking his dog over yonder...
And SHO NUFF, there they were...and we talked about his lovely (sarcasm) family and his dog's allergies and his fucked up shoulder and how J tried to fix it but really needs his table to do a good job and about how J's wife P is a total shrew and just so damn easy to make fun of. I keep trying to tell myself that I wasn't shamelessly flirting with this guy, that I was only being friendly and trying to get to know him better because I HAVE NO FRIENDS, but I think I'd be lying. My only hope is that he truly has no interest in my whatsoever so that I don't end up doing something completely fucking stupid.
I've done this before. When I was married, I had an affair with this big fat guy with a hygiene and self-esteem problem. He was my husband's best friend's roommate. Talk about AWKWARD! The point is that under normal circumstances, I would never EVER have been attracted to this guy (although he is wonderfully sweet and very intelligent and all, I just have cleanliness issues) but because of the place I was in--stuck in a horrible, worthless, never-shoulda-happened marriage and feeling completely UNFULFILLED--I fell into it. Because he said all the right things and the things he didn't say, I just made up in my head that he said them. Because I HAVE ISSUES. I'm sure on some psychological level this has something to do with my childhood and "searching for the love you never thought you had," blah blah blah. That's all well and good on paper but in real life, it's sticky as all get out.
However--the difference between then and now, I've discovered, is that this time, I've actually thought about, and been able to picture, the consequences. If Megan and I split, I would lose something very dear to me. I would lose my best friend. I would lose the person I promised to spend the rest of my life with. And to not be there...it's bad enough now that she has this whole life that has nothing to do with me, I can't imagine how awful it would be to not be a part of her life at all. I mean, damn, as much as I hate the ex-husband (okay, not "hate," just "seriously dislike") and as much as I know that our split was for the best and as much as my life has changed (for the better) since I left him, there have been times when it was like, "how dare you move on and not spend the rest of your life heartbroken over me?" Like when he told me he was getting married, I was seriously pissed for about a week. It kills me to admit that it affected me that much, but the truth hurts. I have no doubt in my mind that Megan would find it relatively easy to pick up the pieces of her life and move on without me...and I don't know if that hurts more because I fear her leaving me or because I fear she already, on some level, has.
Or is everything in our relationship hunky-dory and I'm just trying to justify having an illicit sexual encounter with a freak?
I wish we had someone who lived with us and paid very close attention to us who could sit me down (or both of us) and tell us what exactly is going on...no ifs ands or buts...so we could end the guesswork and do what needs to be done. I wonder how many relationships have needlessly ended due to shoddy guesswork? I wonder how many of them were mine?
Maybe I should just screw someone and get it over with. But it's not as simple as that...on the one hand, I really want to get laid, big time, and I want it to be relatively easy, and let's face it--hetero sex is nothing if not "easy" (for me, anyway--I have never claimed to speak for the masses). You don't have to worry about anyone's feelings, just in and out, hot, sweaty, "get down on it" screwing. Okay, maybe I'm not just talking about hetero sex...I'm talking about sex with anyone OTHER THAN Megan. Because sex with her is damn complicated because there's too much going on there that's not about just getting it on.
And maybe it's not just sex I'm looking for.
I really need to figure out what the fuck is going on here.
I finally FINALLY got to see the Fleetwood Mac "The Dance" concert on VH1 last night. Oh, joy, oh bliss. I don't care if she is fat and old, I think Stevie Nicks is the hottest thing since melted butter. Hell, Buckingham's not bad, either. I think I'd take them both. But when she did "Landslide" and he started crying and then she started crying and she went up to him after the song and hugged him, oh dear... I was farklempt (sp?) myself. I don't know what it is about that love story that intrigues me so but to me, it's better than any soap opera...perhaps because it's produced a hell of a lot of good music...
Megan drank half a bottle of wine last night and then had P drive her to the tattoo place up the hill to get her belly button pierced. It kind of grosses me out.
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