That Familiar Ring

I find marriage preferable to dating. If I could pinpoint one experience that tipped the scales it would be the time I dated Sophie.

We met on a dating site. I had just about given up on whole internet dating after five dates with women who posted pics of themselves from high school, when they weren't seventy pounds overweight. Sophie emailed me and we set up a date for the following night. She was thin, pretty, with long curly locks of jet black hair. We hit it off so I decided to take her somewhere fancy for dinner. The conversation flowed, but with each successive wine, red flag number one (ultimately ignored) waved in my face. The more she drank, the more shifty eyed she became. By the end of dinner it looked as though she was watching a tennis match the way her eyes moved pendulous in their sockets.

The next red flag waved at me the first night we spent together. It was ten o'clock and she said, "If you want to have sex we better hurry, I just took my psych meds and they make me very sleepy." She nodded out in the middle of foreplay. I should have cut my loses then and there, but I'm male.

Rather than listen to the nagging voice in my head assuring me this could only get worse, I invited Sophie to my cousin's wedding. It was more about putting on airs since all my cousins were star athletes, married to pretty girls. Sophie was my trophy.

During the rehearsal dinner, Sophie ordered drinks as if Prohibition would be reinstated at midnight. By the end of dinner she was slouched in her seat, eyes darting to and fro so I feigned a stomach ache and got us out of there. Crisis averted? Crisis postponed.

Since no booze would be served at the church, I felt safe. Sophie looked amazing in the dress I bought her. She was sociable and impressed me to the point that I decided it might be ok if she had a drink or two at the reception. In all the grandeur, I lost track of how much she had. Walking out of the bathroom she ran up to me shouting, "The DJ said I could sing, I'm gonna sing!" and zipped off before I could catch her.

By the time I made it back into the hall the DJ was announcing her, "And now, to sing for the bride and groom, Sophie!"

The thump of It's Raining Men started. I scanned the room but found only the piercing stare of my 80 year old grandmother. I moved out of her direct line of fire and took a seat to wait it out.

"Humidity is rising," she sang, "Barometer's getting low. According to all sources, the streets the place to go..."

Confined to the stage, it seemed that I'd only have to live down a modicum of embarrassment, until, "Tonight for the first time, just about half past ten, for the first time in history, it's gonna start raining men..." She left the stage and started slinking around the room provocatively. The wave of horror passed, the crowd clapped to the beat, and the wedding party was into it.

It was at, "God bless Mother Nature, she's a woman too. She took off to heaven and she did what she had to do," that she approached my uncle, the father of the groom, and proceeded to give him a lap dance during the chorus, "It's raining men, Hallelujah!"

My head had reached the table by then, my face seven different shades of red when I heard the youngest of my cousins yell, "Yo Bry."

I ignored him.

"Hey, Bry!" he called again.

I looked over.

"Why's your girlfriend so shy?"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CB3Gv4oZdWo

State of the Union

Rachel and I have regular talks, prompted by her, about the state of our lives together. Some of our knock down drag out brawls have stemmed from these chats, mostly due to my resistance to the change she'd like to impose. Most talks begin with a simple question that usually gets the hairs on the back of my neck to stand. She'll ask, "So, what do you see us doing with the rest of our lives?"

If my typical 'I don't know' fails to back her down, I'll try to placate her with an answer that disarms her, "We're going to try to be as healthy as possible so we can love each other longer." But this is a short term answer, providing little time to flee, or come up with something tangible. If I can't, the physicality of my depression surfaces, my shoulders slump, and my tone wanes. My one word answers are like spurts of gas on a fire. My hope is that if I piss her off enough I won't have to deal with the reality: I just don't know.

This answer worked in the past, but again, only temporarily, she'll give me my time, and space, with an assignment, "Why don't you think it over, because it's something I'd really like to discuss with you."

I've grown to hate this. Mostly because when the time she allots expires, it's talk-time cubed. This backs me further into a self imposed corner, I lash out, and we fight. It comes down to this--Because of my felonies, I find it hard to dream the way she would like us to. I feel inept because the choices I've made in the past dilute my hopes for the future. I don't want to dream for fear we'll hit the CORI roadblock and feel the pang I feel daily over the fact that I'll probably never return to being a therapist for addicts.

Our talks follow a pattern: Rachel brings up the future, I shut down, she pries me open, I admit that I feel like I'm holding us back, she comforts me, and I postpone yet another attempt to move forward. But with Rachel, it's sink or swim.

I do have a plan: I started this blog as an exercise in writing, so thank you if you're a follower. Second, it forces me to write and follow a deadline (I try hard to write every Sunday). After reading other blogs, I've realized that if you don't know me (and maybe even if you do), this is pretty boring shit. If you happened upon my blog without my prompting, please let me know, but I doubt you exist. Thirdly, I started Change is Optional because I'm rewriting my memoir. The last version garnered some attention from agents. I even signed with one last year, but let the contract run out after I realized it just wasn't good enough.

Perpetrators is almost finished. Aspiring authors write blogs because an agent's second question before offering representation is, "What's your platform for marketing this book?" Most writers mention their blog, which is a great platform if you have tons of followers who leave comments.

So please spread the word, join the blog as a follower, and leave a comment now and again to help me not only publish, but stand tall during State of the Union talks. Believe me, it helps.

PS...I told Rachel that after the book sells we'll buy a farm and I'll write about our adventures living off the land, unless we starve. I also plan to advocate for restructuring of the CORI laws, so that felons like me can spread this message, especially to kids: the consequences of your actions may reach further than you can ever imagine.

Thanks Again...

Housefit

They didn't die as much as they're in the process of decomposing. I'm talking about Rachel's Housefit, a designation more than a name for the clothes I don every time we return from 'Out.' The fact that 'In' has its own attire is due to the fact that 'In' is always preferable to 'Out' in my estimation and should be celebrated with clothing that reflects the mood. Housefits need to be relaxed, (Editor's note: The word relaxed here refers to the fabric. Relaxing would surely fit better, but in terms of fabric, the fibers must be in a constant relaxed state, either by design, or age, the latter being preferable).

The original Housefit started with pajama pants I picked up at TJ Maxx. We weren't shopping for them, but low and behold, on the sales rack, for just $10, was a pair of blue cotton jammie pants I just had to have. We discovered the reason they were a sale item after walking to the Salem Willows one summer night. The fly, held together by a single button, lent itself to random 'exposures.' We jokingly started calling them the Wenie pants (Wenie because I spelled weenie like genie in a text to Rachel). So unpredictable were these pants that we had to warn unsuspecting company that they might see more than they bargained for.

The Housefit caught on. Soon enough Rachel was wearing hers, a long sleeve T swiped from my closet and a pair of light blue pants with rubber duckies everywhere. They were the pants she wore on our first date, after she was canceled from a night shift at work (A shift I suspect to this day was orchestrated to bow out if the date was a bust). We went back to my place, changed into Housefits, and watched dumb comedies all night.

A few weeks ago she pointed out holes in the crotch, a looser, weakening waistband, and faded, pale ducks. Sewing was suggested as an option to prolong the iconic half of the legendary Housefit much the way stitching was proposed to keep Frankenstein together, but then yesterday, she sat down and tore a four inch hole in the ass. With the discovery of even more breaches, it was decided to lay them to rest.

Reverend Austin, now living with us, wears a pair of black sweats, long sleeved green T with regular T underneath, "For temperature control."

Do you have a Housefit? Please share...