2006-03-06

Quotes from Dates

3/7/1980.
It was a very good year.
And a whole bunch of total strangers think that's when I was born. Given my rock and roll life-style and lack of access to the latest (botox) in youth (collagen) chasing (liposuction) techniques, I am pretty impressed with myself.

It has been intimated by my former date that I have a problem with my ego.
DISAGREE.
It is, to quote a good friend, completely humbling for me to feel that I am perfect. To see the utter purity and utter beauty in everyone and in everything and to feel like that comes from God?
If anything, those moments of absolute brilliance are when I feel the smallest I've ever felt. Fearless, but tiny.
Although, I do have a generous helping of ego to serve to you, right on down, in the rest of this read.

(Note: Anytime you see the word �conversation�, know that I mean it in the most loose definition available. I don't mean conversation in its literal form, by any strech. Trust me, there was no exchange of ideas by any strech, on any topic.)

Witness:

Alright, admittedly, we all had hopes for the dog park dude. He is cute, smells like a dreamboat, sort of Jewish, outdoorsy, and capable of keeping something alive for a number of years, notably, a dog. Trust me, that shit isn't easy.
Rosie has almost lost life and/or limb any number of times, both at the hand of my Russian Rage and at the hand of her insistence to eat absolutely anything.
The list of what she's eaten hardly begins and not even ends with the cats' stash of Dead Things. It�s a run-on sentence of clothing, paper products, a ganja cigarette at a party when she was a tiny puppy, and trust me, it just keeps going, ad infinitum.
If a dude can keep a dog alive, he's a-ok in my book.
We all had high hopes.

Those were dashed, officially, as of Friday night.
I went back and forth on this one - he WAS intriguing, for sure. He had that SOMETHING, you know? The intangible spark of curious that makes you stand a little bit away but makes wonder if you should be standing closer.
Friday night, I figured out for sure that the definitive answer to that question in this case is a shouting, resounding NO.
Although there is a lot to detail about this one month flirtation, I can pretty much cut to the part where things got comical to me, in an angry 1990s Riot Grrrl or Idiot Girl clich� way.

Scene:
Epic Cafe. Hipster, tattooed, pierced baristas, multi-colored Tucson walls with A-For-Effort art on the walls, the kind that looks like college but that was probably painted by an angsty 30 year old guy who smokes too much pot and leaves it out where puppies can get into it when there are parties.
They do make really good coffee and there are windows and there's character and generally, dig it there. Namoli is playing!! I haven�t seen her play in forever!!! Yay!!

Old boy is already up in the hizzie when I arrive.
"Did you get my text?"
"No, I was driving."
"I sent you my order."
"Huh?"
"My drink order?"
"Oh. Yeah. There it is." In my head: You've been sitting here for half an hour and didn't get a drink yet? I can't read text message language. I hate texting, I hate it. What is that? Does that mean diet? Damn, Namoli sounds great! I�m really enjoying being around Wendy, too. Awesome! Humming along in my head: �You were the one that said I was kind of cute, and�� Love that song! Trying to Try.
Yup. Love it.

"They just passed the Tip Jar but it's more like a Tip Can."
"Yeah, I saw her manager when I came in and she had the jar. We made that a few years ago with my friend Matthew on Art Night... good memories, you know?"
Dead silence.
In my head: OK.... ask me a question... it's called conversation.... you're watching my dearest friend, my soul sister... what the hell is that noise?
tap tap tap tap tap tap tap.
Oh nice.
It's your foot against a loose metal base for this table.
Stop Immediately.
Everyone can hear you and this is Namoli's show and she doesn't much go for unsolicited audience participation.
STOP
Plus, that's so fucking RUDE that if I address it right now, in the moment, I am going to lose my entire temper all up and down your goddammed foot. Lucky for the foot and for me, my friend Matthew�s friend Lynn looked conspicuously down at the tapping and it stopped.
Thank you, Jesus. Thank you for your sweet intervention.

"Are you going to get me a coffee?"
"No!"
"But I sent you my order. I want a triple mocha, iced."
"I'll get you a coffee but I can't afford that one."
"You can too."
"I can not. I have $10 and that's it."
"How much did those jeans cost you?"
"$12.99. Buffalo Exchange." In my head: Is he for real? How is it remotely this jackass' business how I spend my money? I could have spent $80 on these jeans and it wouldn't mean that I have more than $10 to spend on Friday night coffee, nor that I have to justify my spending to anyone. I am, after years of working to be, completely on the high road there. Justification doesn't apply because there's nothing to question. I do it all exactly the way that it needs to be done right now. There's nothing frivolous.
"How much did you spend on that nail polish?" In my head:
Suppress. The Urge. To Kill.
"What do you want?"
"Triple mocha."
"Not gonna happen. Name something else."
Sure enough when I got both drinks, after securing a modified version for him, my total was $9.14.
$1.00 of my $2.00 cushion went into the tip jar for the baristas.
What?
Why did I comply?
Roughly, I�m not the bitch who makes a scene at her friend�s event.
I complied because if I hadn't, a coffee shop full of folk fans would have seen me spontaneously combust. Often, rather than confront the Russian Rage head-on, I comply with an inane request to buy myself time and to diffuse the impatience of the small child.....
I mean....
Fully Grown Adult Male....
Who has a sense of entitlement that is on par with any of the other mother fuckers who have been dropped from my roster for being spoiled idiots.

�My friend is in a private hospital in Chicago now � I still am kind of reeling, I think. Grown-up problems with grown-up solutions and consequences is what�s on my mind.� Now, at this point, instead of asking me about the family or the home-life or the history, he tells me that he was trying to figure out what the drug was.
�Was it Epidural?�
�No. It starts with an S and it�s for cancer. I told you that now drop it.�
I was seething that he would pursue conversation on this topic with no nod to the humanity of the situation. He cared about the name of the drug? I was so shocked that I had to turn on Corporate Ho, the part of me who can maintain composure and even ignore the immediate, so that nobody gets hurt. I was so hurt by this line of questioning that I was nauseous for ever having brought it up to him in the first place.
"I would never want to be taken to University Hospital. A 'research hospital'. Doesn't that seem like a bad idea? People who don�t know what they're doing are working on you"
"Uhhhh." In my head: Should I explain the difference between a university facility and a public facility or is that going to end up being a problem for me in that it will not lead to a comparison of the inequities of the healthcare system in the USA but rather, I will get some idiot comment about how I can't possibly be correct.
"Uhhhhh�. It's not like the students are unsupervised."

He reaches over and takes my coffee and takes a gigantic drink of it.
Without permission.
I want to throw up.
But I'm turning all Buddhist and shit, so all that crap about not taking things personally and using my internal warmth to continue on the path of making my evening pleasant. Whatevski. Here's a good test for you, Sarah.
Go with it. Be buoyant.
I also haven�t eaten after a big work-out and there�s a lot of milk in that drink, which will fill me up a little, so hands-off dick weed.
MEN MAKE ME SICK.
Well, this man makes me sick.

"I'm kind of hungry."
"Me, too. I didn't eat after yoga." In my head: And your goddamn coffee cost me the tuna salad I was going to get. Why not out loud? Because I'm sure there would have been a salty comment about how much I put in the already-disputed Tip Jar or something.
"Want to go to Los Betos?"
"Nope. I don't want a burrito."
"It's all I can afford."
"I'd rather not go anywhere than go somewhere I don't want to be at. I'd be up for Bentley's - I think they're still serving food."
"I can only afford Los Betos."
"Yeah, I'm broke, too.
"I don't feel sorry for people who are broke on purpose."
In my head: Goodbye, you sorry son of a bitch. You don't even get the implications of what you just said and to whom you just said it.
Kiss my fat rich ass, then, if that's what you think of me.
Kiss my wasteful,
snobby,
privileged,
bad-decision-making
ass.
Because you've got it all wrong and to point out where and how would be a pain in the ass for me, because you wouldn't get it and would feel like an attack to you, because you wouldn't get it and so�..
to quote Shawn Colvin, my childhood neighbor, "Get out of this house."

p.s. And put the lid down when you go.
I don�t know if he thought it was funny, or even original, but he commented, on one of 18 trips to the restroom, that he hates it when girls leave the seat down.
Wow.
That�s such a unique and interesting way of looking at the world.
Enlightened, really.

Luckily, the next night, I had dinner with a friend who I used to date, proving that perhaps in my own way, even though I haven�t met the guy who doesn�t dress like a chick that knocks me off my rocker�.
I�m doing pretty good for myself.

arizonasarah at 9:51 a.m.

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