Showing posts with label anti-awesome. Show all posts
Showing posts with label anti-awesome. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
*Warning!* - Another seriously old, seriously introspective blog! Proceed with caution!
When it comes to being a Hero or Villain, there are definitely shades of gray. With all of the 2007 turmoil, I didn't consider Future Husband a Villain. Conflicted, yes. Foolish, definitely. But I was just as much to blame for the mess. When he told me about his feelings, I could have told him that I reciprocated, but that he needed to end things with Crazy Ex#1 before we started carrying on. I initially did that, but the longer it took, the harder it was to resist him. Eventually it was a full fledged affair. And when it went sour, it hurt all three of us involved, and split our once tight social circle into two distinctive sides, even those that didn't want to be involved. Even today I say the bulk of the blame lies with Future Husband, but I'm not responsibility free. I know that.
And I'd like to think I'm smart enough to not make the same mistake twice... but I did.
Though in my defense, I didn't think I was making the same mistake. And the scenario wasn't exactly the same: It was actually worse. When Future Husband and I finally got together I lived in Oklahoma, and he lived in Seattle... with soon-to-be Crazy Ex #2. I thought that it would just be a fling, and he would finally be out of my system and out of my life. But it was the exact opposite of what ended up happening. Even when he started pushing for a relationship, I suggested we be friends while we were apart, and lovers while we were in the same city. Because, apparently, I like to make things unnecessarily complicated. Just like before, I didn't resist him for long. He promised to break up with Ex #2, just like he had with #1. I hoped that he had enough courage to do it, but was terrified he wouldn't. But something had changed in the years in between. Maybe finally being with me entirely was enough to make him realize I was worth fighting for. I was worth being a Villain for.
During the weeks between us becoming us, and him returning to Seattle from tour, he vented all of his frustrations and insecurities to me. He hated that he had to be a bad guy, but he gave himself the pep talks. I just agreed. He decided he would just blame the band for his reason for leaving Crazy Ex #2. I advised him that this was a bad idea, but if it's what he was comfortable doing, to go for it. He thought it would soften the blow. He also didn't want her to stab him or set his record collection on fire. I couldn't blame him, there. I'd heard through the web of mutual friends that she was just like Crazy Ex#1.
When he got back to Seattle, he followed through, broke up with her, and moved out. Things weren't easy, but he didn't make the same mistake he had in 2007. He chose me, this time. However, things didn't stay peachy for long. It turned out that Crazy Ex#2 had suspected me for a while, and had been facebook stalking me. A few days before Christmas, she was able to track down 'proof' in a comment I'd left on someone's page. She understandably blew her gasket.
She acted like a love torn 13 year old. It was embarrassing. Like those awkward comedies where you laugh because you feel so very bad for the person. For a woman who's almost 30, her behavior was abominable. She logged into Future Husband's social networks, sent out emails to his family and friends, and then changed his passwords so that he couldn't get back in right away to delete everything. She sent me numerous emails. She even sent one to my father on Christmas morning, preaching sisterhood, all the while sending drunken emails to Future Husband about how much she hated me and how I had ruined her life. Me. Not Future Husband for cheating on her. Me.
She harassed me for a few weeks online (she only tormented Future Husband for about a week), and even her mother and two friends got in on it. Months later, when she found out I was going on tour with the band, her nasty messages to me started back up. With only one friend getting in on the action the second time, so I guess that's an improvement. Though, she did threaten me. I'm not sure if she threatened to somehow use the internet to find me and cause me physical harm, or if she meant that she'd find my personal information and like... I don't know. Ruin my credit? Either way, the threat (thankfully) never panned out. Which is fortunate for them, too, because while I am not violence prone, I am vindictive, have a long memory, and have many beefy, violent Italian men that are wrapped around my little finger and willing to do literally anything for me. (Seriously. Back in 2007 when things imploded with FH, I argued with two of my cousins about giving them his home address.) Even now that my family (all of it) is happy with Future Husband, since the engagement I've gotten a few, "We're happy for you, but does he know that if he hurts you again, he's still dead?" It's the Italian in us., what can I say?
Although, on a side note, after months and months of Crazy Ex #2's online harassment, I finally gave in and replied. I never sent a reply to any of her emails (though I wrote a few) and never acknowledged her. I figured ignoring her would probably anger her more, and it kept my own muddled feelings from exploding and making me feel worse. After her last snarky comment (actually on this blog) I gave in to my mischievous side. I had her email address (and home address, and phone number, and work number - because she apparently assumed that I don't know how to use google) and decided to be naughty. After she stalked me and wrote me horrible nasty things for months, after she wrote to my father on Christmas in an effort to ruin our holiday, after she tried her hardest to hurt me (because she assumed I knew absolutely nothing about FH's history, flaws or dark side)... I signed her up for Midget Porn. Yep. You read that correctly. Midget Porn. After her hurtful words and hostile behavior, I threw a rubber chicken. I thought it was hilarious. I had one angry email from her even crazier friend after that, but since then she's left me alone. Never underestimate the power of miniature dominatrices.
What bothers me, to this day, about this situation, is that she considers me the Villain. Not Future Husband. Sure, I was a bad female. I was knowingly the 'other woman.' She even used the word "stole" in one of her tirades. That's always bothered me. It seems like the women who loudly proclaim that they do not want to be objectified are the first to accuse another woman of 'stealing her man.' It's not like I snuck into her backyard one night and took Future Husband because she forgot to lock him up. He's not a bicycle. He's an adult; fully capable of making his own decisions, good and bad.
We (thankfully) haven't heard from her for a few months now, so we're hoping she finally came to her senses, and has recognized that Future Husband treated her horribly. He pretty much used her as an excuse to get away from Crazy Ex #1, and then as a place to live so he wouldn't be homeless when the band moved from Arizona to Seattle. He even told me (before we became a couple) that he knew she was more in love with him, and that he felt bad about it. On the whole, he was truly villainous towards her, and yet she still seems to hold him up on a pedestal. I understand despising me (I would, too), but she's never met me. I don't know Crazy Ex #2 and hold nothing against her, aside from her atrocious behavior towards me concerning this fiasco. She should be angry at Future Husband. She should loathe him. And for some reason, I get the impression she doesn't. She still thinks I stole her bicycle.
Evil Lori will steal your man, and your Penny Farthing. All while wearing a jaunty hat!
In her story, he was Willoughby, and she just can't figure that out. Jane never lets us see Ms. Grey/Mrs. Willoughby. We only hear how Willoughby relates her to Elinor. So who knows how accurate that portrait was, given his past history of self preservation? So if you're still cyber stalking me, Crazyhead- forget Willoughby. Go find yourself your Colonel Brandon.
(On a side note, it seems I'm painting a really horrible picture of Future Husband and I. I guess I'm just trying to clear the air, and my conscience. I'm not perfect, neither is he. He's the Hero in my love story because he's perfect for me. Not because he's Clark Kent. We've both done bad things in our social lives and our love lives, but who hasn't? I'm just willing to share mine.)
Crazy Ex #2 has been intermittently on my mind since we went public with our engagement. I don't think I'll hear from her ever again, but I wouldn't be surprised, either, if there was another little flip out when she finds out that we're getting married and I'm not pregnant. Maybe the new batch of angry messages will come in November, after the wedding. Who knows? Let's hope, for everyone's sake, that she realized what a Douchey McDouchebag Future Husband was to her. That he was a villain in her story, not an anti-hero. Let's hope that she's come to the mature realization that harassing me (It's actually legal harassment - I looked it up. I could press charges if I wanted to.) isn't going to make her feel better, or help her move on.
And how do I do it, you ask? How do I sleep at night being a Villainess? After being instrumental in the heart break of two different women? Well, there are three things that keep me from feeling guilty for more than a few seconds;
1- Future Husband knew me before he know either of them, and in his own 2007 words, fell in love with me the night he met me. It's almost like they were the 'other women.' I was the original.
2- I was only an instrument. My favorite analogy; if you get stabbed by someone, you don't get angry at the knife.
3- Completely good heroes are boring. ;-)
When it comes to being a Hero or Villain, there are definitely shades of gray. With all of the 2007 turmoil, I didn't consider Future Husband a Villain. Conflicted, yes. Foolish, definitely. But I was just as much to blame for the mess. When he told me about his feelings, I could have told him that I reciprocated, but that he needed to end things with Crazy Ex#1 before we started carrying on. I initially did that, but the longer it took, the harder it was to resist him. Eventually it was a full fledged affair. And when it went sour, it hurt all three of us involved, and split our once tight social circle into two distinctive sides, even those that didn't want to be involved. Even today I say the bulk of the blame lies with Future Husband, but I'm not responsibility free. I know that.
And I'd like to think I'm smart enough to not make the same mistake twice... but I did.
Though in my defense, I didn't think I was making the same mistake. And the scenario wasn't exactly the same: It was actually worse. When Future Husband and I finally got together I lived in Oklahoma, and he lived in Seattle... with soon-to-be Crazy Ex #2. I thought that it would just be a fling, and he would finally be out of my system and out of my life. But it was the exact opposite of what ended up happening. Even when he started pushing for a relationship, I suggested we be friends while we were apart, and lovers while we were in the same city. Because, apparently, I like to make things unnecessarily complicated. Just like before, I didn't resist him for long. He promised to break up with Ex #2, just like he had with #1. I hoped that he had enough courage to do it, but was terrified he wouldn't. But something had changed in the years in between. Maybe finally being with me entirely was enough to make him realize I was worth fighting for. I was worth being a Villain for.
During the weeks between us becoming us, and him returning to Seattle from tour, he vented all of his frustrations and insecurities to me. He hated that he had to be a bad guy, but he gave himself the pep talks. I just agreed. He decided he would just blame the band for his reason for leaving Crazy Ex #2. I advised him that this was a bad idea, but if it's what he was comfortable doing, to go for it. He thought it would soften the blow. He also didn't want her to stab him or set his record collection on fire. I couldn't blame him, there. I'd heard through the web of mutual friends that she was just like Crazy Ex#1.
When he got back to Seattle, he followed through, broke up with her, and moved out. Things weren't easy, but he didn't make the same mistake he had in 2007. He chose me, this time. However, things didn't stay peachy for long. It turned out that Crazy Ex#2 had suspected me for a while, and had been facebook stalking me. A few days before Christmas, she was able to track down 'proof' in a comment I'd left on someone's page. She understandably blew her gasket.
She acted like a love torn 13 year old. It was embarrassing. Like those awkward comedies where you laugh because you feel so very bad for the person. For a woman who's almost 30, her behavior was abominable. She logged into Future Husband's social networks, sent out emails to his family and friends, and then changed his passwords so that he couldn't get back in right away to delete everything. She sent me numerous emails. She even sent one to my father on Christmas morning, preaching sisterhood, all the while sending drunken emails to Future Husband about how much she hated me and how I had ruined her life. Me. Not Future Husband for cheating on her. Me.
She harassed me for a few weeks online (she only tormented Future Husband for about a week), and even her mother and two friends got in on it. Months later, when she found out I was going on tour with the band, her nasty messages to me started back up. With only one friend getting in on the action the second time, so I guess that's an improvement. Though, she did threaten me. I'm not sure if she threatened to somehow use the internet to find me and cause me physical harm, or if she meant that she'd find my personal information and like... I don't know. Ruin my credit? Either way, the threat (thankfully) never panned out. Which is fortunate for them, too, because while I am not violence prone, I am vindictive, have a long memory, and have many beefy, violent Italian men that are wrapped around my little finger and willing to do literally anything for me. (Seriously. Back in 2007 when things imploded with FH, I argued with two of my cousins about giving them his home address.) Even now that my family (all of it) is happy with Future Husband, since the engagement I've gotten a few, "We're happy for you, but does he know that if he hurts you again, he's still dead?" It's the Italian in us., what can I say?
Although, on a side note, after months and months of Crazy Ex #2's online harassment, I finally gave in and replied. I never sent a reply to any of her emails (though I wrote a few) and never acknowledged her. I figured ignoring her would probably anger her more, and it kept my own muddled feelings from exploding and making me feel worse. After her last snarky comment (actually on this blog) I gave in to my mischievous side. I had her email address (and home address, and phone number, and work number - because she apparently assumed that I don't know how to use google) and decided to be naughty. After she stalked me and wrote me horrible nasty things for months, after she wrote to my father on Christmas in an effort to ruin our holiday, after she tried her hardest to hurt me (because she assumed I knew absolutely nothing about FH's history, flaws or dark side)... I signed her up for Midget Porn. Yep. You read that correctly. Midget Porn. After her hurtful words and hostile behavior, I threw a rubber chicken. I thought it was hilarious. I had one angry email from her even crazier friend after that, but since then she's left me alone. Never underestimate the power of miniature dominatrices.
What bothers me, to this day, about this situation, is that she considers me the Villain. Not Future Husband. Sure, I was a bad female. I was knowingly the 'other woman.' She even used the word "stole" in one of her tirades. That's always bothered me. It seems like the women who loudly proclaim that they do not want to be objectified are the first to accuse another woman of 'stealing her man.' It's not like I snuck into her backyard one night and took Future Husband because she forgot to lock him up. He's not a bicycle. He's an adult; fully capable of making his own decisions, good and bad.
We (thankfully) haven't heard from her for a few months now, so we're hoping she finally came to her senses, and has recognized that Future Husband treated her horribly. He pretty much used her as an excuse to get away from Crazy Ex #1, and then as a place to live so he wouldn't be homeless when the band moved from Arizona to Seattle. He even told me (before we became a couple) that he knew she was more in love with him, and that he felt bad about it. On the whole, he was truly villainous towards her, and yet she still seems to hold him up on a pedestal. I understand despising me (I would, too), but she's never met me. I don't know Crazy Ex #2 and hold nothing against her, aside from her atrocious behavior towards me concerning this fiasco. She should be angry at Future Husband. She should loathe him. And for some reason, I get the impression she doesn't. She still thinks I stole her bicycle.
Evil Lori will steal your man, and your Penny Farthing. All while wearing a jaunty hat!
In her story, he was Willoughby, and she just can't figure that out. Jane never lets us see Ms. Grey/Mrs. Willoughby. We only hear how Willoughby relates her to Elinor. So who knows how accurate that portrait was, given his past history of self preservation? So if you're still cyber stalking me, Crazyhead- forget Willoughby. Go find yourself your Colonel Brandon.
(On a side note, it seems I'm painting a really horrible picture of Future Husband and I. I guess I'm just trying to clear the air, and my conscience. I'm not perfect, neither is he. He's the Hero in my love story because he's perfect for me. Not because he's Clark Kent. We've both done bad things in our social lives and our love lives, but who hasn't? I'm just willing to share mine.)
Crazy Ex #2 has been intermittently on my mind since we went public with our engagement. I don't think I'll hear from her ever again, but I wouldn't be surprised, either, if there was another little flip out when she finds out that we're getting married and I'm not pregnant. Maybe the new batch of angry messages will come in November, after the wedding. Who knows? Let's hope, for everyone's sake, that she realized what a Douchey McDouchebag Future Husband was to her. That he was a villain in her story, not an anti-hero. Let's hope that she's come to the mature realization that harassing me (It's actually legal harassment - I looked it up. I could press charges if I wanted to.) isn't going to make her feel better, or help her move on.
And how do I do it, you ask? How do I sleep at night being a Villainess? After being instrumental in the heart break of two different women? Well, there are three things that keep me from feeling guilty for more than a few seconds;
1- Future Husband knew me before he know either of them, and in his own 2007 words, fell in love with me the night he met me. It's almost like they were the 'other women.' I was the original.
2- I was only an instrument. My favorite analogy; if you get stabbed by someone, you don't get angry at the knife.
3- Completely good heroes are boring. ;-)
Sunday, August 21, 2011
**WARNING!** Serious Lori ramblings lay ahead. In fact, you will see the darker side of Lori in the following paragraphs. Not 'Making Cartoons in MS Paint' Lori, but 'Sitting in the Dark and being Unhealthily Introspective' Lori. You have yet to see this on this blog. Proceed with Caution!
Okay, I'll soften the blow with a cartoon.
Warning #2!! - I wrote this blog months and months ago, but just never posted it. Which is a pity, because I dearly love the above cartoon. I've decided, in the interest of getting back in the habit of blogging, to post this. A pretty sizable contributing factor to my lack of posting lately has been that I feel I can't really say what I want to say. Self censoring, in a way. Mostly because I've been afraid of offending people, should they happen across my little corner of cyberspace. Recently a few things have happened that have made me stop caring whether or not I offend someone by telling everyone the Emporor's naked. So I decided, before I start venting my frustrations by showing off everyone else's dirty laundry, I would expose a little of my own.
It probably doesn't come as any surprise to you that I enjoy writing fiction, as well as over exposed diary entries. I mean... blogs. So I've been mulling over the idea of Heroes and Villains. And in the good stories, there are no differences in their motivations. Each character believes they are doing what is right. The Villain doesn't know they are the antagonist, or at least, have not set out to be the bad guy. It seems that in the best stories, the Hero and Villain don't even know they're the protagonist and antagonist, they just are.
I've had the word 'fairytale' thrown at me as an insult by both friend and foe, and I fully admit that my coping mechanism is storytelling. I put things into a linear storyline so it's easier for me to swallow. I know perfectly well that life doesn't always happen that way. People don't even behave in a linear fashion, usually. Many factors motivate people, not a sequence of events. Literature, Life and Fairytales alike begin and end in medias res. Life is told in chapters. I've been translating my written world way of thinking into real life, and I've realized that we are all both Hero and Villain. Even the people I love most - me, my family and friends, Future Husband - we have all been both.
Okay, maybe two cartoons.
Lately, I've been thinking a lot about Crazy Ex #1 and Crazy Ex #2. It's well known among Future Husband's friends and family that he has terrible taste in women. The joke is that he's just very lucky that I have strange taste in men, and we ended up together.
(Seriously, when I met his parents for the first time at Christmas 2010 I could tell they were uneasy. Even in March when we stayed with them for two weeks, it seemed like they were a little reserved, just waiting for me to take a sudden detour into Crazytown. It took them a while to realize I wasn't going to go kookoo bananas anytime soon.)
Future Husband and I met before he'd even met Crazy Ex #1. Which is how I've been able to justify being a terrible female by allowing him to cheat on her with me, back in 2007. Things didn't turn out very well for me then, which I suppose is exactly what I deserved. In the beginning I made the mistake of trying to become friends with Crazy Ex #1, so when everything went to hell in a hand basket, she not only had to deal with her boyfriend being unfaithful, but someone she thought was a friend betraying her. That is what I feel awful about. I never should have tried to be friendly with her. After everything exploded spectacularly (I won't tell the story here, as it's the subject of an entire novel I'm writing), Future Husband had a lot of back peddling and butt kissing to do. Their relationship only lasted another year, which delighted me - he lost forever with me for one more year with a crazy girl (or so we thought). In that year, he got her name tattooed inside a heart on his arm. It's also a common man's name, so it's kinda funny. We humorously took care of that in Denver. But he also made the mistake of entering into a Domestic Partnership with her. We've been working to dissolve that, and we're almost done, but that's why she's been on my mind lately.
Thinking of Crazy Ex #1 has made me feel something I thought I never would, especially where she is concerned. She is a spectacular waste of space and, in general, a lousy human - nothing to contribute to mankind on an intellectual, creative or humanitarian basis - but that doesn't mean she deserved to be treated the way I treated her. That doesn't raise her on the human bean scale at all, but it does seem to lower me. I'm disappointed in myself for behaving so poorly towards her, and not doing myself justice. I purposely manipulated her, used her, and thoroughly despised her during the entire duration of our 'friendship.' I felt territorial over Future Husband. He knew me first, and yet she had somehow wiggled in line in front of me. She's a pretty loud, 'out there' kind of personality. While I was flirting subtly with young FH, she was bold and socially aggressive. Of course, now I know that FH was just as unsure of me returning his feelings as I was of his. So it's understandable why a 21 year old boy would go for the girl that made her feelings readily available and easy to read. I can't blame him for that. I can't blame her, either.
A long time ago I made a joke to Future Husband about Crazy Ex #1, and he said, "Well, we know how that turned out. You won."
It ruffled my feathers a bit, because I always considered her to be the competitive one. (Towards the end of the craziness in 2007, she kept lightening her hair, and flat out told me she wanted it to be the same color as mine.) I realized something when he said that; I hadn't cared about winning where she was concerned, I'd cared about being right. I've always been one of those stubborn kids that has a hard time admitting they're wrong, and on the same note, backing off when I'm right. To me, Crazy Ex #1 and Future Husband just didn't make sense together. They were incompatible. We made sense. We fit; we were right. They weren't. That's why I was territorial. Why I was uncharacteristically competitive, manipulative and mean.
Now, with Crazy Ex #1 on my mind while Future Husband and I work on getting rid of her paper trail, I am prepared to do something I rarely do. Crazy Ex #1 is unintelligent, uncaring, spiteful, competitive and manipulative. And I lowered myself to her level.
So if you ever come across my little corner of the blogosphere, Crazyhead, on that long walk I want you to take off a short pier... know that I'm sorry for the way I treated you. I was genuinely terrible to you, and I should not have been. Your inferiority to me did not give me the right to behave badly.
I was wrong. I'm sorry.
As far as Crazy Ex #1 is concerned, when the credits roll on her life story, I'll be billed as a Villain, and justly so. I'm the Hero of my own story, and she's simply a plot point. But I was a terrible person towards her, and she has every right to feel that. If she's capable of human emotion (I have my doubts.)
Maybe it's the time and the distance between the shit storm that was 2007, and now; maybe it's just that I'm older and a little wiser, but I feel more forgiving towards Crazy Ex #1's behavior towards me. Granted, just because I was horrible, doesn't mean she was Pollyanna, she's bar fight kind of crazy. Once she realized I had feelings for Future Husband she was just as manipulative and mean. Now I can see why, though. How horrible to realize that someone you thought was your friend was actually using you just to be closer to your boyfriend. Major suckage. And honestly, I probably would have acted the same. But when the manure did hit the oscillating air dispersal device, I got mad at Future Husband. In fact, I was mad for years. Sure, I wasn't quiet about recognizing what an awful person Crazy Ex #1 was, but I didn't write blogs about how angry I was at her. Because I wasn't. I didn't turn into one of those ridiculous Springer-esque kind of girls that gets mad at the girl. I got mad at FH for using me, and treating me horribly. Like I should have.
Crazy Ex #2, however, can't say the same about her behavior....
Okay, I'll soften the blow with a cartoon.
Warning #2!! - I wrote this blog months and months ago, but just never posted it. Which is a pity, because I dearly love the above cartoon. I've decided, in the interest of getting back in the habit of blogging, to post this. A pretty sizable contributing factor to my lack of posting lately has been that I feel I can't really say what I want to say. Self censoring, in a way. Mostly because I've been afraid of offending people, should they happen across my little corner of cyberspace. Recently a few things have happened that have made me stop caring whether or not I offend someone by telling everyone the Emporor's naked. So I decided, before I start venting my frustrations by showing off everyone else's dirty laundry, I would expose a little of my own.
It probably doesn't come as any surprise to you that I enjoy writing fiction, as well as over exposed diary entries. I mean... blogs. So I've been mulling over the idea of Heroes and Villains. And in the good stories, there are no differences in their motivations. Each character believes they are doing what is right. The Villain doesn't know they are the antagonist, or at least, have not set out to be the bad guy. It seems that in the best stories, the Hero and Villain don't even know they're the protagonist and antagonist, they just are.
I've had the word 'fairytale' thrown at me as an insult by both friend and foe, and I fully admit that my coping mechanism is storytelling. I put things into a linear storyline so it's easier for me to swallow. I know perfectly well that life doesn't always happen that way. People don't even behave in a linear fashion, usually. Many factors motivate people, not a sequence of events. Literature, Life and Fairytales alike begin and end in medias res. Life is told in chapters. I've been translating my written world way of thinking into real life, and I've realized that we are all both Hero and Villain. Even the people I love most - me, my family and friends, Future Husband - we have all been both.
Okay, maybe two cartoons.
The Tale of Crazy Ex #1
---
---
Lately, I've been thinking a lot about Crazy Ex #1 and Crazy Ex #2. It's well known among Future Husband's friends and family that he has terrible taste in women. The joke is that he's just very lucky that I have strange taste in men, and we ended up together.
(Seriously, when I met his parents for the first time at Christmas 2010 I could tell they were uneasy. Even in March when we stayed with them for two weeks, it seemed like they were a little reserved, just waiting for me to take a sudden detour into Crazytown. It took them a while to realize I wasn't going to go kookoo bananas anytime soon.)
Future Husband and I met before he'd even met Crazy Ex #1. Which is how I've been able to justify being a terrible female by allowing him to cheat on her with me, back in 2007. Things didn't turn out very well for me then, which I suppose is exactly what I deserved. In the beginning I made the mistake of trying to become friends with Crazy Ex #1, so when everything went to hell in a hand basket, she not only had to deal with her boyfriend being unfaithful, but someone she thought was a friend betraying her. That is what I feel awful about. I never should have tried to be friendly with her. After everything exploded spectacularly (I won't tell the story here, as it's the subject of an entire novel I'm writing), Future Husband had a lot of back peddling and butt kissing to do. Their relationship only lasted another year, which delighted me - he lost forever with me for one more year with a crazy girl (or so we thought). In that year, he got her name tattooed inside a heart on his arm. It's also a common man's name, so it's kinda funny. We humorously took care of that in Denver. But he also made the mistake of entering into a Domestic Partnership with her. We've been working to dissolve that, and we're almost done, but that's why she's been on my mind lately.
Thinking of Crazy Ex #1 has made me feel something I thought I never would, especially where she is concerned. She is a spectacular waste of space and, in general, a lousy human - nothing to contribute to mankind on an intellectual, creative or humanitarian basis - but that doesn't mean she deserved to be treated the way I treated her. That doesn't raise her on the human bean scale at all, but it does seem to lower me. I'm disappointed in myself for behaving so poorly towards her, and not doing myself justice. I purposely manipulated her, used her, and thoroughly despised her during the entire duration of our 'friendship.' I felt territorial over Future Husband. He knew me first, and yet she had somehow wiggled in line in front of me. She's a pretty loud, 'out there' kind of personality. While I was flirting subtly with young FH, she was bold and socially aggressive. Of course, now I know that FH was just as unsure of me returning his feelings as I was of his. So it's understandable why a 21 year old boy would go for the girl that made her feelings readily available and easy to read. I can't blame him for that. I can't blame her, either.
A long time ago I made a joke to Future Husband about Crazy Ex #1, and he said, "Well, we know how that turned out. You won."
It ruffled my feathers a bit, because I always considered her to be the competitive one. (Towards the end of the craziness in 2007, she kept lightening her hair, and flat out told me she wanted it to be the same color as mine.) I realized something when he said that; I hadn't cared about winning where she was concerned, I'd cared about being right. I've always been one of those stubborn kids that has a hard time admitting they're wrong, and on the same note, backing off when I'm right. To me, Crazy Ex #1 and Future Husband just didn't make sense together. They were incompatible. We made sense. We fit; we were right. They weren't. That's why I was territorial. Why I was uncharacteristically competitive, manipulative and mean.
Now, with Crazy Ex #1 on my mind while Future Husband and I work on getting rid of her paper trail, I am prepared to do something I rarely do. Crazy Ex #1 is unintelligent, uncaring, spiteful, competitive and manipulative. And I lowered myself to her level.
So if you ever come across my little corner of the blogosphere, Crazyhead, on that long walk I want you to take off a short pier... know that I'm sorry for the way I treated you. I was genuinely terrible to you, and I should not have been. Your inferiority to me did not give me the right to behave badly.
I was wrong. I'm sorry.
As far as Crazy Ex #1 is concerned, when the credits roll on her life story, I'll be billed as a Villain, and justly so. I'm the Hero of my own story, and she's simply a plot point. But I was a terrible person towards her, and she has every right to feel that. If she's capable of human emotion (I have my doubts.)
Maybe it's the time and the distance between the shit storm that was 2007, and now; maybe it's just that I'm older and a little wiser, but I feel more forgiving towards Crazy Ex #1's behavior towards me. Granted, just because I was horrible, doesn't mean she was Pollyanna, she's bar fight kind of crazy. Once she realized I had feelings for Future Husband she was just as manipulative and mean. Now I can see why, though. How horrible to realize that someone you thought was your friend was actually using you just to be closer to your boyfriend. Major suckage. And honestly, I probably would have acted the same. But when the manure did hit the oscillating air dispersal device, I got mad at Future Husband. In fact, I was mad for years. Sure, I wasn't quiet about recognizing what an awful person Crazy Ex #1 was, but I didn't write blogs about how angry I was at her. Because I wasn't. I didn't turn into one of those ridiculous Springer-esque kind of girls that gets mad at the girl. I got mad at FH for using me, and treating me horribly. Like I should have.
Crazy Ex #2, however, can't say the same about her behavior....
...to be continued.
Friday, August 19, 2011
It's been ages since I posted, I do realize this (two months and two weeks, to be a little less vague.)
I could give you a long list of excuses, but instead I will just eventually tell you the crazy stories from my crazy summer. Most of them involve working two jobs with conflicting sleep schedules, and being in a ridiculous girly funk because my other half was miles and miles away. We are eight and a half months through the year, and Future Husband and I spent four of those months apart.
We did, however, just reunite after two weeks apart, and a lot of emotionally burdensome things happened in those two weeks.
In happier news, The GBF (Gay Best Friend) is moving to Seattle in two weeks. YAY!!! This is the GBF. We love him like a brother. He's always smiling, always laughing, always making the world a more pleasant place for everyone around him. Also, he is the mutual friend that FH and I met through. Hooray!
I could give you a long list of excuses, but instead I will just eventually tell you the crazy stories from my crazy summer. Most of them involve working two jobs with conflicting sleep schedules, and being in a ridiculous girly funk because my other half was miles and miles away. We are eight and a half months through the year, and Future Husband and I spent four of those months apart.
We did, however, just reunite after two weeks apart, and a lot of emotionally burdensome things happened in those two weeks.
In happier news, The GBF (Gay Best Friend) is moving to Seattle in two weeks. YAY!!! This is the GBF. We love him like a brother. He's always smiling, always laughing, always making the world a more pleasant place for everyone around him. Also, he is the mutual friend that FH and I met through. Hooray!
Also, he's the first Blogger Stick Figure to have ears. Huh.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
I know, I know, it's been over a month since I've posted. Believe me, I would love to be keeping you all updated, in the most comical way possible, on how miserable being a Tour Widow is.
But a lot happened this April. A LOT.
I'll keep my list of excuses short, but give it to you nonetheless:
1-My grandmother took a turn for the worst. She's been in and out of facilities since January, but at the end of March she was moved to Hospice. The first weekend of April, I flew down to AZ to visit her one last time. She improved during and after my visit and was moved out of Hospice. I got a call Thursday night, that she's been moved back again.
2-I'm working two jobs. Which, while Future Husband is here, isn't so bad. But with him gone, I feel like he took half my brain with him. I'm miserable, lonely, and all I want to do is sleep. But when I crawl into bed alone, all I can think about is how much I miss him, and that keeps me awake.
3-We're moving. We've been looking for an apartment since February, but it's ridiculously difficult for many reasons. What little free time I have between work and trying to sleep has been sucked up by the fruitless search. (Oh, I have such tales to tell.) We finially found a place yesterday, right as we were starting to get desperate.
4-Our Roommate got picked up by Bounty Hunters. No joke. I wasn't able to post on my blog all about my roommate drama, because she was always online, always reading my blog, always commenting on my facebook. Now that she's in jail, I can say all the things I've been wanting to say. You, dear readers, will get quite a lot to read on this subject.
But that will be at a later date. I have to finish packing up the crappy Roomie's stuff, find her pets new homes, finish packing up my stuff, move it all into our new home (by myself), and somehow still find the time for two jobs and sleep. And maybe flying to AZ for a funeral.
Wish me luck.
But a lot happened this April. A LOT.
I'll keep my list of excuses short, but give it to you nonetheless:
1-My grandmother took a turn for the worst. She's been in and out of facilities since January, but at the end of March she was moved to Hospice. The first weekend of April, I flew down to AZ to visit her one last time. She improved during and after my visit and was moved out of Hospice. I got a call Thursday night, that she's been moved back again.
2-I'm working two jobs. Which, while Future Husband is here, isn't so bad. But with him gone, I feel like he took half my brain with him. I'm miserable, lonely, and all I want to do is sleep. But when I crawl into bed alone, all I can think about is how much I miss him, and that keeps me awake.
3-We're moving. We've been looking for an apartment since February, but it's ridiculously difficult for many reasons. What little free time I have between work and trying to sleep has been sucked up by the fruitless search. (Oh, I have such tales to tell.) We finially found a place yesterday, right as we were starting to get desperate.
4-Our Roommate got picked up by Bounty Hunters. No joke. I wasn't able to post on my blog all about my roommate drama, because she was always online, always reading my blog, always commenting on my facebook. Now that she's in jail, I can say all the things I've been wanting to say. You, dear readers, will get quite a lot to read on this subject.
But that will be at a later date. I have to finish packing up the crappy Roomie's stuff, find her pets new homes, finish packing up my stuff, move it all into our new home (by myself), and somehow still find the time for two jobs and sleep. And maybe flying to AZ for a funeral.
Wish me luck.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Firstly, let me say that Future Husband hates the expression 'Tour Widow.' Probably because he takes it literally. Which is probably because I keep warning him to drive safe, not be too tired, or drunk, or let either G or D be incapacitated. Not to make me a widow before I can actually be one.
But, I mean, c'mon. How much would it suck to have your fiance die right before the wedding? You're losing your husband, but there are no legal benefits or responsibilities. So you're powerless in a time of personal crisis. Then add on to it the fact that there's some sort of social stigma. Like, "Oh, your boyfriend died 3 months ago? Why aren't you dating again?" compared to, "Oh, your husband died 3 months ago? I'm so sorry. How are you feeling?"
Still, though. I like the phrase 'Tour Widow' and I've seen other bloggers in my situation use it.
And my situation is this; there wasn't room for me in the van for their short Seattle to Austin migration. (Seriously, the Seattle music scene is a ghost town right now. Everyone's flying south by southwest for the Spring.) They're sharing a van and equipment with another band. It's a smart choice, both economically and for their career. This band is a little bit bigger and well connected, and was able to get them into some good SXSW shows.
So when the tour started last weekend, I followed them down to Oregon in my little Hyundai, named Francine. Future Husband and I stayed in cheap motels and did our best to enjoy the last few days of each others company. Unfortunately, with the work situation, the driving and the two shows, we got maybe 10 hours sleep between Wednesday and Sunday, total.
We parted ways in Central Oregon on Sunday morning. I did my best not to cry, and he kissed me tenderly, and called me 'Wife' with a wicked little smile. He climbed into the bigger van and started towards Lake Tahoe, and I got back into Francine and started back to Seattle.
When I finally arrived back at our house, I crashed for nearly 14 hours. It was lovely. Except that it made me wake up 5 hours before the start of my first job. So I decided that I should use this abundant energy to my advantage, before my brain realized just how far away Future Husband was.
I cleaned our room, picking up bits of trash that had accumulated over the last two weeks. Sorted the laundry, and got all of the dirties picked up off the floor. I even managed to decorate a little bit, putting up one of the good pictures from our Engagement Photo session in January. I drank half a pot of coffee, and wore real clothes and listened to music while I cleaned, like a normal person. (My usual cleaning routine is pajama pants and a Jane Austen movie on in the background.) After cleaning I ran to the bank, the thrift store and grabbed a quick lunch out before going to work. I was a whirlwind of productivity.
Day 1: The rare but productive Lorinado.
But after nannying, getting ready for my night time job, and a long, frustrating night, I was exhausted. Add to it the fact that this new night time job I have is for the same company that Future Husband works for, and that he trained me, and it's a strange emotional roller coaster. Whenever I had a question about what I should do, I couldn't just go to him and ask. I sat alone at lunch. And while I got to talk to him briefly during the break, it just wasn't quite the same. So when I got out of work at 8am, feeling tired and lonely, getting lost was the last thing I needed. I turned the wrong direction out of the parking lot in the fog, and ended up two miles away before I realized my mistake. I was able to eventually turn around and find my way back and get on the right track home, but it was insanely frustrating. And it delayed me enough that I was stuck in horrific morning rush hour traffic. What should have been a 35-40 minute drive, turned into a 90 minute one. A few minutes in, right after I had gotten on the right freeway, some silly, mopey, lovesick song started blaring out of my iPod, and it started the waterworks.
So there I sat, stuck in foggy, bumper-to-bumper traffic, thinking of the cute way Future Husband walks with his hands in his pockets and the quirky, non-sequitur things he'll say to make me laugh. Even though it wasn't the longest we had gone without seeing each other since we've lived together (which was 3.5 days in July, when I flew down to AZ for a wedding), I knew that it was going to be a lot longer. So I felt the full brunt of missing him, because I was too tired to think rationally and stave it off.
Day 2: Sad, in so many ways.
The rest of the week has alternately flown by or dragged on. Every moment he's away feels supernaturally elongated, but sitting here on Saturday, looking back at it, it's like it was over in a flash. I've had similar ups and downs emotionally, but have done my best to let my brain hold the reigns over my heart.
We'll see how the next two weeks feel.
But, I mean, c'mon. How much would it suck to have your fiance die right before the wedding? You're losing your husband, but there are no legal benefits or responsibilities. So you're powerless in a time of personal crisis. Then add on to it the fact that there's some sort of social stigma. Like, "Oh, your boyfriend died 3 months ago? Why aren't you dating again?" compared to, "Oh, your husband died 3 months ago? I'm so sorry. How are you feeling?"
Still, though. I like the phrase 'Tour Widow' and I've seen other bloggers in my situation use it.
And my situation is this; there wasn't room for me in the van for their short Seattle to Austin migration. (Seriously, the Seattle music scene is a ghost town right now. Everyone's flying south by southwest for the Spring.) They're sharing a van and equipment with another band. It's a smart choice, both economically and for their career. This band is a little bit bigger and well connected, and was able to get them into some good SXSW shows.
So when the tour started last weekend, I followed them down to Oregon in my little Hyundai, named Francine. Future Husband and I stayed in cheap motels and did our best to enjoy the last few days of each others company. Unfortunately, with the work situation, the driving and the two shows, we got maybe 10 hours sleep between Wednesday and Sunday, total.
We parted ways in Central Oregon on Sunday morning. I did my best not to cry, and he kissed me tenderly, and called me 'Wife' with a wicked little smile. He climbed into the bigger van and started towards Lake Tahoe, and I got back into Francine and started back to Seattle.
When I finally arrived back at our house, I crashed for nearly 14 hours. It was lovely. Except that it made me wake up 5 hours before the start of my first job. So I decided that I should use this abundant energy to my advantage, before my brain realized just how far away Future Husband was.
I cleaned our room, picking up bits of trash that had accumulated over the last two weeks. Sorted the laundry, and got all of the dirties picked up off the floor. I even managed to decorate a little bit, putting up one of the good pictures from our Engagement Photo session in January. I drank half a pot of coffee, and wore real clothes and listened to music while I cleaned, like a normal person. (My usual cleaning routine is pajama pants and a Jane Austen movie on in the background.) After cleaning I ran to the bank, the thrift store and grabbed a quick lunch out before going to work. I was a whirlwind of productivity.
Day 1: The rare but productive Lorinado.But after nannying, getting ready for my night time job, and a long, frustrating night, I was exhausted. Add to it the fact that this new night time job I have is for the same company that Future Husband works for, and that he trained me, and it's a strange emotional roller coaster. Whenever I had a question about what I should do, I couldn't just go to him and ask. I sat alone at lunch. And while I got to talk to him briefly during the break, it just wasn't quite the same. So when I got out of work at 8am, feeling tired and lonely, getting lost was the last thing I needed. I turned the wrong direction out of the parking lot in the fog, and ended up two miles away before I realized my mistake. I was able to eventually turn around and find my way back and get on the right track home, but it was insanely frustrating. And it delayed me enough that I was stuck in horrific morning rush hour traffic. What should have been a 35-40 minute drive, turned into a 90 minute one. A few minutes in, right after I had gotten on the right freeway, some silly, mopey, lovesick song started blaring out of my iPod, and it started the waterworks.
So there I sat, stuck in foggy, bumper-to-bumper traffic, thinking of the cute way Future Husband walks with his hands in his pockets and the quirky, non-sequitur things he'll say to make me laugh. Even though it wasn't the longest we had gone without seeing each other since we've lived together (which was 3.5 days in July, when I flew down to AZ for a wedding), I knew that it was going to be a lot longer. So I felt the full brunt of missing him, because I was too tired to think rationally and stave it off.
Day 2: Sad, in so many ways.The rest of the week has alternately flown by or dragged on. Every moment he's away feels supernaturally elongated, but sitting here on Saturday, looking back at it, it's like it was over in a flash. I've had similar ups and downs emotionally, but have done my best to let my brain hold the reigns over my heart.
We'll see how the next two weeks feel.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
The terrible combination of being ridiculously sick and away from internet access has kept me away from my blog. Sorry! (Believe me, I’m sure I enjoyed it far less than you did.)
Day 6
Tuesday morning came, and I woke feeling worse than I did Monday. This was not boding well for me. We hung out at our friend’s house with her and all three kids (everyone but dad had stayed home) until it was absolutely time to leave for Reno. Future Husband took the first half of the drive, and as we were about the leave Lassen Forest, I took over.
We made good time, considering how often us sickies stopped for coffee, and therefore, bathrooms. We pulled into the club in Reno and unloaded pretty soon after. The good friend we usually stay with in Reno is between housing situations (which I’ve found can be a problem with the type of people who take home an entire band from a bar), so we couldn’t stay with him. He was trying to find a friend that would let us crash, but we decided to just load up on coffee and start the 16 hour drive to Colorado.
The guys played pretty well, and we sold some merch. Which is good, considering there were only six people besides the people that worked there and me. In fact, a pair of guys who barely spoke English drove up from Carson City to see them. The show ended prematurely, however, when D broke the head on his snare drum.
We hung out with our friend for only a little while, and hit the road at midnight-ish. We stopped at a creepy little truck stop about 30 miles east of Reno for sandwiches, chips and soda. D started the night drive, while the rest of us climbed in the back to try and sleep.
Day 7, or The No Good, Terrible, Very Bad Day
Neither Future Husband nor I slept much on the drive, as both of our colds were keeping us up. Mine turned into a terrible sounding cough and a tremendously sore throat, and his was sinus pressure so bad, driving through the mountains and changing altitude was pushing it around and giving him a awful headache.
When we rolled into a gas station outside Salt Lake City (D was a coffee drinking and driving machine), we both had maybe three disjointed hours of sleep. I climbed out to use the bathroom and discovered that I had done something I’d managed to avoid not doing in the last eleven years. I ruined my favorite pair of jeans. Did I mention that in addition to being sick, it was my special Lady Time? Add to that the sleeplessness and the throat so sore and swollen that I could barely talk or swallow my own saliva, and you have a very grumpy Lori. So I climbed into the very back bench, put on my favorite comfy pants, got under a sleeping bag, and read about Ted Bundy. Strange, I know, but that’s what made me happy right then. After a little while, I was able to grab a few more hours of sleep. I woke up in Cheyenne, where Future Husband bought me a Frosty at the truck stop Wendy’s and I took over the 60 mile drive into Fort Collins.
We got to this friend’s house about 5 o’clock, and proceeded to sit like sick little lumps on her couch until we fell asleep about midnight. With the exception of a Walmart run to buy a gallon of orange juice.
Day 8
We had all day to kill before we had to drive to the venue, which was about five minutes from the house. The guys decided they wanted Pho (which if you don’t know, is a delicious Vietnamese beef and noodle soup and you should totally seek some out) and I figured a big bowl of hot broth could only benefit me. We loaded up the five of us in the van, and took off on our soupy adventure. Everyone had a runny nose by the time we left, either because the hot broth loosened everything, or because there was so much added Sriracha. Or both.
After our Pho adventure, we went back to the house and watched a lot of Logo before we went to the show. Like, a lot. That channel is fabulous.
By the time we got to the show, the little bit of good the pho had done me was wearing off. I felt miserable the entire time, and my ears had been aching since the afternoon. My throat was swelling up again, and the only available table to do merch at was right by the door, so I was shivering for a good portion of the night. Future Husband lent me his hoodie for a while, and I draped it over my legs.
The guys sounded great, and it was a good show, even though it was peppered with tiny mistakes. They were all sick, so it was to be expected, but they had fun, so the crowd had fun. Everyone won. We sold a lot of merch, and made a lot off the door, so we have a nice little gas fund now. The guys were feeling well enough to enjoy their three free pitchers of beer. I was not, but did partake in the free pizza. After eating, I felt better. A terrible predicament for someone with a sore throat; eat, and you’ll feel better, but eating is a torturous experience you have to force yourself to do.
After the show and the free pizza and beer, I loaded up the tipsies and the drunkies and drove them all back to the friend’s house. I was hoping since everyone was sick, and since she had dealt with a terrible stomach bug only a few days previously, everyone would want to crash. I was wrong.
More friends trickled in after we got back, and they all complained (very loudly and drunkenly) that there was no beer or liquor in the house. Until one of the roommates came out and reminded everyone that he had work at 8:30. Luckily for me, the party moved to the back room and the hot tub outside, so I stayed in the living room, right by the quiet roommate’s door. At 4 o’clock, I decided I couldn’t put it off anymore, and made up the sleeping bags on the floor, just as Future Husband came in from the hot tub. He dried off and changed into his comfy pants, and climbed into bag next to me with his book. I fell asleep after only two coughing fits. It was quite an improvement.
Day 9
I woke up feeling much better. I still had a snot encrusted face, but my throat felt so improved that it brightened my mood. After a trip to the bathroom to chip away the flaky sick on my face, I helped myself to a big glass of orange juice, and started shooting zombies on my computer. It was, after all, part of my prescription from Future Husband only a few days before.
We all took our time getting ready, lazily watching TV, taking long, hot showers, and running off to nearby establishments for food. G took D on a ‘mandate’ (and only complained once that he didn’t put out). FH and I ran over to grab a new headlight for the Ogre so he wouldn’t be a Cyclops anymore. (This is the second time we’ve done this.
We hit the road about 5 o’clock, so as to avoid as much rush hour as possible. It didn’t work that well in Fort Collins, but we missed almost all of Denver’s, so it was worth it. When we got to Colorado Springs, G and D headed into the club, while Future Husband and I walked next door to Dutch Brothers. MUCH preferred to Starbucks, but we probably can’t lounge around in a Dutch Bros. all day getting free refills and wi-fi. Oh, well.
The show was a pretty good one, though not as packed as it usually is. One of the friend bands (Friend Band- n. - a band made up of or including a friend or friends, that the guys usually play the show with.) was playing at the opening of a new art gallery in town, so a lot of the crowd that is usually at our show, was over there. The boys still got more free pitchers that are supposed to be allotted, we sold some merch, and were paid well off the bar. So it was still pretty good for a Friday night.
The show’s promoter offered to let us crash on his floor, saving us a drive up to Denver to stay with my other GBF. And to top the night off, we pulled through the only burrito joint not within 100 miles of the border that’s decent. Oh, carne asada, how I’ve missed you.
When we got to the Promoter’s apartment we made up our sleeping bags and watched ‘Bad Taste’, a completely ridiculous movie. Future Husband loves it because it’s so bad it’s good, and G was disturbed by how funny we found the campy, schlocky gore.
In spite of feeling better for most of the day (and my sore throat ever fading) I had a pretty nasty coughing fit during the movie, and right before I fell asleep. Thankfully, it doesn’t feel like it’s migrated south to my chest (which would fulfill my annual upper respiratory infection requirement), but has stayed pretty much in my throat. Silver lining, right?
Friday, July 16, 2010
In order to understand how a relatively intelligent girl (like myself) could be so ridiculously stupid, there are two things you need to know before proceeding.
1-I love to cook.
2-I hate spicy things.
So when I set about making 30 jalapeno poppers for a BBQ at our new place, I had no idea what I was doing. I bought fresh jalapenos, washed them, set the cream cheese out on the counter to soften, and got to deseeding the peppers. I cut out the middle seedy parts, and sliced them in half. About a third of the way through stuffing the halves with my cream cheese mixture, I felt a burning on my ring finger. I thought maybe I'd just had a paper cut I didn't know about. A la lemon juice paper cut detection.
About ten more poppers down the road, my thumb started to burn as well. I finished putting the cream cheese in the peppers, but paused before wrapping them in bacon to wash my hands. I figured I should get the oil out of the invisible little cuts I had by washing my hands. In hindsight, this was my first mistake.
Within twenty minutes, the heat was spreading to my fingertips and intensifying. I realized something was very wrong. I assumed my allergy to bell peppers might be a factor in my sensitivity to the jalapenos. I googled 'jalapeno burns' and found only other people asking if it was possible to get burned from the oil in the peppers. I tried washing my hands a few more times, finding temporary relief in the cool water.
After another twenty minutes, I realized that it was only going to get worse as time passed. Now all five fingers on my left hand hurt, as well as most of my palm, and the fingertips on my right hand had just started to warm unpleasantly. I grabbed a cold beer from the fridge, and held it in my left hand while I googled again with my right hand. This time 'home remedy jalapeno burn', and came back with pages and pages of results.
It seemed that most people recommended baking soda paste, while some recommended soaking your afflicted areas in vinegar or milk or yogurt. I tried vinegar first, with no relief. I washed my hands again, then tried the baking soda paste. It relieved the burning a little while it was in the paste, but taking it out of the bowl only brought the pain right back. I didn't let it dry into a thicker paste, as it felt like it only trapped the heat in my skin and intensified it.
The catch-22 of this situation is that in order to try some new remedy, I had to wash my hands, which only made the burning worse ten minutes later. I unfortunately lost my appetite (which was terrible, because everything Boyfriend and the new Roomie were cooking smelled amazing), but still forced myself to have a brat, so I could take some pain medication. I took five Advil liqui-gels, with two beers, which shows you how much I was hurting. Two hours in, it felt like I had put my hands on the stove.
There were other things I began to try. Dawn soap: nope. Sugar scrub: nope. Oil absorbing clay facial mask: nope. Soaking in milk: nope. Thicker baking soda paste: nope. I found a bit of relief from hand sanitizer, just enough to finish reading the home remedy search results. I read stories of people that had accidentally touched their eyes or nose, and all I could think was how grateful I was that I hadn't done these things. I would have lost the last little bit of composure that remained and been a whimpering lump on the floor. I would have looked like this;
Finally I stumbled across someone who said the nurse at the hospital she went to for her burns rubbed her hands in hydrogen peroxide, and followed it up with hydro-cortisone cream. A few other people swore by rubbing alcohol. Unfortunately, of the three, I only had hydrogen peroxide. By this point I was so nauseated from the pain (the Advil wasn't touching it) that Boyfriend was starting to notice that this was actually a problem. (That high pain tolerance has always made it difficult for loved ones to realize how badly I'm injured. Like the time I cut off the tip of my thumb, but mom didn't realize she needed to take me to the ER for twenty minutes.) He'd seen me trying different solutions, but I'd been so quiet about it all, and he'd been so preoccupied with manning the grill, that he didn't realize it was causing me actual pain. He took one look at my face, and asked if there was anything he could do. It'd been almost four hours at this point, and I'd already looked up hundreds of comments, and tried most of them. I decided right then I was going to walk to the Walgreen's on the corner and buy myself a damn bottle of rubbing alcohol. Before I left, I gave in and took one more Advil, and one of the Darvocets I had left over from the Kidney Stone incident in April.
On a side note; Poor Boyfriend! Both times I've been 'ill' since we got together, he's been unable to do anything to make me feel better. All he can really offer is comfort, which I appreciate, but I know he wishes he could do more. He got a stomach bug on tour, and it drove me crazy that all I could do was rub his back or hold his hair or offer him Gatorade. Eventually I'll get the Flu (or, knowing me, Bronchitis or Pneumonia) and then he can make me soup and cover me in blankets and bring me hot tea with lemon. You know you've got it bad for someone when getting sick is romanticized. Jeez...
But back to the story... Before I took off for the pharmacy, I grabbed my bottle of hydrogen peroxide, poured a little bit into my cupped palm, and rubbed it all over both hands. Instantly, I felt better. With my hands still damp (and doing that annoying, half itchy, half painful peroxide fizz thing) I held them in front of the fan in the front room. Sweet, sweet relief. I waited, sure it would be just as momentary as the other solutions had been. This one, however, gave me about ten minutes of relief. Just enough time for me to get down to Walgreen's, find the rubbing alcohol and purchase it. The burning was just beginning to return when I tore open the bottle outside the automatic door. I poured a little into my palm, and rubbed it around. Amazing.
I made it all the way home without having to use it again. After five minutes, however, it was coming back. It was greatly lessened, however. So begun the 90 minutes of alternating between peroxide and alcohol, all the while blowing on them or holding them in front of a fan. By this point, Boyfriend and I had been up for almost 24 hours. All that was keeping me awake was the pain, because god knows the chemical cocktail I concocted for myself was designed to take down a barn animal. After the peroxide had made my skin stingy and patchy and white (still preferable to being engulfed by invisible flames) I switched to simply soaking my poor hands in rubbing alcohol.
Finally, after six hours, my hands were cool enough that I could sleep. I had to have Boyfriend help me undress and get into pj's, because my poor little hands were bright pink, with little red sores on the fingers of my left hand. They were completely useless.
I woke about six hours later, when I rolled over in my sleep and put my hand on Boyfriend's bare chest. It felt like he was on fire. While my hands felt fine while they were held useless in front of me, if I touched anything, especially warm things like Boyfriend or my own body, it burned. Still! I was starving, since all I'd had to eat the day before was one damn brat, I decided I deserved a treat. After all I'd been through the day before, it only seemed fitting to reward myself for coming out sane and sans Urgent Care trip.
The weirdest part of the aftermath? My fingernails. The beds of my fingernails were all tender. Each one felt as though I'd smashed the tip with a poorly aimed hammer or a slammed car door. I didn't realize how often I reach over and scratch Boyfriend's back, or how often your fingernails are of use (buttons, zippers, opening anything), until I couldn't do anything with them. The skin on my hands (particularly the left) looked thin and shiny. They also felt ridiculously soft. I don't really want to repeat the chemical peel I gave myself for it, though. My skin looked and felt better after a two days. My fingernails, however, took four. And the moral of the story? Gloves. Gloves, gloves, gloves.
1-I love to cook.
2-I hate spicy things.
Dangerously delicious? Or deliciously dangerous?
So when I set about making 30 jalapeno poppers for a BBQ at our new place, I had no idea what I was doing. I bought fresh jalapenos, washed them, set the cream cheese out on the counter to soften, and got to deseeding the peppers. I cut out the middle seedy parts, and sliced them in half. About a third of the way through stuffing the halves with my cream cheese mixture, I felt a burning on my ring finger. I thought maybe I'd just had a paper cut I didn't know about. A la lemon juice paper cut detection.
Pictured: Not the preferred method for discovering wounds
About ten more poppers down the road, my thumb started to burn as well. I finished putting the cream cheese in the peppers, but paused before wrapping them in bacon to wash my hands. I figured I should get the oil out of the invisible little cuts I had by washing my hands. In hindsight, this was my first mistake.
Within twenty minutes, the heat was spreading to my fingertips and intensifying. I realized something was very wrong. I assumed my allergy to bell peppers might be a factor in my sensitivity to the jalapenos. I googled 'jalapeno burns' and found only other people asking if it was possible to get burned from the oil in the peppers. I tried washing my hands a few more times, finding temporary relief in the cool water.
After another twenty minutes, I realized that it was only going to get worse as time passed. Now all five fingers on my left hand hurt, as well as most of my palm, and the fingertips on my right hand had just started to warm unpleasantly. I grabbed a cold beer from the fridge, and held it in my left hand while I googled again with my right hand. This time 'home remedy jalapeno burn', and came back with pages and pages of results.
It seemed that most people recommended baking soda paste, while some recommended soaking your afflicted areas in vinegar or milk or yogurt. I tried vinegar first, with no relief. I washed my hands again, then tried the baking soda paste. It relieved the burning a little while it was in the paste, but taking it out of the bowl only brought the pain right back. I didn't let it dry into a thicker paste, as it felt like it only trapped the heat in my skin and intensified it.
The catch-22 of this situation is that in order to try some new remedy, I had to wash my hands, which only made the burning worse ten minutes later. I unfortunately lost my appetite (which was terrible, because everything Boyfriend and the new Roomie were cooking smelled amazing), but still forced myself to have a brat, so I could take some pain medication. I took five Advil liqui-gels, with two beers, which shows you how much I was hurting. Two hours in, it felt like I had put my hands on the stove.
This is what I felt like.
There were other things I began to try. Dawn soap: nope. Sugar scrub: nope. Oil absorbing clay facial mask: nope. Soaking in milk: nope. Thicker baking soda paste: nope. I found a bit of relief from hand sanitizer, just enough to finish reading the home remedy search results. I read stories of people that had accidentally touched their eyes or nose, and all I could think was how grateful I was that I hadn't done these things. I would have lost the last little bit of composure that remained and been a whimpering lump on the floor. I would have looked like this;
Finally I stumbled across someone who said the nurse at the hospital she went to for her burns rubbed her hands in hydrogen peroxide, and followed it up with hydro-cortisone cream. A few other people swore by rubbing alcohol. Unfortunately, of the three, I only had hydrogen peroxide. By this point I was so nauseated from the pain (the Advil wasn't touching it) that Boyfriend was starting to notice that this was actually a problem. (That high pain tolerance has always made it difficult for loved ones to realize how badly I'm injured. Like the time I cut off the tip of my thumb, but mom didn't realize she needed to take me to the ER for twenty minutes.) He'd seen me trying different solutions, but I'd been so quiet about it all, and he'd been so preoccupied with manning the grill, that he didn't realize it was causing me actual pain. He took one look at my face, and asked if there was anything he could do. It'd been almost four hours at this point, and I'd already looked up hundreds of comments, and tried most of them. I decided right then I was going to walk to the Walgreen's on the corner and buy myself a damn bottle of rubbing alcohol. Before I left, I gave in and took one more Advil, and one of the Darvocets I had left over from the Kidney Stone incident in April.
On a side note; Poor Boyfriend! Both times I've been 'ill' since we got together, he's been unable to do anything to make me feel better. All he can really offer is comfort, which I appreciate, but I know he wishes he could do more. He got a stomach bug on tour, and it drove me crazy that all I could do was rub his back or hold his hair or offer him Gatorade. Eventually I'll get the Flu (or, knowing me, Bronchitis or Pneumonia) and then he can make me soup and cover me in blankets and bring me hot tea with lemon. You know you've got it bad for someone when getting sick is romanticized. Jeez...
But back to the story... Before I took off for the pharmacy, I grabbed my bottle of hydrogen peroxide, poured a little bit into my cupped palm, and rubbed it all over both hands. Instantly, I felt better. With my hands still damp (and doing that annoying, half itchy, half painful peroxide fizz thing) I held them in front of the fan in the front room. Sweet, sweet relief. I waited, sure it would be just as momentary as the other solutions had been. This one, however, gave me about ten minutes of relief. Just enough time for me to get down to Walgreen's, find the rubbing alcohol and purchase it. The burning was just beginning to return when I tore open the bottle outside the automatic door. I poured a little into my palm, and rubbed it around. Amazing.
I made it all the way home without having to use it again. After five minutes, however, it was coming back. It was greatly lessened, however. So begun the 90 minutes of alternating between peroxide and alcohol, all the while blowing on them or holding them in front of a fan. By this point, Boyfriend and I had been up for almost 24 hours. All that was keeping me awake was the pain, because god knows the chemical cocktail I concocted for myself was designed to take down a barn animal. After the peroxide had made my skin stingy and patchy and white (still preferable to being engulfed by invisible flames) I switched to simply soaking my poor hands in rubbing alcohol.
Finally, after six hours, my hands were cool enough that I could sleep. I had to have Boyfriend help me undress and get into pj's, because my poor little hands were bright pink, with little red sores on the fingers of my left hand. They were completely useless.
I woke about six hours later, when I rolled over in my sleep and put my hand on Boyfriend's bare chest. It felt like he was on fire. While my hands felt fine while they were held useless in front of me, if I touched anything, especially warm things like Boyfriend or my own body, it burned. Still! I was starving, since all I'd had to eat the day before was one damn brat, I decided I deserved a treat. After all I'd been through the day before, it only seemed fitting to reward myself for coming out sane and sans Urgent Care trip.
So I had ice cream for breakfast. Even then, it was a small consolation.
The weirdest part of the aftermath? My fingernails. The beds of my fingernails were all tender. Each one felt as though I'd smashed the tip with a poorly aimed hammer or a slammed car door. I didn't realize how often I reach over and scratch Boyfriend's back, or how often your fingernails are of use (buttons, zippers, opening anything), until I couldn't do anything with them. The skin on my hands (particularly the left) looked thin and shiny. They also felt ridiculously soft. I don't really want to repeat the chemical peel I gave myself for it, though. My skin looked and felt better after a two days. My fingernails, however, took four. And the moral of the story? Gloves. Gloves, gloves, gloves.
Monday, April 19, 2010
Of course, the day after I post a blog bragging about how nice my skin looks now, I wake up with the biggest zit I've had this decade.
And since this is 2010, that means I have the biggest zit of the millinium.
I had one about a year ago that was so bad I started carrying concealer in my purse (I'm basically a dude with boobs, so this is a big thing.)
This one is worse.
Basically, I woke up with this on my chin;
And since this is 2010, that means I have the biggest zit of the millinium.
I had one about a year ago that was so bad I started carrying concealer in my purse (I'm basically a dude with boobs, so this is a big thing.)
This one is worse.
Basically, I woke up with this on my chin;
Sunday, April 18, 2010
I promise I will eventually write a blog about how much fun tour is. It actually is a blast living in a van with three guys. A stinky, flatulent, perpetually hungry and thirsty, stupidity laced blast.
This blog is not about how much fun it is.
Sorry.
We left South Dakota and headed for Northwood, Iowa. A tiny little town on the Minnesota/Iowa border. Boyfriend and I were trying to nap in the back, since we had to leave right after the show and do a good portion of the driving to Missouri. Of course, being in close proximity and generally lacking privacy, we did more High School necking and less sleeping than we should have.
The guys all agreed that it was the tiniest town they'd ever played. It was white picket fences and a downtown that seemed to have been built between 1910 and 1950. And then everything had stayed that way. The police station was on the corner, and the plaque on the side of the building proudly proclaimed that it was an historical building, built in 1909.
The bar they were about to play in had a similar plaque, this one displaying the year 1912. The year before my parents' house was built. Needless to say, it wasn't as well taken care of. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Perhaps I should let the pictures do the talking.
When we parked behind the club/bar, the boys headed in while I stayed outside in the Ogre and put on my shoes. I was also secretly trimming my toenails while they weren't looking. Every few cities I sneak away or let them go in somewhere without me, and I stay in the van and do something girly, just to remind myself that it's not all about poop jokes and making fun of inferior musicians. Sometimes I'll tweeze my eyebrows, or put on makeup. Just as I was exiting the van from my personal girly time, the guys were coming out the back door.
G was the first to address me, "Ready for the scariest load in ever?"
This scary ass staircase was metal, but not anchored to the adjacent brick wall, except at the foot and top of it. So as you were walking up, it swayed away from the wall. There were two posts underneath the upper landing, each with places for four bolts. Each support only had two. The entire thing was also slatted.
Looking back on these pictures, it seems that the photos didn't quite capture the sheer terror of being on this red monster. Not only did it wobble left and right while you were walking up it, some of the steps were squishy. I don't know what physics regulated the universe that this Scarecase was built in, but in my universe, metal is not fucking squishy.
I took this video for two reasons 1.)When/If the Scarecase collapsed, the guys would want to laugh at it later on youtube and 2.)I would want proof for the lawsuit so we could win money. Pizza and hotel rooms every night on tour. Definitely worth the broken bones, right?
As you can see, no such unfortunate event transpired. Nevertheless, the night was still full of building quirks that made me and Boyfriend raise our eyebrows. I think it's best to let the pictures do the talking, here.
The building felt like it was going to collapse around us at any moment, but then there were the people...
I'd like to take a moment and say to my readers (however few your numbers) that I mean no offense if you're from Iowa. Maybe not all of Iowa is like this. In fact, later that night we stopped at a Village Inn and had one of the coolest waitresses ever. But this tiny little town seemed perfectly worthy of my ridicule.
The men varied from redneck to mediocre looking frat-boy wannabe. The women, however, are what made my night. I was easily taller than most everyone, but I towered over the women. I'm 5'11", which is kinda tall, but I was in flats, and I'm pretty sure I was slouching at the beginning of the evening. I stood up straighter, however, when I realized that I was also the prettiest and the thinnest woman in the bar.
Those of you that know me in person know why this is a triumphant, happy moment, and not a pretentious or mean spirited one. I've recently become a size 14 after spending most of the last ten years as an 18 or 20 (thanks, living in a van!), and my skin's relatively cleaned up (even though I live in a van), and my hair's been looking rather awesome since I got it done right before I left Tulsa. In summary, I feel pretty. But looking at the short, round women in Iowa with their non-descript or pug faces made me feel like a supermodel. Granted, there were only four other women in there at the time. There were about twenty guys, though, and when I walked downstairs they all turned and looked at me. It was glorious. Like a scene out of a romantic comedy. Three of the women looked me over, but then decided quickly to ignore me. The one that looked like a middle aged poodle with wire rimmed glasses was the only one that had the nerve to shoot me the stink eye for a while. I think they realized faster than the local men that I was there with one of the long haired musicians, and therefore off the market.
But I was floating for the rest of the evening.
The band, however, was not so lucky. The sound guy had no idea what he was doing, and the crowd stayed mostly downstairs. Not much merch was sold, and some drunken idiot tripped and spilled their rum and coke (at least that's what it smelled like) in the merch box and soaked most of the CDs. The club paid them less than a hundred dollars, which wasn't terrible for a small town, but it didn't help the mood. Needless to say, we split as quickly as possible and started the seven hour trek to Jefferson City, MO, stopping along the way to pick up a 30-pack for the boys and for some pancakes after the beer worked its magic.
It was a waste of a night for the band, but it sure did make me feel better.
This blog is not about how much fun it is.
Sorry.
We left South Dakota and headed for Northwood, Iowa. A tiny little town on the Minnesota/Iowa border. Boyfriend and I were trying to nap in the back, since we had to leave right after the show and do a good portion of the driving to Missouri. Of course, being in close proximity and generally lacking privacy, we did more High School necking and less sleeping than we should have.
The guys all agreed that it was the tiniest town they'd ever played. It was white picket fences and a downtown that seemed to have been built between 1910 and 1950. And then everything had stayed that way. The police station was on the corner, and the plaque on the side of the building proudly proclaimed that it was an historical building, built in 1909.
The bar they were about to play in had a similar plaque, this one displaying the year 1912. The year before my parents' house was built. Needless to say, it wasn't as well taken care of. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Perhaps I should let the pictures do the talking.
Northtinywood, Iowa. It looked like a model train layout. (That hairy fellow, by the way, is my special friend.)
When we parked behind the club/bar, the boys headed in while I stayed outside in the Ogre and put on my shoes. I was also secretly trimming my toenails while they weren't looking. Every few cities I sneak away or let them go in somewhere without me, and I stay in the van and do something girly, just to remind myself that it's not all about poop jokes and making fun of inferior musicians. Sometimes I'll tweeze my eyebrows, or put on makeup. Just as I was exiting the van from my personal girly time, the guys were coming out the back door.
G was the first to address me, "Ready for the scariest load in ever?"
This flimsy, rickety, visibly crooked beast was how the club wanted the guys to load their equipment in.
This scary ass staircase was metal, but not anchored to the adjacent brick wall, except at the foot and top of it. So as you were walking up, it swayed away from the wall. There were two posts underneath the upper landing, each with places for four bolts. Each support only had two. The entire thing was also slatted.
So not only did you feel the space between the slats under your shoes, you could see exactly how far you were about to fall.
Looking back on these pictures, it seems that the photos didn't quite capture the sheer terror of being on this red monster. Not only did it wobble left and right while you were walking up it, some of the steps were squishy. I don't know what physics regulated the universe that this Scarecase was built in, but in my universe, metal is not fucking squishy.
I know this is just holding the padding, but at first it totally looks like part of the staircase from hell is being held together with duct tape.
I took this video for two reasons 1.)When/If the Scarecase collapsed, the guys would want to laugh at it later on youtube and 2.)I would want proof for the lawsuit so we could win money. Pizza and hotel rooms every night on tour. Definitely worth the broken bones, right?
As you can see, no such unfortunate event transpired. Nevertheless, the night was still full of building quirks that made me and Boyfriend raise our eyebrows. I think it's best to let the pictures do the talking, here.
Did I forget to mention that the Stairway of Doom had electric wires hanging over the landing?
Yes, that is a board nailed to the floor. It's covering the hole that goes down into the first story.
I'm pretty sure the women's upstairs restroom doubled as a storage closet. Also of note; urine on the floor. How does a girl miss the toilet by that much?
Is that the baby changing table?
The greasy, dirty kitchen towels that cover the window in the "ladie's" room. The door knob was also not attached, just kind of sitting in the hole...
The "locking" door on the downstairs bathroom.
The building felt like it was going to collapse around us at any moment, but then there were the people...
I'd like to take a moment and say to my readers (however few your numbers) that I mean no offense if you're from Iowa. Maybe not all of Iowa is like this. In fact, later that night we stopped at a Village Inn and had one of the coolest waitresses ever. But this tiny little town seemed perfectly worthy of my ridicule.
The men varied from redneck to mediocre looking frat-boy wannabe. The women, however, are what made my night. I was easily taller than most everyone, but I towered over the women. I'm 5'11", which is kinda tall, but I was in flats, and I'm pretty sure I was slouching at the beginning of the evening. I stood up straighter, however, when I realized that I was also the prettiest and the thinnest woman in the bar.
Those of you that know me in person know why this is a triumphant, happy moment, and not a pretentious or mean spirited one. I've recently become a size 14 after spending most of the last ten years as an 18 or 20 (thanks, living in a van!), and my skin's relatively cleaned up (even though I live in a van), and my hair's been looking rather awesome since I got it done right before I left Tulsa. In summary, I feel pretty. But looking at the short, round women in Iowa with their non-descript or pug faces made me feel like a supermodel. Granted, there were only four other women in there at the time. There were about twenty guys, though, and when I walked downstairs they all turned and looked at me. It was glorious. Like a scene out of a romantic comedy. Three of the women looked me over, but then decided quickly to ignore me. The one that looked like a middle aged poodle with wire rimmed glasses was the only one that had the nerve to shoot me the stink eye for a while. I think they realized faster than the local men that I was there with one of the long haired musicians, and therefore off the market.
But I was floating for the rest of the evening.
The band, however, was not so lucky. The sound guy had no idea what he was doing, and the crowd stayed mostly downstairs. Not much merch was sold, and some drunken idiot tripped and spilled their rum and coke (at least that's what it smelled like) in the merch box and soaked most of the CDs. The club paid them less than a hundred dollars, which wasn't terrible for a small town, but it didn't help the mood. Needless to say, we split as quickly as possible and started the seven hour trek to Jefferson City, MO, stopping along the way to pick up a 30-pack for the boys and for some pancakes after the beer worked its magic.
It was a waste of a night for the band, but it sure did make me feel better.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
I've been working on this one for a few days. You may need to schedule bathroom breaks for this one, folks.
Touring is a strange thing. Personally, I love it. But I realize that there's a risk involved. Some of the social situations encountered on tour can turn out awesome, or terrible, with no middle ground. I knew this going into everything, based on all of the zany stories I'd heard from Boyfriend about tours past. There were people scattered all over the country that I'd heard Boyfriend, G and D talk about; people they were hoping would come to the show, bands they were looking forward to playing with, new friends they were anxious to hang out with. I've also heard the horror stories about people that they crossed paths with, or worse, accidentally gone home with. I don't mean that in a sexual way at all. (Those are entirely different stories, which I won't be posting. Ever.) When you live in a van, if you meet someone cool at a bar, and they offer to let you sleep on their floor or use their shower, you almost always say 'Yes!' So far, we've only declined one offer of hospitality because we had too far to drive for the next show and had to get started immediately after the we left that night.
I guess it is a lot like going home with someone in a sexual way. I've never had a one night stand, but imagine it might be a lot like this. Usually, we go home with someone, sleep over, and leave the next morning. We thank them profusely, and if things were swell, we exchange contact info. If things were super swell, we exchange contact info and stay with them again on the next tour. So far we've had a few repeated sleepovers, and met a few really cool people that we hope we can stay with again on the next tour.
But this blog is not about them. Those cool people have drafts of blogs being written about them. No, this entry is about my first encounter with a crazy person. The kind of one night stand that turns terribly, terribly sour. The kind that wakes you up in the morning talking about what your kids will look like and wondering when you'll move your things in. The kind that has a disturbing collection in their closet, like severed kitten heads or jars full of their fingernail clippings.
The show in Indianapolis was not a great one. It was the first show after spending three days down time with friends in Columbus. We were all excited to get back on the road and out of the Cigarette Depot (as Boyfriend and I nicknamed it.) The show, however, didn't really pay off. It was another example of the economy really beating the crap out of the South and Midwest. People just aren't coming out to shows as much as they used to. We did meet a few awesome people, however. Unfortunately, none of them offered us their floor as sleeping space.
There was one guy there who did offer, however. Earlier in the evening, when everyone was sober, he had interviewed G for the magazine he runs. Seems cool, right? Later in the evening, after everything was packed up, and the guys had milked the bartender for all the free beer and whiskey shots they could, this guy was one of the few left in the bar with us. He asked us where we were sleeping that night, and when we replied that we would sleep in the van, probably in a rest area, he offered to let us stay with him. He said he lived within walking distance of the club. He bought a bottle of whiskey and a bottle of vodka, and promised the guys and me sleeping space and food in the morning. I offered to cook breakfast and do the dishes. I figure if someone is providing room and board, literally the very least I can do is the work involved.
So Band Nanny went to work. I gathered up the boys, made sure everyone had their cell phone and wallet, and we clambered into the van, with the Creeper sitting up front so he could give us directions. In the bar he had given me a strange vibe, but I just chalked it up to the fact that he seemed like a pretentious music snob and was inebriated. Still, when G agreed to stay over at his place, I was a bit disappointed. Which should have been a red flag for me. That I would rather sleep in the van in a rest stop, than stay on this guy's floor. Only a minute or two into the drive, however, I knew something was way off. He and the three drunk bandmates began discussing hip hop. The guys like it ironically. They like it because it gives them an opportunity to make fun of rappers. This guy likes likes it. He loves it. In fact, he's a promoter, and deals mostly with hip hop and rap acts. Let me clarify; the fact that a middle aged white guy likes rap is not what set off my creepy vibe. It's the fact that when any of my three guys said they liked it, he would counter with something that sounded like he'd taken offense to whatever they'd just said, but was actually agreeing with them. He would repeat what they had said to him, but in such a way that it was both contradictory and condescending.
Before we'd even gotten out of the van, he was already reminding us what a favor he was doing for us. We would all thank him profusely, and reassure him that we knew he was under no obligation. This he seemed to not acknowledge at all.
His apartment was in a super nice gated community. As we were walking in, he turned to Boyfriend and I and said, "I've gathered that the two of you are a couple, right?" We confirmed it, and he said, "Well, I never sleep in my bed. I only sleep there when I have a lady, so I don't like sleeping there when I don't have a lady over." We thanked him, but grabbed our sleeping bags anyway, and said that he didn't have to give us his bed.
When we got into the apartment, G set up my sleeping bag (since the Creeper kept insisting that Boyfriend and I sleep in his bed, since he never did anyway) and plugged in his cell phone. He announced that he was going out for one more cigarette, but then said as an aside that he hated being alone outside while he smoked. So I left Boyfriend and D inside with the Creeper and went outside with G while he smoked his cigarette. (Although, half the reason I accompanied him was because he fell down while we were just standing at the door, waiting for the Creeper to get the it unlocked, and I didn't want G to pass out in the bushes. He looks dainty compared to Boyfriend and D, but he's still taller than me.) We talked again about the things he's worried about in his life. He confides in me whenever he's drunk. It's kind of endearing. He's all badass, tattoo boy while he's sober, but when he drinks he worries about things and wants to talk them over.
We went back inside after he finished smoking. He climbed into the sleeping bag and I went into the kitchen to find Boyfriend, D and the Creeper discussing music. All drinking whiskey and coke. They were all swaying already and their speech was slurred. Boyfriend's least of all, it seemed. After D finished his drink, he went in and collapsed on the Creeper's bed (the bedroom was right next to the kitchen.) I looked in and saw him, face down in his classic D-is-drunk-and-it's-time-for-sleep-now pose. I also noticed that the bed didn't look like a bed that was rarely slept in. It looked like it was slept in every night. Yeah, there was also a pillow and blanket on the couch. Honestly, it looked like a normal Bachelor's apartment. Sometimes he fell asleep on the couch in front of the TV, and kept a blanket there for when that happened. This raised a few more red flags for me. Nevertheless, the promise of bed sleep (I'd spent two of the last three nights sleeping on a cement floor in a basement in Ohio) overtook the alarms going off in my head, so I announced to the Creeper and Boyfriend that D had fallen into the bed, doing my best to make it sound like an 'Aw, shucks/Oh, well' kind of thing. This is one of the few girly ploys I use to get what I want. Usually I'm straight forward, I swear. This had the desired result of making them go move D from the bed. I set up the other sleeping bag for him but he stumbled into the living room before I could get it completely set up, and so he collapsed on the couch, where I presumed the Creeper would sleep.
The three of us still awake (of course, Boyfriend and I are always the last ones up, always have been) went back into the kitchen. The boys made themselves another drink, and made one for me as well, which finished off the small bottle of Jim Beam. We stood around in the kitchen talking, and whenever Boyfriend would mention something that the Creeper knew anything about, he would do that contradictory/condescending but agreeing thing. It was getting super annoying, but I stayed polite. Those of you that know me in real life, know how painfully nice I am. In fact, while I worked at the restaurant, one of my coworkers grabbed me by the shoulders, looked me dead in the face and said, "Stop being so fucking nice all the time." Boyfriend, however, was drunk. Not fall down drunk, but to the stage where he's completely over his natural shyness, and feels comfortable using his inebriation as an excuse to say what he normally wouldn't because he can blame it on alcohol. He doesn't really get belligerent or mean, but he loses his painful politeness. It's a trait the two of us really should work on overcoming. We're far too nice to people, and it usually only bites us in the ass.
We left the kitchen and sat down in the living room, D on the couch and G in the sleeping bag. The Creeper showed us a bunch of music on youtube that we hadn't seen before. It was all actually really good stuff. However, the drunker he got the more he mentioned his ex-wife, and how badly she had treated him. He also tried to rap along with the hip hop videos he showed us, but didn't know the words as well as he thought he did. He was also to the slurring stage of drunk, so it was funny.
But as we watched more videos, the creep factor just got dialed up higher and higher. He started being snarky towards me. Whenever I would say something, he would reply with biting sarcasm. Not the funny kind. The kind of sarcasm a High School bully uses. The kind that's completely uncalled for and disdainful. He also kept insisting that Boyfriend and I take his bed. About once every ten minutes. Every other time he urged us to sleep in there, he alluded to us having sex.
They finished their drinks, and the Creeper said they should drink more, but he'd had trouble sitting down in the first place (he'd tried to sit on something, but kept falling off so just sat on the floor instead.) I offered to mix their drinks for them, since I was sober and they were wobbly. They both thanked me. This is a bit mean of me, but I decided to mix the Creeper's drink stronger than I mixed Boyfriend's, because I wanted him to fall asleep already. Needless to say, it didn't work. We stayed up for an extra two and half hours watching youtube videos. Finally, after he made fun of me for yawning periodically, he suggested we go to bed. We asked him again if he was sure about letting us sleep in his bed.
"Yeah, I'll crash in my chair over there," and pointed to an easy chair by the window.
"Really though, we're happy to just have a floor to sleep on. We don't need to take your bed," Boyfriend said.
"No! No! No! Take the bed. And fuck." He then turned his drunken gaze on us. "Seriously. Enjoy the bed. Fuck. I know you want to." Then he jabbed a drunken thumb in my direction, "I know she wants to."
As often as he was degrading and assumptive, you wouldn't think I would have learned to let his crazy bounce off of me. But it didn't. I was offended pretty much every time he said something to me or towards me. It was always mean spirited, and it was always an incorrect assumption. With the one exception being the fact that he guessed I was Irish. That was the only time he was right, and not offensive. Otherwise, he assumed things about my life and personality that he hadn't bothered to actually guess at. Maybe he saw big tits and blonde hair, and the company I keep, and assumed that I was a drug munching whore. That's sure how he treated me, or at least what he inferred. I'd blame it on living in the van with guys (cause I sure am used to people assuming things about me based off the tits and hair), but the Creeper was the first person to do such. Everyone I met in Tennessee correctly assessed my awesomeness. But not Indiacrapolis guy. He didn't bother to observe what I did or said throughout the course of the evening. And the drunker he got, the stranger he was towards me. With Boyfriend he was condescending, but it was plain to see that he liked him the best of the three. He even gave Boyfriend a backhanded compliment, when explaining why their band was not yet successful. 'D is old, and G is arrogant.' He never finished that thought, but I can only guess that by not including Boyfriend in this tiny tirade, that he meant he liked him.
We finally made our escape to the bedroom, and Boyfriend mumbled apologies for being so drunk and keeping me up so late. He took off his boots near the bed, then took his gun from his waistband and put it in one of his boots. I was massively relieved to see it. I readied for bed as well. The door had no lock, so I put an empty cardboard box in front of it. It wasn't big enough to prevent the door from opening, but it was small enough that it would make one hell of a racket should the Creeper open the door. It was almost six already, and I wanted to get some sleep, though I had a sneaking suspicion I wouldn't.
I snuggled up next to Boyfriend and listened as he quickly fell asleep. I also heard our Creepy Host moving around in his living room and kitchen, and still watching videos online. I heard him talking periodically, but I never heard D or G respond to him.
My paranoid brain, soaked in horror movies as a pre-teen, began to imagine the worst. I moved Boyfriend's boots so that I could reach the gun stuffed one just by sitting up and reaching over the side of the bed. Excessive, maybe, but it put my sleep-deprivation induced anxiety slightly at ease.
About an hour later, I heard the Creeper banging around clumsily in the kitchen. I hadn't slept a wink yet, though I had stayed comfortable and warm near Boyfriend's side. A moment later, the Creeper burst through the bedroom door, flinging the little box across the room and into a wall. He slammed his hand against the wall, somehow managing to turn on the light in the process. He looked surprised to see Boyfriend and I in his bed (he looked so drunk he probably would have been surprised to see any of us in his apartment.) I waved at him, partially amused, somewhat frightened, but mostly pissed the fuck off. This guy was so rude, so untrustworthy, so damn creepy that it was starting to piss me off. I'm sure the not sleeping part helped.
With his free hand, he made a dismissive wave gesture back, turned off the light, and slammed the door shut. In his other hand? I kid you not - the pictures of his children he had shown off to us earlier, a Costco box of mini eclairs, and a bottle of BBQ sauce.
Touring is a strange thing. Personally, I love it. But I realize that there's a risk involved. Some of the social situations encountered on tour can turn out awesome, or terrible, with no middle ground. I knew this going into everything, based on all of the zany stories I'd heard from Boyfriend about tours past. There were people scattered all over the country that I'd heard Boyfriend, G and D talk about; people they were hoping would come to the show, bands they were looking forward to playing with, new friends they were anxious to hang out with. I've also heard the horror stories about people that they crossed paths with, or worse, accidentally gone home with. I don't mean that in a sexual way at all. (Those are entirely different stories, which I won't be posting. Ever.) When you live in a van, if you meet someone cool at a bar, and they offer to let you sleep on their floor or use their shower, you almost always say 'Yes!' So far, we've only declined one offer of hospitality because we had too far to drive for the next show and had to get started immediately after the we left that night.
I guess it is a lot like going home with someone in a sexual way. I've never had a one night stand, but imagine it might be a lot like this. Usually, we go home with someone, sleep over, and leave the next morning. We thank them profusely, and if things were swell, we exchange contact info. If things were super swell, we exchange contact info and stay with them again on the next tour. So far we've had a few repeated sleepovers, and met a few really cool people that we hope we can stay with again on the next tour.
But this blog is not about them. Those cool people have drafts of blogs being written about them. No, this entry is about my first encounter with a crazy person. The kind of one night stand that turns terribly, terribly sour. The kind that wakes you up in the morning talking about what your kids will look like and wondering when you'll move your things in. The kind that has a disturbing collection in their closet, like severed kitten heads or jars full of their fingernail clippings.
The show in Indianapolis was not a great one. It was the first show after spending three days down time with friends in Columbus. We were all excited to get back on the road and out of the Cigarette Depot (as Boyfriend and I nicknamed it.) The show, however, didn't really pay off. It was another example of the economy really beating the crap out of the South and Midwest. People just aren't coming out to shows as much as they used to. We did meet a few awesome people, however. Unfortunately, none of them offered us their floor as sleeping space.
There was one guy there who did offer, however. Earlier in the evening, when everyone was sober, he had interviewed G for the magazine he runs. Seems cool, right? Later in the evening, after everything was packed up, and the guys had milked the bartender for all the free beer and whiskey shots they could, this guy was one of the few left in the bar with us. He asked us where we were sleeping that night, and when we replied that we would sleep in the van, probably in a rest area, he offered to let us stay with him. He said he lived within walking distance of the club. He bought a bottle of whiskey and a bottle of vodka, and promised the guys and me sleeping space and food in the morning. I offered to cook breakfast and do the dishes. I figure if someone is providing room and board, literally the very least I can do is the work involved.
So Band Nanny went to work. I gathered up the boys, made sure everyone had their cell phone and wallet, and we clambered into the van, with the Creeper sitting up front so he could give us directions. In the bar he had given me a strange vibe, but I just chalked it up to the fact that he seemed like a pretentious music snob and was inebriated. Still, when G agreed to stay over at his place, I was a bit disappointed. Which should have been a red flag for me. That I would rather sleep in the van in a rest stop, than stay on this guy's floor. Only a minute or two into the drive, however, I knew something was way off. He and the three drunk bandmates began discussing hip hop. The guys like it ironically. They like it because it gives them an opportunity to make fun of rappers. This guy likes likes it. He loves it. In fact, he's a promoter, and deals mostly with hip hop and rap acts. Let me clarify; the fact that a middle aged white guy likes rap is not what set off my creepy vibe. It's the fact that when any of my three guys said they liked it, he would counter with something that sounded like he'd taken offense to whatever they'd just said, but was actually agreeing with them. He would repeat what they had said to him, but in such a way that it was both contradictory and condescending.
Before we'd even gotten out of the van, he was already reminding us what a favor he was doing for us. We would all thank him profusely, and reassure him that we knew he was under no obligation. This he seemed to not acknowledge at all.
His apartment was in a super nice gated community. As we were walking in, he turned to Boyfriend and I and said, "I've gathered that the two of you are a couple, right?" We confirmed it, and he said, "Well, I never sleep in my bed. I only sleep there when I have a lady, so I don't like sleeping there when I don't have a lady over." We thanked him, but grabbed our sleeping bags anyway, and said that he didn't have to give us his bed.
When we got into the apartment, G set up my sleeping bag (since the Creeper kept insisting that Boyfriend and I sleep in his bed, since he never did anyway) and plugged in his cell phone. He announced that he was going out for one more cigarette, but then said as an aside that he hated being alone outside while he smoked. So I left Boyfriend and D inside with the Creeper and went outside with G while he smoked his cigarette. (Although, half the reason I accompanied him was because he fell down while we were just standing at the door, waiting for the Creeper to get the it unlocked, and I didn't want G to pass out in the bushes. He looks dainty compared to Boyfriend and D, but he's still taller than me.) We talked again about the things he's worried about in his life. He confides in me whenever he's drunk. It's kind of endearing. He's all badass, tattoo boy while he's sober, but when he drinks he worries about things and wants to talk them over.
We went back inside after he finished smoking. He climbed into the sleeping bag and I went into the kitchen to find Boyfriend, D and the Creeper discussing music. All drinking whiskey and coke. They were all swaying already and their speech was slurred. Boyfriend's least of all, it seemed. After D finished his drink, he went in and collapsed on the Creeper's bed (the bedroom was right next to the kitchen.) I looked in and saw him, face down in his classic D-is-drunk-and-it's-time-for-sleep-now pose. I also noticed that the bed didn't look like a bed that was rarely slept in. It looked like it was slept in every night. Yeah, there was also a pillow and blanket on the couch. Honestly, it looked like a normal Bachelor's apartment. Sometimes he fell asleep on the couch in front of the TV, and kept a blanket there for when that happened. This raised a few more red flags for me. Nevertheless, the promise of bed sleep (I'd spent two of the last three nights sleeping on a cement floor in a basement in Ohio) overtook the alarms going off in my head, so I announced to the Creeper and Boyfriend that D had fallen into the bed, doing my best to make it sound like an 'Aw, shucks/Oh, well' kind of thing. This is one of the few girly ploys I use to get what I want. Usually I'm straight forward, I swear. This had the desired result of making them go move D from the bed. I set up the other sleeping bag for him but he stumbled into the living room before I could get it completely set up, and so he collapsed on the couch, where I presumed the Creeper would sleep.
The three of us still awake (of course, Boyfriend and I are always the last ones up, always have been) went back into the kitchen. The boys made themselves another drink, and made one for me as well, which finished off the small bottle of Jim Beam. We stood around in the kitchen talking, and whenever Boyfriend would mention something that the Creeper knew anything about, he would do that contradictory/condescending but agreeing thing. It was getting super annoying, but I stayed polite. Those of you that know me in real life, know how painfully nice I am. In fact, while I worked at the restaurant, one of my coworkers grabbed me by the shoulders, looked me dead in the face and said, "Stop being so fucking nice all the time." Boyfriend, however, was drunk. Not fall down drunk, but to the stage where he's completely over his natural shyness, and feels comfortable using his inebriation as an excuse to say what he normally wouldn't because he can blame it on alcohol. He doesn't really get belligerent or mean, but he loses his painful politeness. It's a trait the two of us really should work on overcoming. We're far too nice to people, and it usually only bites us in the ass.
We left the kitchen and sat down in the living room, D on the couch and G in the sleeping bag. The Creeper showed us a bunch of music on youtube that we hadn't seen before. It was all actually really good stuff. However, the drunker he got the more he mentioned his ex-wife, and how badly she had treated him. He also tried to rap along with the hip hop videos he showed us, but didn't know the words as well as he thought he did. He was also to the slurring stage of drunk, so it was funny.
But as we watched more videos, the creep factor just got dialed up higher and higher. He started being snarky towards me. Whenever I would say something, he would reply with biting sarcasm. Not the funny kind. The kind of sarcasm a High School bully uses. The kind that's completely uncalled for and disdainful. He also kept insisting that Boyfriend and I take his bed. About once every ten minutes. Every other time he urged us to sleep in there, he alluded to us having sex.
They finished their drinks, and the Creeper said they should drink more, but he'd had trouble sitting down in the first place (he'd tried to sit on something, but kept falling off so just sat on the floor instead.) I offered to mix their drinks for them, since I was sober and they were wobbly. They both thanked me. This is a bit mean of me, but I decided to mix the Creeper's drink stronger than I mixed Boyfriend's, because I wanted him to fall asleep already. Needless to say, it didn't work. We stayed up for an extra two and half hours watching youtube videos. Finally, after he made fun of me for yawning periodically, he suggested we go to bed. We asked him again if he was sure about letting us sleep in his bed.
"Yeah, I'll crash in my chair over there," and pointed to an easy chair by the window.
"Really though, we're happy to just have a floor to sleep on. We don't need to take your bed," Boyfriend said.
"No! No! No! Take the bed. And fuck." He then turned his drunken gaze on us. "Seriously. Enjoy the bed. Fuck. I know you want to." Then he jabbed a drunken thumb in my direction, "I know she wants to."
As often as he was degrading and assumptive, you wouldn't think I would have learned to let his crazy bounce off of me. But it didn't. I was offended pretty much every time he said something to me or towards me. It was always mean spirited, and it was always an incorrect assumption. With the one exception being the fact that he guessed I was Irish. That was the only time he was right, and not offensive. Otherwise, he assumed things about my life and personality that he hadn't bothered to actually guess at. Maybe he saw big tits and blonde hair, and the company I keep, and assumed that I was a drug munching whore. That's sure how he treated me, or at least what he inferred. I'd blame it on living in the van with guys (cause I sure am used to people assuming things about me based off the tits and hair), but the Creeper was the first person to do such. Everyone I met in Tennessee correctly assessed my awesomeness. But not Indiacrapolis guy. He didn't bother to observe what I did or said throughout the course of the evening. And the drunker he got, the stranger he was towards me. With Boyfriend he was condescending, but it was plain to see that he liked him the best of the three. He even gave Boyfriend a backhanded compliment, when explaining why their band was not yet successful. 'D is old, and G is arrogant.' He never finished that thought, but I can only guess that by not including Boyfriend in this tiny tirade, that he meant he liked him.
We finally made our escape to the bedroom, and Boyfriend mumbled apologies for being so drunk and keeping me up so late. He took off his boots near the bed, then took his gun from his waistband and put it in one of his boots. I was massively relieved to see it. I readied for bed as well. The door had no lock, so I put an empty cardboard box in front of it. It wasn't big enough to prevent the door from opening, but it was small enough that it would make one hell of a racket should the Creeper open the door. It was almost six already, and I wanted to get some sleep, though I had a sneaking suspicion I wouldn't.
I snuggled up next to Boyfriend and listened as he quickly fell asleep. I also heard our Creepy Host moving around in his living room and kitchen, and still watching videos online. I heard him talking periodically, but I never heard D or G respond to him.
My paranoid brain, soaked in horror movies as a pre-teen, began to imagine the worst. I moved Boyfriend's boots so that I could reach the gun stuffed one just by sitting up and reaching over the side of the bed. Excessive, maybe, but it put my sleep-deprivation induced anxiety slightly at ease.
About an hour later, I heard the Creeper banging around clumsily in the kitchen. I hadn't slept a wink yet, though I had stayed comfortable and warm near Boyfriend's side. A moment later, the Creeper burst through the bedroom door, flinging the little box across the room and into a wall. He slammed his hand against the wall, somehow managing to turn on the light in the process. He looked surprised to see Boyfriend and I in his bed (he looked so drunk he probably would have been surprised to see any of us in his apartment.) I waved at him, partially amused, somewhat frightened, but mostly pissed the fuck off. This guy was so rude, so untrustworthy, so damn creepy that it was starting to piss me off. I'm sure the not sleeping part helped.
With his free hand, he made a dismissive wave gesture back, turned off the light, and slammed the door shut. In his other hand? I kid you not - the pictures of his children he had shown off to us earlier, a Costco box of mini eclairs, and a bottle of BBQ sauce.
Did I mention yet that this guy has been to prison at least twice? Once for dealing cocaine, and the other might have been for robbing a Walgreens. I didn't ask for clarification.
I was wide awake now, and listened to him bang around out in the kitchen again. Five minutes later, he came stumbling into the room again, taking off his shoes as he made his way towards the bed. I realized that he was about to get into the bed next to me, so rolled over, nearly onto Boyfriend. The Creeper demanded, "Move over," but I already had. Boyfriend had slept through the box flinging incident earlier, but this woke him. As the Creeper pulled the blanket I had been using off of me and over him he mumbled, "Mmm, toasty."
He was talking to himself the whole time, most of it word salad and completely unintelligible. I wanted to leave right then, but knew I would have a hard time rousing three drunk boys and getting them out of the apartment. Instead, I knew I needed to get Boyfriend out of that bed. The Creeper kept talking to me, and when I sat up to move and tried to wake Boyfriend to a basic stage of coherency, the Creeper looked over and asked me, "Who's over there?" He wasn't surprised at all to see me in his bed, but was confused about a member of the band he'd invited home being there.
He mumbled things at me, and I could tell he intended whatever he said for me, but I couldn't make sense of any of it. Except for when he rolled over and looked at me and said, "You should quit being so bitchy." I wasn't sure if he was talking to me or himself, so I simply said, "Me?" I was surprised. I've never been called a bitch before. I thought taking care of the guys, offering to cook breakfast in the morning, mixing drinks for him when he wanted more but couldn't stand up, complimenting him on his taste in music while he forced us to watch videos, and thanking him profusely for his generosity were the actions of someone that was quite the opposite.
"Yes, you. You were a bitch tonight," he said, rolling back over.
"I'm sorry," I said, doing my best to sound sincere and not let on how ridiculously angry and offended I was.
Once I'd started to move off the bed, he asked me, "Where are you going?"
"We're gonna go sleep in the living room," I said, handing Boyfriend his shirt, while I grabbed the gun stuffed boot first.
"Oh, how very kind of you," he sneered. Actually sneered. Like he wanted to be freaking Lucius Malfoy in the worst way. It pissed me off so much I was shaking. He had been the one that insisted we take his bed, and now he was mad that we were in it. Why couldn't he have been like every other blackout drunk and just fallen asleep on the floor in the living room? As we left the room, he mumbled something about Sarajevo.
As I guided a mostly asleep Boyfriend into the living room, I considered how much effort it would be to get all three of the guys out to the van, and come back in for all of our stuff. It was about 7:30, and there would be enough light outside for me to see. I knew however, that the Creeper was a music promoter, made a living doing so, and might be able to help us. He'd also interviewed G for his magazine, and had all of the guys' info. He'd even facebook friend requested Boyfriend while they were watching youtube videos. I didn't want him to wake and find us gone and A.)Sabotage the guys musically in some way or B.)Get pissed off and fictionalize an account of the guys vandalising or stealing something. Looking back they may have both seemed a bit strange to worry about, but I had also been awake for about twenty hours on only three hours sleep.
Instead of sneaking the guys out, I let Boyfriend sleep with his head on my lap, and I grabbed a book from the coffee table. I didn't hear any more movement from the Creeper's bedroom, so I figured we'd be all right. I kept the special boot nearby, however. Just in case.
At 10:30, G got up and started morning bathroom things, so I decided to grab a little bit of shut eye. About fifteen minutes of it. Suddenly the Creeper was up and in the living room, trying to hustle us all into alertness, so I could cook them breakfast and he could get to work. (Remember, he works from home.)
He seemed sober now, but I knew there was no way he was. Three hours of sleep would not get rid of the entire bottle of vodka I'd discovered he'd drunk after Boyfriend and I went into the bedroom. His condescension resumed, and everything he said to me seemed designed me make me feel stupid. He asked if there was anything he could do to help cook breakfast, and when I replied, "You can start the bacon, if you want." He turned to me with a raised eyebrow and a voice full of indignation, "Oh, I can?"
I've come to conclude that he has a lot of issues with his ex-wife, and either I remind him of her looks wise, which is why all of his reactions towards me were completely mismatched, or that any well spoken, seemingly intelligent woman with a knack for caretaking reminds him of her. Either way, I'm sure he was spewing all of his ex-wife issues all over me, in addition to just being a shitty human being. I keep using the word 'condescending' to describe him, but there's not a more fitting word in existence to use. He very obviously considered himself, his taste in music, his 'career' in music superior to the guys in every respect. It may have been true in some ways, but everyone else I've met in the industry, musician or not, is eager to network, eager to flatter and hopeful that everyone will somehow help them get a leg up. Not this guy. He looked down his nose at the guys, while simultaneously telling them they were amazing musicians and put on a great, captivating live show. Me, however, he consistantly treated like shit. There was nothing I said that he didn't try to turn around on me and either make me feel stupid, or feel like I'd just insulted him. For example, while I cooked breakfast, he insisted on replaying this music video. It was a good video, and I liked, but when he played again it he said to me, "You've had mornings like that. Don't pretend you haven't," in a thoroughly accusing tone.
And the answer is a firm, "No. I haven't. And also; Fuck You."
For those of you that didn't click the link, it's a song and video about a girl that wakes up hungover from a wild night, implying heavy drinking, drug abuse and promiscuous sex. And not just this one night. Common behavior. I was so insulted that he had assumed this about me, that I seriously considered breaking something in his kitchen and blaming it on my clumsiness.
For the record, while I am a drinker, I have only ever blacked out twice in my life, both in strange circumstances but around good friends that I trust. I never have, and never will, allow myself too much to drink when I am not in a safe, trusted environment. I am more often the designated driver than the drunkard. I have never done, and never plan to do, any sort of illegal drug. As I stated earlier, I have never had a one night stand. I remember all of the names of the people I've kissed, let alone those I've fooled around with. I used to think that people assuming I was stupid was the most insulting thing they could do to me, but I've now discovered that assuming I'm an irresponsible, drug munching whore is even more infuriating.
I fed my guys and the Creeper as quickly as I could, so we could get out of there. Even then, he followed us to the van, and asked for a CD and a shirt ($15 worth of merch = food for a week or 1/4 tank of gas) in a way that made it plain he had no intention of being denied. At least he didn't remind us again of how hospitable he had been when he had no obligation to be. He was however, true to form and managed to be condescending as he took the last small shirt, "I'll give his to one of my girlfriends. You want attractive women wearing your shirts. More people will take notice of them."
GAH! At least writing this has gotten it out of my system. I still feel like I need a shower for my brain though. Any suggestions are welcome.
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About Me
- Lori
- Seattle, United States
- During this course of study, you will come to learn much about the strange eating, sleeping and mating habits of the Instrospective Lori under stress. We will observe as she moves halfway across the country to start a life with her own Captain Wentworth, takes a year off of work to pursue a writing career, and incessantly references Jane Austen.