Daddy Issues

I never really liked my dad. He came into the picture when I was 3 or 4 (my step dad actually) and the story I've been told is that I was furious that this strange man was taking my mommy away from me. Apparently one evening I was so angry that he was intruding on me and my mom and monopolizing her attention that I took a shit in his bag. So there. My mom had been abandoned and divorced and had a baby to take care of, and even though he was still married to someone else, I don't think she could resist being rescued.

Growing up I always thought my dad was kind of a tool. He's too gregarious and to anxious to be every one's best friend. I was wary of most of what he said, even his affection for my mom seemed stagy and not genuine. Nothing about him was very genuine, he has money and he's eager to show everyone, and so he tries to have expensive tastes but gives himself away by ordering "Expresso" and abroad he's very much the embarrassing American. He needs constant admiration, he's always trying to tell me and my brother stories about how great he is at his job, not understanding that admiration from his children is not earned the way a promotion is earned. He's not smart, he uses words he thinks sound impressive in ways that indicate he does not know what they mean and yet he looks down on anyone without a graduate degree. He never remembers anything about anyone else, he calls people by the wrong names all the time and is not remotely embarrassed by it, he was never very interested in what I was doing in high school. He'd ask about school but not know what classes I was taking, what play I'd been at rehearsal for for the past 2 months, and everything is a vehicle for him to talk about himself. He's basically Michael Scott.

The only time he was interested in what I was doing was when I was out. That made him furious, and he would yell at my mom until she called me and told me I had to come home immediately. I thought it was all her, and all throughout high school I hated her for not letting me see my friends, sometimes grounding me from play rehearsal or other extracurricular activities for offenses that were never explained to me. I thought she was just a horrible, cruel woman, and I'd come home and cry and my dad would give me a sympathetic look and put all the responsibility on my mom. He never said anything to me, it all came through my mom. He'd later accuse her of not letting him be a father to me.

My mom is smarter than him and it scares him. He left her for his girlfriend from high school who never went to college and never left the area. She is so impressed by his Ph D, the fact that he can take her all over the world (even if it means I have to take out loans for school because money is suddenly a lot tighter...). and in return he's her little bitch, he jumps to answer her calls, which come about 15 times a day, he wears what she tells him too, he asks her before he does anything, he's stopped eating red meat even though he used to love steak, he used to love Bombay Sapphire Martinis and now he drinks fruity girl drinks because she made them from some recipe she cut out of redbook or something. He's become an emasculated little pussy whipped piece of shit.

My point is, I never liked him and I would be perfectly happy never to see him again. It sucks that now I have loans to pay off after I graduate and we're gonna have to sell the house and we can't go on vacation anymore and he can go to Hawaii and Paris with this other woman, but I'm not gonna miss him. My mom will still miss him, even though the man she was in love with doesn't exist anymore, and my brother will miss having a father he sees regularly, but I never liked him, I was never attached to him, so losing him is not painful for me.

When we went to family therapy (which was awesome, by the way, I had a kick ass time) I told the therapist that I didn't want anything to do with my dad, that he was never really a big part of my life and I would be happy not having a dad, but that my only hesitation was that this would most likely mess me up a little when it came to guys. As soon as I said it I tried to take it back, I didn't want to let my dad have the power to influence anything in my life, even if it was just through his absence. The therapist said that would be a problem for me no matter what, and that I was likely to pick guys that were somewhat distant like my dad if I wasn't careful.

That's a stock answer. I think it's somewhat more specialized than that. Actually looking at the boyfriends and quasi-boyfriends I've had, it's clear that I have been picking guys that I don't even like or respect. I find myself describing them as not that smart, insecure, not funny, boring, a little girly, not sexy... I could get close with them and comfortable and tell them I love them too but it made ending it very easy.

So my realization that I really like S terrifies me. I don't just like that he likes me, I'm not just feeling blown up by the attention and admiration, I like him, independent of that. So when he leaves me I won't be able to say I'm better off without him. I will miss him. I've never missed a boy after breaking up with them. I just miss the sex. I don't miss my dad. I just miss the money. It's going to suck really hard when S leaves me.

New York!

We had a lovely time in New York. Went to West Village Friday night, ran around to different bars, flirted with guys and drinking and then going to the bathroom and not coming back. I didn't pay for any drinks, this is awesome. We didn't really meet anyone interesting, and we noticed that we were both changing the way we talked, more "likes" and "you knows" and no big words. I stopped telling people I was a Chemistry major or that I was planning on going to grad school, I just made up random stuff. We started talking to two guys from the Cayman Islands at one lounge and we had some trouble getting away. I don't know why guys think they have to lay it on so thick. After talking for a few minutes, he's asking me what it would take to get me to fly in for the next weekend. I'm not going to pretend that I would do it, and I don't wanna argue about it, stop being such a leech. He says, "Have you ever dated a black guy before?"
"No...."
"Yeah I can tell!'
"What? What do you mean, how can you tell?"
"You're looking at me like I'm crazy!"
"Well thats cause you're saying crazy shit!"

The next night I wanted to go to the East Village. I'd seen all these cool weird bars that I thought it would be fun check out. We ran around to a few bars, but they were all full of little groups of people who didn't want to meet random girls. I can't really blame them. We decided we didn't feel like paying for our drinks so we went to the hotel bar. I felt a little lame for going to a hotel bar but it was really pretty and I sort of liked how hooker-ish it felt to hang out at a hotel bar in a slutty dress getting 35 year old out-of-town guys to spend money on us. While we were there we met some very good looking Federal Agents, in town for the Iran Presdient's visit to the UN. This is a good demographic- sexy, succesful, fun guys who would be married if they weren't too busy rocking the shit out of their jobs. Hmm I know a guy like that...

The next morning my dad came to see us for a little while. He was in Long Island, with his mistress. Yeah. Earlier last week he asked if I would be ok with meeting her. I said no, I wasn't comfortable. He's only recently moved out of the house, and I'm in no hurry to meet the woman who convinced him to adandon his wife and kids. We come down to the lobby and guess who is with him! Great. In spite of all the shots of top-shelf liquor the night before and my disgust at being ambushed like that, I managed not to vom all over her leathery fake-baked face. Instead I focused on the little turquoise box sitting in front of her. I was well behaved and polite and appreciative, even as they talked about how much fun they had picking it out together at the Tiffany's in Long Island. Gross.

Other than that, fantastic weekend.

Anti-Feminist Agenda

Being home means lots of bonding with my mom. She and my dad have just separated, and that's pretty much all we talk about. Sometimes it's fascninating and sometimes I'm so bored I want to die. She is very much of a different generation, and it's not that she's more traditional, it's more that in her attempt to be progressive, she lost what I would consider common sense. Things that should be obvious are somehow groundbreaking.

She tells me, "You know, I read in one of my books" (these fucking books are everywhere, with the most embarassing titles splashed across the front) "...that it is important for men to have a wife that is attractive, and also that they want for other people to think she is attractive." Imagine that. "And also, it's not that they just want sex all the time, which, oh god they do, it's terrible..." (Really? Terrible?) "...but they really want to think that you like having sex with them!"

I try to be nice, this is so hard for her, but sometimes I can't help but stare in disbeleif when she says these things. I said, "Well, yes, I would imagine so. I....I mean, I wouldn't know"

She says, "I bet that for a man, if a woman really loved having sex with him, he'd marry her in an instant. She'd never have to worry about anything because he would never leave her if she really always wanted to have sex with him."

I didn't know what to say. I think I said something along the lines of, "Oh I'm sure that's an oversimplification, I don't know about that." How could she even say that? I guess it's a convenient theory for her. It would be much easier for her to blame her lack of interest in sex than something more fundementally wrong, something she cared about more. I think she considered sex with her husband a form of subjugation, maybe she felt very liberated by not having to have sex with him. I don't know. One time she told me only prostitutes performed oral sex. I thought sex with my husband would be the best part of marriage. I mean, partly for my own gratification (obviously) but also, I just like taking care of a boy, taking the time to give a well-deserved blow job seems like an extension of that, like cooking dinner and listening to his probelms and rubbing his back when he's tired. I know, I know, I'm not a very good feminist. Just don't tell my mom.

Gratuitous All-Nighter

I don't have that much work. Just a paper on reasons adolescents and young adults make bad decisions. I know, right? I didn't pick that to be ironic, it sort of turned into that. The conclusion seems to be that you're going to end up like your parents. I'm sorry. I wish there was something I could do.

I actually used to think my parents were really smart and made good decisions, but watching them do this separating thing, I don't know, at least now I feel like every asinine thing I've done isn't my fault, I was raised by morons.

My dad married this girl out of college, they were engaged for a year or two while he was a grad student and he was teaching undergrad classes and fooling around with his students while she lived at home. He married her and that worked out for a little while and then fell apart.

Then he met my mom. She had recently had me, and my biological dad had left and moved to Japan under circumstances I don't understand. I'm scared to ask; it will only make me feel awful, and if she wanted to tell me she would. My (step)dad is still married to the girl from college and starts to move in on my mom, who is abandoned with a Baby Sarah. I suspect this whole rescue-fable which my mom feels she deserves after the blows she's had and my dad feels he's redeemed for cheating on and then discarding his wife. They get married and drink a lot of wine and have a baby and move back to the east coast.

My dad's ex girlfriend from high school looks him up through one of those ads on the Internet, she'd heard about him winning an award at an alumni event she attended because she still lives a mile away from that high school and never went to college. She's really impressed with his success and his money and all his nouveau riche grandeur (unlike my mom who is actually just as smart as him and will remind him every chance she gets) and she's between husbands or something so she starts sending him flowery emails about being each others' First Loves, how they were Meant To Be.

I'm sure it's not like, her fault. Nobody cheats on their wives if their marriage is going well. Actually, no one would get caught cheating if their marriage is going well. You obviously need to want to get caught. It's really classic, there are lots of books about it and my mom bought them all and leaves them on every end table and coffee table in sight. (we get it, you can read, you're smarter than her) When she first told me about it, she said, "I don't understand...she's not even educated!" Yeah she never corrects him on his interpretation of an NMR spectrum or calls him out for not understanding viscosity measurements as well as she does or explains something to him, he always gets to be smarter.

So now he's addicted to feeling like the intellectually superior benefactor like he was addicted to feeling like the altruistic hero and this time it's not as endearing when he says he can't be reasoned with, that it's true love and no one else understands. I'd like to think I would know better but the research suggests...not so much

Is poor decision making in adolescents influenced by their parents or their peers? I should really work on that paper.

self help?

Had to kill some time with my mom in Barnes and Noble. She lured me to a corner of the store saying she wanted to look at cookbooks, but somehow the rack of Save-Your-Marriage books pulled her in. I ducked out to read some diet books, but they got sort of depressing. (I can't have coffee?!) I told her that, and she said her books were depressing too. "This books says he wants to leave me because I am not attractive enough, this books says anything I do will make it worse, and this one says he decided to leave me years and years ago and has just been biding his time. Here, you should read this." Hands me a book the size of an encyclopedia called, "1,000 Lies Men Tell". I could probably abridge that for her. "Umm I'm gonna go read more about how to be skinny" You know, an ounce of prevention.

being a good daughter

My mom is so much easier to talk to now that she's in therapy all the time. She's really not used to examining her relationships, or any kind of introspection... I swear, we are related. She seems to have never thought about this shit before! What does she think about all day? Productive things?

"At first I thought, why would he want someone like that? but the therapist says that he needs for a woman to be really impressed with him all the time"
"Yes...." No Shit!
"You might know something about this, you take all those psych classes... I'm begining to think he's a narcisist"
"Um, yeah.... I coulda told you that years ago. I could have told you that when I was 10"
"Really? I knew he thought exceedingly highly of himself, but I didn't think it would be a problem for him"
She's not really people-smart, but I didn't think she could have missed all that entirely!

oh, and later... "Apparantly I'm not enough of a fluffer." ...Sorry? A fluffer? "Some people fluff up each other's egos, some people are good at doing that and they also need people to do it for them, they need to be fluffed by their partners" Mom, stop saying fluffer.

The best part is, just for listening to this shit, which I really find fascinating, I get train tickets home and shopping trips as compensation. I'm going straight to hell.