Misadventures & misdemeanors

Act 2, Scene 1: In which we discuss Act 1, Unscene 1.

Our setting is S2's kitchen. It's *early* afternoon, and she is pouring me a glass of wine.

"Where are you going to start this story?" she asks.

With her index finger, I reply. Her *right* index finger.

S2 freezes. Stops midpour. A look that blends skepticism and fear and curiosity appears on her face. "Uh... her *index* finger?"

Yeah. The end of it was stained brown. She is such a heavy smoker that, I kid you not, her finger was stained brown.

S2's look turned to disgust. She extended the bottle toward my glass and said, "You're going to need more of this."

We looked at each other, laughing. Raising our glasses, I toasted, Such as it is.

I had, just before arriving at her home, been on one of those strange forays that happen to single people in this modern age. I met someone on the Internet. I decided to meet her in person for coffee.

It was noon.

Turns out this lady was on about her eighth cup of coffee that day. She had, mercifully, switched to decaf. Her first sentence to me, aside from noting that she'd consumed six cups of coffee before leaving the house this morning, discussed the fact that she had not studied for the oral exam in her German class today "because of all my personal problems."

I'll say at the outset that I knew immediately -- even before shaking her brown finger -- that this was a no-go. But when S2's hubby later asked me why I'd allowed this meeting to last as long as a 50-minute hour, my impulse was to say that I have never been able to turn away from a train wreck and certainly wasn't going to start today. But instead, I added the whole bit about where I think it's rude to carry out an in-your-face rejection move.

Plus, truth be told, I was a little fixated on the brown finger tip. I have never known anyone who smoked enough to turn their finger brown. Her teeth were positively disgusting -- nothing I hadn't seen before -- but the finger was kind of like the Sucker's Trophy, which I won for not paying heed to some of the signs rather evident in the e-mails this woman had been sending me.

Considering the way in which our e-mail exchange *began,* I really ought to have noticed something was amiss. But, as I said, train wrecks and all... I boldy go where others seem to know better.

A couple weeks ago, I was in a pissy mood, and I was reading Craigslist. As I mentioned in a previous blog entry, I have taken now and then to issuing rather nasty missives into the ether, giving totally random people little slices of my thoughts. This particular woman had advertised herself as "Loyal to a fault." And so, because I was feeling pissy and pompous and heaven knows what else, I replied to her add: I'd like to make a suggestion: Don't advertise yourself as "loyal to a fault." That just makes it sound like you're willing to take abuse.

Now, if someone sent such a thing to me, I either would not have responded or would've replied with a bit of my "go fuck yerself"-ness, of which I have in abundance for the most part but rarely deploy because I'm trying to learn to be a "better person."

I thought this woman was in the did-not-respond camp until earlier this week, when I found her reply as I was scanning my spam filter. (Also caught in that spam filter was The Clairvoyant's birthday wish for me, even though I get e-mail from her pretty regularly. The whole *world* is capricious, my friends. Not just some of my teachers. But I digress.) This woman's response was, basically, "Thanks for the advice. I find the CL ads so *demanding* that I decided to go in the opposite direction." And then she made a few comments which caught my interest, so I responded.

And there you have it. Following some curious e-mail exchanges -- in which she engaged in a bit of excessive self-disclosure -- we decided to meet for coffee. With me being a "gay gal trapped in a straight woman's world," as S2 has noted, I have been trying to figure out how to expand my social circle a bit. I wasn't thinking "date," which is why I suggested coffee. And having seen a photo of her online -- which turned out to be an exceptionally flattering photo -- I thought she seemed alright. I mean: Why not?

There have been so many times in my life where I've asked myself, "Why not?" and gone ahead and done something I might otherwise not have done. I would love to tell you, my friends, that my curiosity has been rewarded with really positive, enriching experiences that might someday find their way into one of those obnoxious anthologies, a little "Chicken Soup for the Adventurer's Soul" or somethign of that ilk.

But that's generally not what happens. Instead, I end up with some kind of story of that includes aspects of horror or humiliation. Like how I ended up at the "Casa del Serpiente" out in the Amazon, a place where an Amazonian cultural experience met a carnival midway show met the cast of "Deliverance." Or how, on the same little boat journey on the same day, I ended up dancing with topless, drunken women who were quite a few steps beyond *bored* out of their intoxicated minds and just a tad irritated, perhaps, that I had awakened them from their afternoon nap. (Hey, I didn't want to be there, either! But I had said, Well, why *not*?)

The upside to all of this is that I usually end up with a good story. I tend to appreciate the more humorous aspects of life. (Not that I'm laughing at discussions of traumatic events in class or anything, mind you. That is *not* me who's doing that. ... Is it?) Anyway, there's usually a good story to be had, traumatic or not.

And, although there was considerably more I could share with you -- most of it outrageous and weird and funny -- this one really centered in a brown index finger.

I suppose, if I have one more bit of advice for this odd woman, it would be, Honey, avoiding dairy and eating vegetarian really does not compensate for your caffeine and tobacco habits. In fact, chewing on a little meat now and then -- better yet, gnawing on a bone -- might help you clean a little of the tar and coffee stains off them there teeth. I'm just saying'.

But I'm afraid, given her first response to my random criticisms, that kind of comment might lead her to think we're in a relationship or something.

All things considered, I'd rather spend a night at the Casa del Serpiente.

Now, onto Scene II, Act II.

Our setting is *still* S2's kitchen.

I don't want to say I got *stuck* in S2's kitchen, but when, five hours after my arrival, I was trying to figure out how to make my exit and really developing an appreciation for my habit of watching train wrecks, I thought, This experience *here* is all about bitch-slapping my ovaries. I was quite convinced that the universe was conspiring to make me excrutiatingly aware of what having children might like.

Now, let me say at the outset that I have long been of the opinion that, when it comes to mothering, S2 is DA BOMB! I hate to use such a cliche and dated term, but she is freaking *awesome,* and I admire the hell out of how she interacts with her children.

On this day, however, she had two extra kids under her wing. So, in this scene, we have the following cast: S2's own children, including Little Pea, age 3 and a half, and Getting to Yes, age 6; as well as the children of one of S2's friends, including 18-month-old Baby and 4-year-old Lil' Dude.

For a few hours, all four of these children were swirling around S2 like a human tornado. To have four children under the age of six is one thing, to be on your FOURTH day of caring for all of them is something entirely different. Especially when you have, as S2 has, been feeling under the weather yourself.

At first, I filled the role of the Big Play Thing. Kind of like that oversized, flying dog (or whatever that was) in "The Never-Ending Story," if you know what I mean. I played "tennis" with Little Pea. I talked to Lil' Dude about his fake snakes. I entertained everyone by attempting to get a tennis ball back from the neighbor's German short-haired pointer, which was interested mainly in *not* returning the ball.

And then, as S2 did something else with the three other children, I played some lopsided "game" in which Little Pea poked and prodded and punched at my breasts while repeatedly asking me, "Do you *know* the co-co? Do you *know* the co-co?"

Finally, I asked her, What's your fixation with my boobies? And I was told, "They're big. Mommy's are not big. The only big ones are you and my babysitter." She obviously liked their fleshiness. When I suggested she punch another "boobie" -- which was the roll of fat at my waist -- she poked at it, deemed it too hard to be a boobie and demanded, as she pulled up my shirt, that I show her what the mysterious lump was. *sigh*

And then I stood in the kitchen and watched S2 make dinner for this brood, each of whom was demanding her attention in some way or another. The baby was crying for water, Lil' Dude was insisting S2 see how many peices of pork he had on the tendons of his fork at a given moment, Little Pea wanted mom to look at the fake lips she'd made out of an apple, Getting To Yes wanted to talk about something.... It doesn't matter what. They were all talking at once, all calling out for S2, all wanting her attention.

I stood back, behind them all, and felt my eyes widen at the sheer shock of it. I thought about The Notorious M.O.M. and what it must have been like to have four kids at once. Especially when one of them was yours truly. What a nightmare that must have been.

But here's the difference between S2 and The Notorious M.O.M.: With all that *insane* demand on her, S2 still appeared to be functioning. She did not yell at the collection of children before her that she was fed up and was going on strike, didn't go lock herself in her bedroom and not come out for days.

No. Instead S2 appeared to be present, to be attending to each spontaneous, childish eruption and demand for attention. She responded to each child, replied to each request as if they were the only one asking for something. Each little human got treated as if they were deserving of attention, of a real response to their curious little pleas.

Little Pea got down from her chair, walked behind me and started poking me in the ass. If it's not the front end, it's the back end. She wanted to play a game whereby when I turned to the right to see what was poking me, no one was there. And when I turned to the left to see what was the matter, no one was there, either. Everytime I looked over my shoulder, she would shift sides, hiding her small frame behind my enormous ass. It was quite a thrill for her, if all the giggling was any indication.

But aside from entertaining that little one, the others continued to put such a demand on S2, who was also cleaning the kitchen and tidying up the house in anticipation of a guest's arrival, that I found it difficult to make note of the fact that I would be leaving. I pretty much couldn't get in a word edgewise -- if only because I was too fascinated by the sheer amount of energy swirling around there in the kitchen. Periodically, a child would leave his or her seat and run somewhere, only to run back. It was INSANE.

In the middle of it all, however, I took a phone call that lead to me committing a misdemeanor. Or perhaps a felony. Doesn't really matter. Because all I could think was that, even if I got busted, whatever time I might spend in lockup would pale in comparison to the kind of hard-time your average mother serves when she's got three or four young children in the house.

Which is also when I realized that, at my age, and not really having "natural" impregnetion as a method at my disposal, chances are getting better and better that my ovaries are sending out too many eggs at once. If I got pregnant under the most likely conditions, I could easily end up with a multiple-birth situation.

That realization was when my ovaries got bitch-slapped. And then bitch-slapped again for good measure. Like: Ohmyfukingod, there is NO WAY.

So, eventually, I made my exit. I walked out into the cool evening and headed home to my dog. He was very excited to see me. Which I knew on accounts he sniffed my leg. Then we took a walk together. I fed him an easy dinner of kibble in a bowl. Then a friend came over, and we talked without interruption, and then we went out and got dinner.

And I was happy living my child-free life.

Except the part where there was no one who wanted my attention or needed my love.

Except for that, life is grand.