Skin Deep

I must have been throwing it out there in a major way the other night, or maybe I just took a little extra care with my makeup, because I was getting flattery hurled at me from every angle. This does not happen to me that often, so when it does I don't quite know what to do other than to just aw, shucks my way out of it. It's hard to take a compliment. It is hard to say anything other than, "No, I'm not," to someone telling you that you're beautiful. We're trained to do this because pride is a sin, and none of us want to be sinful. Still, any physical beauty I have wasn't always there, and it's not permanent, and I feel that to some degree, I have earned it. My awkward phase lasted a long time, to the point where my family was looking at me and probably thinking to themselves that they would just have to accept that this was how I would be forever. When my father learned of my divorce, his way of cheering me up was to say, "You're a good-looking girl, you know, you'll find someone else no problem."
Thanks, Daddy, but these good genes you passed down to me are not going to solve everything for me. If being pretty was really the only deciding factor, I would not be a sad bitch right now. Men don't always opt for who is prettiest, nor should they. If I'm honest, I wouldn't want to date someone who only valued looks. I hate myself whenever I hold my looks side-by-side against the girls who were chosen over me and my first thought is, "I am so much prettier than her!". Thoughts like that are ugly, and I shouldn't even allow them to enter my mind. All I can do is try to ignore them.
I didn't feel pretty at all by the end of last week. I had a headache that was annoying enough to wake me up three times during the night, I was a little nauseous, and on top of all of that, my heart was heavy. It actually felt painful to smile. Still, whatever I was throwing off earlier this week must have still been coming off of me, because I ran into Gino in the employee dining room and we sat and talked for an hour over lunch. "It's nice to talk to you," he said, "My parents never want to talk and my brother never wants to talk. All my friends have their own lives, you know. Is it okay if we hang out and talk sometime?"
I knew I should say no, go fuck yourself, you're an asshole, or any of the other things my friends have been coaching me to say to him since he donkey-punched me in the heart, but I couldn't resist. We were best friends once, people who knew each other too well and could say anything to each other. I missed it so much, I told him yes, we could hang out that night if he wanted to come over.
Spending time with someone you know so well, but don't really know anymore, is weird. It's like visiting the country you were born in after being away for several years. The landmarks are familiar, but you have different eyes. We talked for a while, and had some beers, and after a while I realized something weird: Gino was flirting with me. He rejects me, tells me he doesn't love me anymore, and the last time we had sex it seemed like he was trying to keep himself from vomiting, and now he comes to my house and flirts with me?He kept trying to show me how his body had changed since he had started working out more and telling me my ass looked different and could he see it with no pants on? I was more than just a little confused by the whole thing. In my mind, this man doesn't even like me anymore and hated having sex with me and now he wants to show me his lats and inspect my ass for new musculature? It all became clear when he just came out and said, "Let's have sex."
You can only say that when you have known someone for as long as we've known each other, and you are totally unintimidated by them. Once you have seen someone on the toilet, puking and having diarrhea at the same time (as I have with Gino) or had to carry them because they were blackout drunk (as Gino had to do for me on our wedding night), you cannot be intimidated by them. As soon as he suggested, oh so subtly, that we have a zipless fuck, I had to walk to the bedroom half-naked because my pants were already off. It was the kind of sex that can only happen between two people who have been through something as horrible as a divorce. It wasn't the routine married sex we had for years- it was just like the sex we had when we first met, when everything was new and we weren't scared of what would happen if one of us did something weird. There was hair-pulling and ass-slapping and biting and scratching and all the good stuff we used to do before we got bored with each other. It felt new because it was new- we have different bodies than we did just a few months ago, and different minds. We have been away from each other long enough to have new experiences that are not shared ones. When he left my house, we kissed goodbye like friends, like two people who are fond of each other and can have sex without having to have a huge discussion about what it means. I don't want to fall back into a relationship with this man, go back to the person I was while we were married and attach that weight to my neck all over again. I like who I am becoming, and I don't want to backslide, and I know he wasn't after that anyway. I did tell him that he can't call me every time he feels like it or every time he feels lonely, though, and I won't let him sleep over. That would be too confusing.
I did feel a tad morose after Gino left, only because I missed Mike a little. While Gino and I were having sex, Mike was on my mind just the same way that while I was having sex with Mike, Gino was on my mind. All I can think is, dude, is this what people do? Just go from one person to the next with the ghost of the last person you fucked standing right next to you like a perverted specter? I actually wished I could talk to Mike about it, just as a male friend, but he is still not talking to me. At this point, I don't know if it is because of the girl he is seeing or because he just doesn't need me in his life. I don't like being ignored- it drives me crazy. I would rather have someone scream in my face than ignore me. The other part of it that is driving me crazy is that he is ignoring me as a friend, not just as a woman he had sex with a few times. It is one thing for him to not be into me anymore that way, but for him to just throw the baby out with the bathwater and dispose of our friendship makes me a little annoyed. I suppose we are just different people. He no longer even talks to his ex, and does not speak of her fondly, and seems to have learned nothing from that relationship other than how mean she was to him. I am going the other way with Gino, because I would rather preserve our friendship, even if it means we have to kill our marriage.
I was talking to my father the other day about whether my sister and I are both doomed to repeat history, and make all of the terrible decisions that our mother made when it comes to men. My mother divorced my father because she was bored, and she wanted to see what else was out there. She ended up getting involved with a man she went to high school with, who never looked at her twice when she was a slightly overweight teenager (with her original nose), but who was suddenly taken with her as a grown woman. Because of this man, there ended up being violence in our home when he showed up one night, drunk, and put his fist through a window. She stopped seeing him for a while, but then took him back for who knows what reason, maybe because she was lonely. I was 10, maybe 11, and it's no wonder why I was a nervous wreck around men until I was 21 years old. Because of my mother's terrible choices, I thought that all men eventually showed up screaming and dripping blood from their fists in the middle of the night. I hate to judge someone who is no longer with us, but she should have considered how terrifying it was for my sister and I to have to see this man after something like that. He apologized, but his apologies meant fuck-all to me after I saw his other side: a drunk, bleeding man who dragged my mother down the stairs from my bedroom in the middle of the night. My mother, though, could give a shit how anything affected us, and I'm just now starting to see just how far-reaching her poor judgement and narcissism continue to be.
I hope I'm not cursed. I know I'm not as insecure as my mom was because I was raised better. All it took, seemingly, was one look from this guy who wouldn't fuck her in high school, and she chucked out my dad like garbage. My sister has similar issues in that she has compromised relationships over something trivial like that, and then regretted it. My aunt told me the other night that she thinks my mother may have been a sex addict, but I think she was actually a love addict. She was also a terrible over-sharer when it came to her sex life, and I remember being all too aware of how much sex my mother was having, post-divorce. I can safely say I am nothing like my mother, but I do have the inclination toward some of her bad behaviours, even if I don't follow them. I had trouble always being true, in my heart, to Gino while we were married, because I would get lonely or want validation and it was easier to get it from a dependable source, like one of my guy friends, than to ask him for it, but I never cheated and I never took any of these flirtations seriously. They never compromised what I had with Gino, because that was a real, tangible thing, and I knew the difference. This is how my friendship with Liam developed actually, because he could give me advice while keeping his opinion out of it, and he was always quick with the flattery that I sometimes really needed.
I keep thinking about the movie Celeste and Jesse Forever, and how when I saw it by myself in the theater, I was saddened because their story wasn't my story. I thought there was no hope of retaining that deep bond with Gino because he didn't want to be my friend anymore. The married couple in that movie decides to get divorced, but keeps seeing each other nearly every day as friends. They end up not being able to keep everything the way it was, but in the end, they are still friends, and still love each other, and they both grow up a little. I still love Gino, but that love is different now. I love him as a close, dear friend who I care so much about, and I know he still loves me in a similar way. When he told me he didn't love me anymore, I believe he meant to say that he didn't love our marriage. If I'm really honest, I didn't, either. I kept telling myself I wanted to stay married, but I think I was just scared of what would happen if it ended. All of this, that I am going through now, is what I was afraid of, and I am dealing with it. There is hope for me yet.