If Your Nose Hurts, It's Because I Broke It

I received a text from my dear friend Kit the other night informing me that she was watching Mike make out with a girl we know, and all I could think to respond with was, "Oooookay."
Good for him, I thought, because she's cute. I kind of feel bad for her, though. She probably spent her weekend feeling hopeful, which is the worst state of mind to be in when it comes to Mike. He inspires a lot of hope with no follow-through. He says really nice things and then realizes what effect they are having and changes them into really mean things. I surprised myself because at another point in my life, I might have thought, "What a slut. Hope he likes herpes," but my first thought was more along the lines of, "Oh, poor her. Hope she likes getting jerked around."
Still, part of me kind of hoped that maybe she was going to be the one to jerk him around. Each girl I hear about him fucking around with as he Big Daddy Roths it through the female populace, I hold a little burning hope that maybe he'll be the one to get his sternum caved in this time. This is the reason why I know that whatever I felt for Mike, it wasn't even close to love. When I love someone, really love them, the way I, for example, loved Gino, I want them to be happy even if it means getting the hell away from me. I don't want Mike to be happy. I want him to be miserable. I want him to be stomach full of stinging nettles miserable. I want him to suffer. I have a lot of mean thoughts.
I don't think I even liked him that much. That's why I'm still thinking about it, still trying to figure out what the hell happened there. I went from really liking him to really hating him so quickly, my timeline is fucked up. I think what I really liked was being able to have sex that didn't make me sad, and that's it. My problem is, I still do not know how to separate sex and those pesky emotions that cooler people can ignore. Sex was how Gino and I said a lot of things. It was how we said, "I love you" and also, "I hate you." It gets especially confusing when the hate-sex feels just as good as love-sex. Love can hurt, and hate can feel good- like the adrenaline rush from a punch to the jaw.
I was so busy riding that high I got from the validation, the way he made the first move, that I never even stopped to think about it. It was the flattery of it that fucked with my head, made me think I had emotional attachments growing when really, all I had was a physical itch being scratched. I don't know how to tell the difference, it turns out, between, "I really like you," and ,"I really like the way your tongue feels in my pussy".
Mike happened because I let him, and also because he was there. I am getting closer to being honest with myself and admitting that I just wanted to have sex, and I might have ended up having sex with just about anyone at that point. I kept pushing it with him for longer than I should have because it was easier than finding someone new to think about. It's similar to why I kept insisting my marriage was stable even long after it was clear to everyone that it was crumbling. It was easier to just deny what was obvious and keep going.
Gino said something interesting the other night about this, though, when I referred to my laziness with men. "I don't think you're lazy," he said, "You're just impatient."
Holy shit, I thought, Gino really does know me better than just about anyone, even if he spent that whole nugget of wisdom eye-fucking another woman's cleavage. I wanted to think I could keep it casual, just enjoy myself with Mike and have fun, but I was always several steps ahead. I knew what we were doing, but I was so determined to make it into something else. I was full of hope, even if I didn't like him all that much. I just wanted to be loved again after being run over so harshly by Gino telling me he didn't love me anymore. I was willing to settle for someone, anyone, who would pay attention to me, and I refused to believe that someone could say something and not mean it. It says something about me, I guess, that I made a slight fool of myself just because for once, I met a guy who put so much effort into getting me to come. I really liked the orgasms, not the person, and I didn't figure it out until it was over. At least I did figure it out. Maybe a little late, but eventually.

Galentine's Day

I'm not as cynical about Valentine's Day as I used to be. Maybe I'm just picking my battles a little more carefully, or maybe I'm just getting to that age where I'd rather take a nap than stew about how IN LOOOOVE everyone is. I'm single. The pressure I used to apply to my ex-husband is off. I can just relax instead of waiting for him to not live up to what he is "supposed" to do for me. It's, frankly, a relief. Plus, I was too excited about Galentine's Day to even think about Valentine's Day. Galentine's rules, and Valentines can suck it.
Galentine's Day was perfect, of course. It was the perfect group lady-date. You can't really go wrong with the group of girls (and one dude) who were there, especially when your group activity is eating waffles and drinking Bud Light. The other thing that made it great was that it was a pretty even split between single people and people who are in a relationship. This is just more proof that Hollywood always gets it wrong when they portray what it is like to be single in this day and age. In the rom-com version of my life, I would have spent my first Valentine's Day post-separation crying, maybe looking through my wedding album and chugging white wine like a doctor is on his way to saw my legs off. Instead, I spent the 13th pounding waffles and beer (which is, real talk, an underrated combination) and the 14th going to see The Silver Linings Playbook. The only time I cried was during the movie, and I blame Robert DeNiro for that. This Valentine's season left me feeling more loved and cared about than the past five have. Who gives a shit, right? I love movies and I love my girlfriends. If this stupid holiday is about love, then I spent the night before with a bunch of people I love and the evening of doing what I love. I crushed Valentine's Day.
I spent the morning of Valentine's Day, ironically, texting with Gino. He posted something that confused me on Facebook, I asked him what his post meant, and then started texting me from his brand-new Android phone either because he misses me a little or because he has no one else to text. Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.
After he explained what he meant (and I explained to him what Instagram is, a.k.a. the Magical Place Where Happiness Lives) we both suggested that we should hang out soon. We went back and forth on when and where and what we could do together, and I got a little jolt of deja-vu. It felt like, even though it definitely isn't, we were setting up a date. Here I am, finally feeling comfortably blase about Valentine's Day, and I'm setting up a pseudo-date with my ex.
We met for a beer that quickly turned into him updating me on the girls he is attempting to date. One is a single mom who seems kind of out of his league, if I'm honest, and the other is a girl I think might be a little too young for him. Still, I reserved my opinion and told him to go for it with either of them because, despite the little cramp I get in my gut over it, I really just want him to find someone. More than that, I want him to find someone who is better for him than I was. I was a good wife, but not what he needs. I let him get away with so much, let him coast because I didn't want to be hard on him. That's how I know how much I love him, still, even when I want to strangle him because he is barely paying attention to what I am talking about because he is so distracted by the huge set of jugs standing to my right. I kind of love him for that, too. He can do whatever he wants now, after all, and so can I.

Lady Dates

I've been busy this week with planning some "lady dates", which are much more fun and less fraught with anxiety than actual dates where I might have a good time and/or sex. For a lady date, I still put just as much effort into the fun part, getting dressed up and making sure I smell nice, but I don't have to deal with
the part that bums me the fuck out, i.e. when the guy is going to start talking about his ex or try to choke me. Or both.
I met up with my good friend, Libby, this week since she was visiting from Albuquerque. I wanted to see her, but felt a bit conflicted about it, since my sister told me that she and Libby had recently had a fight and weren't friends anymore. I find myself in this position often, having to choose between being loyal to my sister and doing what I actually want to do. It kept me from seeing the not so subtle, ham-fisted flirting Mike was throwing at me (which actually might have been a good thing, come to think of it) because Sarah forbid me from hooking up with him. I've lost other friends because of one thing out another that Sarah did. To be fair, a friend who can't separate me from my sisters actions is not one I really needed, but it still stings. All I need to remember to get over my guilt, of course, is that Sarah has done worse. She went behind my back to a former friend, a person I refuse to associate with to this day because he is a garbage person who told everyone I was in rehab for an imaginary drug addiction when I was actually in a psych ward for behavioral issues. Sarah and I ended up at the same party as this bitch, and Sarah cornered me and told me that I needed to get over it and be friends with him again, because I was "being immature". Yeah, I needed to be friends with him because Sarah probably needed something from him. Sometimes, that's how she operates. I love her, but I don't always trust her.
Regardless of my misgivings, I enjoyed spending time catching up with Libby. We had some wine and I did ask her what the fight with Sarah was about. Her version of events was, of course, totally different from Sarah's. Not really a shocker, because I'm used to that. I heard Libby out and then just had a fun time, caught her up on what I've been doing and felt happy at the end of the evening that I had gone on my lady date with her.
I started trying to interest my friends into the ultimate lady date- Galentine's Day. I stole the idea from Parks and Recreation, but who cares? It's a great idea. Valentines is a shitty holiday. If you're single, it makes you feel, somehow, even more single. If you're in a relationship, even if it is with someone you really love, often you either fail them or they fail you. Or, you try to surprise them with flowers and discover that your wife is allergic to baby's breath. That happened to me one of the only times Gino made an effort.
Last Valentines was the worst. I had to bully Gino into taking me out for a hot chocolate and a fucking macaron at Chocolate Springs, and he was sulky and bored. He was even more sulky when I brought up the fact that we never talked about the future any more, and that I wanted to talk about moving out of his parent's house, and maybe starting a family soon. It was a conversation about a future conversation I was hoping to have, but it was still too much for him. I always wondered why it was so hard to get him to do something nice for me. It didn't come naturally to him, especially last Valentine's Day, when he had already stopped loving me that way.
Focusing on lady dates feels like the best thing for me. I need my friendships more than ever, because I can feel myself turning, little by little, into a spiteful bitch. I don't like it. I saw that Mike put a poem by Charles Bukowski on his Facebook page, and I grumbled about it all night. I mean, Charles Bukowski? What the ass? That's like when Gino quotes Albert Einstein- it's absurd. I'm not even sure what bothered me about out so much. Maybe it was the fact that he even put a whole verse of any poem on his page, as if he is so emotional and deep, he has to borrow the words, but maybe it was the poem he chose, as if he knows what it feels like to have a bluebird in your heart. To have a bluebird in your heart, first you need to have a heart, you fuck stick, I wanted to say. I didn't say it, because it's not my place to say what someone can quote on Facebook, nor is it really my place to call him a fuck stick. I'll leave that to others. But I still think he's a fuck stick.

The Place Where Things Happen

The other night, the pipes froze in my apartment building because the basement of my building is unheated. The handyman who works for my landlord came over, assessed the damage and told me he was sorry, but he couldn't fix it tonight, leaving me without a working toilet, shower or bathroom sink for the evening. I was actually happy to live alone at a time like this. If I was going to spend the night peeing into a plastic bucket and pouring it out into the kitchen sink, I was grateful no one was around to see that.
It does nothing to point this out right at the moment, but it is fucking cold. It is so cold, I have been compelled to break out my "cuddle socks", which should never be worn by a person who wants to be touched by another human ever again. They came in one of my parent's notoriously misguided Christmas packages a few years ago. They are baby blue, fleecy and hideous as all-get-out, not to mention the rubber grippies on the bottom that remind me of slippers for invalids. They are so unattractive, they make me not even want to fuck myself when I'm wearing them.
It's too cold to even think of anything other than not freezing to death right now, so it should come as no surprise that I've settled into my extended dry spell for the time being. I am wearing so many layers, the first of which is gray long underwear that makes me look, to paraphrase Patton Oswalt, like a Dr. Seuss rough sketch, that no one could even get to me if they wanted to. They would have to fight through three layers of cotton, fleece and wool to be able to even know what my skin feels like. Winter is not a sexy time. When I was still in a relationship, sex during winter meant moving things to the side or half-off, getting it over with and then covering back up as quickly as possible. No one gets naked willingly when it is this cold. If I could get away with showering in my thermal undergarments, trust me, I would.
I was out the other night, at yBar Writer's Room, to see a poet named Jon Sands. Everyone, myself included was still wearing our coats indoors to keep from shaking like pathetic, wet poodles. I ended up in a conversation about this blog with Jim, the owner of the bar and founder of Word by Word. He mentioned that he kept meaning to check it out after I read a post at the Open Mic Night the week before. Gabriel, my best dude friend and reluctant writing mentor, referred to it as, "The naughty blog where things happen."
I wish things were happening right now, but I'm too busy shivering. I said as much to Gabriel, and he ordered me to go out and get some penetration before this turns into a cooking blog. This was similar to something my friend Joe expressed to me last week when he asked, "So, when are you going to embark on a new disastrous relationship that you can write about?"
I had a typically whiney reaction to both of these options, a response of, "Aww, come on, do I have to?"
I'm not going to start having gross, weird sex or date someone who is totally wrong for me just so I have something to write about. This isn't Nerve.com circa 2000. I am also not planning on posting about ten new ways to cook kale (because it is, apparently, the only vegetable that exists in New England during winter). Any of these things might be fun, but I hope I don't need to rely on them yet. I still have territory to mine, after all. I'm still in the process of getting divorced which, I found out thanks to my new legal career, is because an uncontested divorce is placed on a six-month hold from the time it is filed, in case one of the parties changes their mind. So, in the end, the address of this blog might not even be true. I might not, in the end, even be divorced by thirty. My thirtieth birthday is less than three months away, and this might not even go to court until after that date. For the time being, this blog is going to have to be how I'm not getting laid or getting divorced yet, and hopefully the horrible dates and bad (or good, or bad/good) sex can wait for now. I think I'll wait until I feel comfortable taking off the long underwear, and then I'll see.

Sunburn

A week ago last Wednesday, the day I had been waiting for since August finally arrived, and I got to drive to Cambridge and get my arm tattooed. It was an okay day for it- the sun was out, it wasn't too cold, and I didn't really mind being by myself, surprisingly. I always think I will prefer to have someone with me for long car rides, but the truth is, I usually end up wanting to be alone once the crankiness sets in and I get tired of talking. I was glad no one was available to go with me, actually, or I might have lost a friend in the process. Plus, I left early, I barely ate anything all day, and I would have felt weird smoking in my own car with someone else there. Plus, asking someone to sit on a bench, feeling like a weirdo is a big favor to ask. I did it for Mike, when he got tattooed there, sitting silently for hours like patience on the monument. It was kind of awful, and then I had to drive back to Pittsfield in rush hour with a guy who didn't like me that much anymore.
I got there early, of course, like I always do, so I had some time to catch my breath before I had to sit in the chair and get stabbed for hours. I talked with the mom of a kid who was getting some kind of shamrock/football jersey number thing on his ankle (probably the biggest Masshole cliche of them all) about what my tattoo meant, because it is, understandably, hard to understand why I would get a tattoo of a squid fighting a whale. "I've had a hard year," I said, "A whale of a year, and I think of myself as the squid, wrapping all my tentacles around it and taking it down."
She smiled, amused, and didn't seem to really get the why and wherefore of it, but I didn't expect her to, really. A tattoo is public and private at the same time. I could have just said that I wanted it because it looks cool and left it at that, but I never go with the easy answer. I always overexplain when I could just keep my mouth shut.  
Once Erick, my tattoo artist, actually got me in the chair and started, it wasn't so bad. I've gotten tattoos before, but this one is the biggest, and I was in the chair for four hours, minus a few breaks. Erick did the entire thing in one sitting, from the outline to color, so I got to leave that day with the finished product, not just the rough sketch. He must have done the full job because I sat there so nice and still, not making any noise. I always thought I have a decent pain threshold, and I guess it's actually true.
Getting tattooed is a little more intimate than other services you pay for, moreso than getting your hair done, or getting a bikini wax, even. You are trusting a professional to put something permanent on your body, something meaningful that everyone will see. You have to almost form a false friendship with this person that only lasts a few hours, and only picks up again if you need a new piece. I still felt weird, and girly and silly, and like I was seventeen years old, but I felt something else this time, an electricity coursing through me while the needles were stabbing me over and over. I had to think, in order to sit calmly and not wince every time the needles pierced my arm, that this made me feel alive, that this was a good pain, a pain that was productive, and worthwhile. After all the just-below-the-surface pain, the ache that had no name that I've felt for more than half a year, this pain of getting a beautiful piece of art stitched into my skin felt great. It was because it was my choice, and I was in control of it. Now, I have something I get to keep forever, barring my arm getting chopped off. In an age of my life where nothing feels permanent anymore, where the list of people I love and who still love me changes from month to month, and sometimes day to day, this feels grounding. Plus, it's something I did just for me.

One Foot In The Door

I heard from my friend Christina this past week, before New Year's, asking if I was still looking for a new job. I have missed working with her a great deal (she is the person who sent me home the day I came in to work looking like Samara from The Ring and insisted I go home and have a good cry), so when she suggested I send her my resume, I jumped at the chance. I've already been putting feelers out, sending my resume when I find a job posting online that seems like it might be a good fit, but I haven't been desperate to leave my current occupation. My job is not that challenging, but it is dependable. I like my co-workers, and I can deal with the specific aspects of it that make me unhappy. It's not like I work in a coal mine, so I've learned to be content with my weird schedule, my days off in the middle of the week, the insistance by the corporate office that in order to have dual roles as admin and events presenter (I teach a weekly knitting class for the guests of this establishment, which I love doing), that I need to only work a total of 40 hours between both departments. This means that I have to cut three hours out of my work week at the desk in order to make up for the three hours of class time. It's a pain, but I've never objected because despite finding it unfair, I understood where they were coming from. When you employ as many people as the corporation I work for does, you need to make sure your bases are covered.
The change in my hours, plus the fact that my boss told me, in no uncertain terms, that my days off could not be altered, plus the fact that she has been slightly lacking in the professionalism department, have made my decision that much easier to make. I sent my resume to Christina, who forwarded it to one of the partners at the law firm she left here to work for. I went in for an interview on Wednesday morning, only minimally prepared, figuring that going in cold was a better idea. I didn't want to do what I usually do- overprepare and oversell myself, ending up in a position I am really not the best fit for. I've done that once, when I worked for Verizon, and it was traumatizing, to say the least. I knew at that time, when I showed up for training, that I had to keep that job, even though it confused the hell out of me and I never really fit in with the other people there. I ignored my instincts and just buckled down, forcing myself to just deal with it, because as the primary bread-earner in my relationship, I had to keep Gino and myself afloat. When I got sent back to my original position as a lowly directory assistance operator, I was so relieved, I cried, even though I knew it meant finding a more affordable place to live and no more shopping at the nice food stores. Leaving that position was, in the end, worth going back to ghetto groceries. I also did the same thing when I interviewed for Pine Cone Hill, pitching myself at the woman who interviewed me with a little too much enthusiasm. I was not really the best fit for that position, as I had been working for a company that valued speed over accuracy for so many years that I didn't know how to make myself slow down. Their customer service model was all about building relationships with their customers and taking the time to listen. They were slow food, where I was used to short-order cooking. I couldn't adapt, and when they did their big layoff, I got the chop. If I hadn't been laid off, I think, I would have probably gotten fired for not learning their ways.
The interview with the attorney went well, and I felt my confidence swelling the longer she kept me in the room with her. I drew parallels between law and healthcare without really reaching for them, I was honest about why I felt the time had come to move on from a place I had worked for nearly three years, and I maintained eye contact, which my father taught me is key to showing a new person that you can be trusted. It didn't always come naturally to me, but I've reached a point where it actually feels strange to not look straight into another person's eyes while I'm speaking to them.
When I left the interview, I felt similar to the way I felt in September, after a particularly successful knitting class, thinking to myself, "There is nothing wrong with you. There is something wrong with every man who tells you there is something wrong with you," and I actually believed it. It is easy to say these words, aloud, to voice them with something close to conviction, but it is harder to really believe them, to take them to heart. The things that bothered me the most for the better part of this past year- being rejected, not once, but twice, hating myself and my body, wondering where I slipped on the tracks, are not eclipsed by a new professional achievement, but they seem less important. I was hired the day of the interview, despite not having a shred of legal experience, despite not having a college degree, despite the fact that I didn't have my references printed out and prepared. Who cares that I don't look perfect, that I am a little abrasive, that I love too hard and with too much of myself? What I have managed to do, this year, despite every painful moment, is pretty impressive to me. I don't usually impress myself, but I have managed to find a new job, squeeze my brain until a novel popped out, and form a better friendship with my ex-husband, all without missing a single day of work. All of these things serve as a reminder that just because I am not good enough for a couple of dumb guys does not mean I am not good enough.
I think that, and maybe this is a justification I make to myself just so things make some kind of sense, that my intelligence, my success, all of the things I really value about myself, might actually end up being a detractor to the guys I always end up being into. Gino is barely able to keep his head above water, money-wise, without me, but he didn't appreciate me more because I brought in more money. I think that knowing he needed me, literally, for survival, made him resentful of me. One time, his mother was lamenting the fact that she could never leave Gino's father, saying, "You can't escape the fact that you always need them for the financial support," referring, of course, to men.
I said nothing, never pointing out the fact that in our situation, the roles were reversed. Managing without the money Gino brought in has been difficult, but not impossible. He only ever worked part-time when we were together. Even when he split his time between his current job and working for UPS, he never worked a 40-hour week. Both of his jobs were hard, manual, labor, of course, and I gave him more credit than he probably deserved for working them, but he never put in as many hours as I did. I always brought home more money, but the thing is, I tried not to point that out to him. Gino remarked on it often, in terms of the unfairness of it, how I got paid more than him for sitting on my ass all day. I had to apologize for my own minimal success, with the fact that despite not completing my education, I managed to find steady employment using only my skill set. I was apologetic for earning more money than him and for earning a job that allowed me to sit on my ass all day in the first place. Nothing was handed to me and I was given the same advantages as anyone else, but Gino's persecuted worldview made me feel guilty for a lot of it. A man's ego is a fragile thing.
Gino also had a tendency, it seemed to me, to imply that I was ditzy. He would talk to me about things I could understand, but just wasn't interested in, like time travel and conspiracy theories. I would contribute nothing because I had nothing to contribute, which, to him, made me seem like I just didn't understand what he was talking about. He would try to get me to watch episodes of Dark Matters and Through The Wormhole, or other programming on Science Channel, and I would try to pay attention, but it just wasn't compelling to me. I would sit through an episode, then beg him to switch to an episode of Community or Hell on Wheels or something else I could just sit back and enjoy. At the end of the day, sometimes you just want to give your brain a rest. I asked him why he did that this week, and he seemed genuinely surprised that I would think that. He didn't apologize for anything, of course, turning on me and accusing me of talking down to him all the time, making him feel like he was the dumb one. I wanted to object, but I knew that the time wasn't right for it, so I did apologize for always correcting his grammar and pronunciation. It's a bad habit I could never kick, that I inherited directly from my father, and I knew he hated it, but his malapropisms were hard to let slip by. If he said "worth ethic" when he meant to say "work ethic", it just drove me nuts, because people are not always kind. I just wanted to protect him, keep him from getting made fun of. I looked at it from the angle of being protective, but it hit his ear as just more criticism.
Mike implied that I was kind of dumb as well. When I told him the story about Gino's attempts to educate me, he started teasing me about it, and Liam started showing up for our Thursday night get-togethers with episodes of Through the Wormhole loaded onto his USB drive for us to watch. I knew they were doing it just to annoy me, and I could have squashed it by not reacting, but I got a little irritated. I don't doubt my own intelligence, but I am used to insecure people inferring that I am not that smart, so I'm just a little sick of it. Sensing how much it was annoying me that Liam and Mike not only wanted to watch a television show about quantum worlds, but refused to stop talking about it while I was sitting there, contributing nothing, Mike said, "Well, we could watch something about knitting instead," his voice just dripping with condescension.
I'm not a big fan of being talked down to, and while I can take being teased, I have an easier time with it if the joke is, you know, good. I told him thanks for the offer (you fucking dickbag), but I don't watch television programs about knitting, I just knit. Having a hobby that is girly and silly does not make me girly and silly. And, even if it does, who cares? Being girly and silly doesn't make me stupid, either. I know I have a bad habit of dumbing myself down for men, especially if I like them, because most men like to feel that they are the smartest one in the room. Or, at the very least, the men I've been involved with seem to want that.
I guess I am a little more insecure about my intelligence than I used to be. When I was younger, and I was overweight and really awkward, my brain was all that I had. I was one of those people, who just had to remind everyone how smart I was every second of every day. It didn't really win me a lot of friends, so I toned it down. I know that I don't have to impress how smart I am upon people, but it gets to the point where, occasionally, I don't really seem that smart at all. Najwa told me recently that when we first met, she had no idea I was smart. That was probably due to the fact that when I first met her, I didn't talk much because I was totally intimidated by her prettiness and didn't really make a great first impression. Still, she told me that my brains aren't really there on the surface, that they come out slowly.
I hope I can learn to speed up that process, when it comes to work, because I have a very short window in which I need to learn my new job, and I don't want my new employer to regret hiring someone who seems like a dullard. I need to just remind myself that being smart is good, that it has gotten me farther than anything else has, and that I don't have to water my intelligence down for everyone.

That's A Wrap

I concluded this year feeling the way I felt for the majority of the year- exhausted, hungry, and a little annoyed with my ex. Instead of going out and getting irritated with the crowds or spending more money than I wanted to, I worked the New Year's Eve party for the guests at the resort, manning the desk as a pit boss for our annual casino night. It was hectic, a little stifling, but all-in-all, it went pretty smoothly, and I got paid more than double what I make per hour at my "real" job to do it. I was also compelled, by my manager, to take all of New Year's Day off because if I worked that day, I would have gone into overtime. So, in the end, I got some extra money in my next paycheck, I got three days off in a row, and I did manage to sneak in one drink with Shauna before the bars closed on New Year's Eve. Can't say fairer than that.
As for Gino, I did get irritated with him for, of course, being himself. He was working New Year's as well, dealing poker, and when he showed up, he immediately started complaining about being hungry because he didn't eat enough that day. Not my problem, I thought to myself, although I have an inability to shut off the side of me that always ends up taking care of this man. Luckily, I didn't have to do much because one of the dining room employees brought out some leftover wraps that were going to be thrown out if we didn't eat them. I called Gino over and pointed them out, and he took one, with a look on his face that made it seem like I had just offered him a big bag of garbage. "These are the only ones they have?" he asked.
"Yeah," I said, "But if you're hungry enough, it shouldn't matter."
He took one, still looking unhappy, but he ate it. I finished off half of mine and, trying to be nice and make sure Gino had enough, offered him the other half. This is an old, dying reflex, left over from seven years of learning his habits and, I hate it, but, wanting to make sure he is fed. However much food I ever gave Gino, I would give myself half as much, and then usually give him half of that half when he had finished his. I did this not only for him, but also to control the amount I ended up eating. He started calling himself "The Portion Controller" after a while, because he was the only thing keeping me from weighing 200 pounds. If I was giving him half of my food, I wouldn't end up mindlessly eating it after I was already full. Unchecked, I can eat until I explode, which is why I started training myself to eat smaller amounts until I was satisfied with them. My friends pick on me, but I have a shitty metabolic rate and I have to do something to keep myself at a healthy weight.
When I called out to Gino to see if he wanted the other half of my turkey wrap, he answered, kind of rudely, "No."
It was just a no. Not a no, thank you, or a no, thanks, or anything close to it. I don't know why this bothered me so much, but it did. I suppose it is because I have been trying to rehabilitate him for years, deprogram him out of all the bad manners his family (sorry) taught him. Having bad manners doesn't make them bad people, of course, and this is a judgement on my part, but I have found that it is harder to get people to take you seriously if you skip the pleasantries. Good manners were drilled into my head from a young age, and I would never respond to a kind gesture with anything less than a "no, thank you". My mother was just as blunt and matter-of-fact as Gino's mother is, but she at least taught me how to be polite. What really bothered me must have been that, even after trying, for seven years, to force a little more politeness and consideration into Gino's personality, he's the same. I wasn't trying to change him, exactly, just smooth him over, make him a little more presentable, but he remains just as rough as he always was.
Shauna and I were in charge of counting up the guest's chips and announcing the winners at the end, and then ended up being each other's New Year's hug when midnight struck. Before Gino left, I snuck through the crowd to give him a quick hug and wish him Happy New Year, finding him near the door to the lobby, talking to a guy that works for another department. Gino did something he tends to do when I speak to him in front of someone we work with- he acted like he didn't want to talk to me. When it is just us, of course, he is fully engaged and I actually believe that we are friends. When we are around other people, he acts like King Shit and I am the pain-in-the-ass ex-wife who won't stop hanging off his dick. I should just not play into it at all, or just not let it bother me, but it's a little immature for a 31-year-old to act this way. We aren't in high school. We were married, and now we're something else, and he doesn't have to pretend he wants nothing to do with me anymore just because we are no longer a couple.
I guess I just expect more from him than I really should, given his history. I never learn. I keep wanting Gino to surprise me, show me that he learned anything during our time together, but he hasn't. It's stupid for me to expect it, or even hope for it, because I wasn't his educator, I was his wife. I have to let him be who he is, because that's fine for him to be that way. He might not get very far with his interesting pronunciation and his inability to use common courtesies, but he might not want or need to. My tendency to correct his grammar and try to force him to be more considerate are not things that he probably looks back on fondly. They are just more examples of me being a pain in the ass and not letting him do what he wants. Maybe he will get lucky and meet someone who does not care about any of it, or better yet, has even worse manners than he does. Either way.
I finally got home from work at around 1 AM, so tired I forgot how to go to bed. I sat on my couch, counted up the things I learned this year, weighed them against my mistakes, and figured I broke even on all of it. Then, I did what I usually do, and had a glass of whiskey and finally dragged myself to bed. I don't have a big, concluding statement for this year, because I still haven't figured it out. Then again, just because it's the end of the year, that doesn't automatically endow a person with all manner of sagelike wisdom. I'm closer to figuring out what I need to do to make myself happier, though, so that's something.