Extra Grande

A friend had a run in with some pervert and sent me a screenshot of how she handled him. And then...well...

Her: Then it took a turn for the obscene and I had it. I'm only telling you cuz I feel like I dropped the mic.

Me: First, what a jackass. Second, I love how the only time you're a lady is when you're telling a fool off lol.

Her: lol I'm a prude to a point. I was like, "Oh yeah? How big are--wait a goddamn minute!"

Me: LOL. You're juuuuuuust slutty enough to snap yo'self outta asking.

Her: LOL Yes!

[Six hours later]

Me: Love you gurl.

Her: I adore you, with everything I've got.

Me: Oh yeah? How big is everything you've--wait just a damn minute! I am a lady!

Her: LOL!!! I fuckin' love you.

Have You Seen My Childhood?

Well, this affair talk will just not die down, ya'll. I had a mess of convos about it the last 24 hours, but one in particular stands out. A friend relayed a story about how they'd been involved in a long term affair with someone who had kids and it was the worst mistake of their life. This person literally woke up one day and got some sense and ended things on the spot. The reason? She witnessed a lot of the same behavior in her family growing up and didn't want to repeat the pattern. MOC said something similar to me early in our relationship, when she was going through an awful divorce. Her mom raised three kids on her own but was always in and out of a relationship with her father. And the relationship was often violent. Because of this, MOC wasted no time in pulling the plug on her first marriage when dude took a swing at her after an argument they had over his philandering. She also decided not to repeat the pattern she'd witnessed as a child. Another friend mentioned that her parents were not always faithful to one another in her youth and she could always sense that things weren't great between them, and that's been a major reason why she's avoided that kind of drama in her own life. As she so perfectly stated, what we witness as children relationship-wise either becomes our norm or our aversion. But is it our choice which one of those we gravitate towards? I'm inclined to say it's at least partially our decision. Sure, there are some seeds planted so deep that we can't dig them out and expel them no matter how hard we try. But as we get older and decide for ourselves what's right and what's wrong, we gain a better understanding of how to avoid such behaviors. And that's when it becomes our choice.
I don't recall every detail of my upbringing thanks to the damage to the old noggin, but there are some things you just never forget. I was about 7 when my mom told us who our father was, but she was very vague about the details of everything. We did know he had several children from several different women, but did not find out until after his death that he'd been in touch with all of them - except the three of us. In my youth, I didn't think much of my father. I knew I had one, I knew what he did for a living, and I knew I'd encountered him only once and after about a month, his phone calls an interest in us waned. To be honest, it didn't bother me much. My uncles and Y's dad were my male role models and most of them were much better fathers than the one I had. Even then, I saw my father's absence in my life as a blessing and not a curse because I'd rather be a kid who never knew my father, than a kid always waiting for dad to approve of me or be a part of my life. If there'd been a crack in that door and always hope that he'd be an actual parent to me, I'd have been devastated that it never happened. But exiting my life was the best thing he could've done, I expected nothing and wasn't disappointed when that's all I got. Because of the situation with my father, I knew I didn't want to be that way; multiple baby mamas, kids I never saw, living the rock star lifestyle without regard for the families I was creating. His absence gave me the resolve to make sure I would be the best, most present father ever, no matter how fatherhood came to me. And it's a resolve that was tested when Miss N arrived the way she did. Even with the unexpectedness and the fact that I was still a man child myself at the time, I was averse to being anything other than present everyday for my little girl.
You'll notice I said most of my father figures were great, but not all. My Prodigal Son uncle was the complete opposite of the rest of the dudes I grew up with. He knocked up a chick, they entered an ill-fated marriage where he cheated left and right, had another kid together and then divorced. She took the kids and moved out of state and, while the rest of our family tried to maintain ties and see the kids as often as possible (these were the family's first grandkids), he saw the divorce as liberation. He spent a few years as a single dude, banging every chick in sight, before meeting someone else, knocking her up and getting married. And guess what? Yep, he cheated left and right there too and she left him, though continued to make him be a part of the kid's life. When I was young, he would come around and visit sparingly and always with a new gal pal on his arm. It was sort of the unspoken rule amongst the rest of us not to talk about the chick from the week before, whom we were all sure he was still seeing on the side anyway. He never had just one chick to run to. I remember being very aware of how I didn't want to end up like that when I grew up. I didn't want to have a parade of chicks in and out of my life every other day. The next two decades brought him several more marriages (like, almost double digits now), all of them ending in shady ways. Most let him go without a fight, knowing he'd cheated the whole way through, but when one cheated on him, he pulled the plug and became an even bigger bastard because of it (it was all very, "how dare you cheat on me!" because his ego is just that big). The second to last chick he was married to was no fool and is still dragging his ass through the courts to get her half of the cash, which infuriates him (or so I hear, we don't speak). Witnessing his antics growing up made me terrified of ending up the way he had. Sure, an endless parade of chicks doesn't seem to bad, but there was something about it, maybe the extreme ego boost it gave him, that just rubbed me the wrong way. I didn't want to become that kind of guy, that arrogant. As is documented here on the blog, I have my fun with ladies, but nowhere near on the scale of PS uncle. I don't like drama, so I don't date more than one chick at a time. I've never cheated on anyone in my life (or, as is the saying amongst my peeps, I will cheat on board games or tests with no regrets, but never on another person). I didn't jump into what would've surely been a short marriage with MOC just because we had a child together, and that saved all involved a major headache. I guess this one is kind of a draw. I don't have an extreme aversion to manwhoring, but I'm not your typical, do anything in a skirt kinda manwhore either. Most people are taken aback when they hear the details of my manwhoring escapades because it doesn't quite fit with their view of a manwhore. The ladies have always been my weakness, and maybe they always will be. That's just part of who I am. But it's my choice to not let it become a matter of a different chick every day of the week.
You know when you become super aware of how much your childhood affected your adulthood? When you have a kid. The older they get, the more questions they ask and the more you realize they see and comprehend so much more than we give them credit for. Most of what I think about my uncle and father, I originally thought when I was just a kid. Miss N is 7 now (or almost 7 and a half, as she likes to say) and MOC and I hope that she doesn't remember most of the drama between us when she was really little. Once we both got ourselves on track, we agreed that the most important thing is raising our child to the best of our abilities. We're a family and even though we don't all live under the same roof, hopefully Miss N knows she has three people who would jump in front of a bus for her. I hope to be all loved up with my lobster sooner rather than later, but if that's not meant to be, I hope my not "settling down" doesn't have a negative effect on her. And I hope MOC and Gio's relationship has a positive effect on her. Someday she'll hear the story about mom's first husband, and mom's childhood and how she turned the whole thing around. I hope the takeaway from that is yes, our childhood plays a part in our adult relationships, but even if our childhood is negative, it does not mean we're doomed to fail as adults. We make our own choices and those choices dictate where our life ends up.

When She Leaves Your Ass, She Gon Leave With Half

A friend and I got into an interesting discussion about this cheater website that just had all of it's data leaked. I was surprised, and a little alarmed, that this friend found the type of thing the website was promoting, affairs between married people, to be perfectly acceptable "in some cases". Granted, this is coming from a fellow manwhore. However, he and I differ in how we handle our manwhoring. He's your textbook manwhore who doesn't care what a chick's situation is, as long as she's open to hooking up with him. On the other hand, I considered married folk to be totally off-limits, willing or not. Marriage is a super serious commitment between two people, not something that's thrown by the wayside when ish gets tough. If you're that unhappy in your marriage that you feel the need to seek excitement in the bedrooms of others, then get a divorce and then go do whoever you want. The friend sees it quite differently - as long as everyone (minus the spouse, of course) is a consenting adult, who cares who you sleep with? In his view, it's not his job to make sure a person stays faithful since he's not the one who took the vows. Whilst I understand that perspective, having been a position where I was cheated on, I can't fathom being involved in any behavior that makes someone else feel the way I did in the aftermath. And that was outside of a marriage, so the feeling when it's your spouse has to be that much worse. Further, I couldn't live with myself if I played that kind of part in the dissolution of a marriage. I mean, how do you hook up with someone, knowing they have a husband/wife and maybe even kids, and then just go on about the next day like it was a regular old fling? They go home and go back to happy family mode and you go on about your life and then ya'll do it all over again. I can't wrap my head around that. I think the reason I was surprised by this friend's view is because he's a relatively decent guy, even with the manwhoring. Good family, good morals (well, mostly) and would give his right arm to any of his loved ones who needed it. But we all have flaws. I'm just glad he's in something right now that doesn't involve infidelity in any way.

But The Kid Is Not My Son

Me: Psssh, who cares about that? What happens to the womensz after they leave my room is none of my business.

G: LOL. I get such a kick outta how you have impeccable manners, impeccable grammar and yet the shit that flies out of your mouth is some of the most offensive crap I've ever heard.

Me: LOL. Life is short, G. If I censored myself, we wouldn't be friends.

G: lol Word to your mother. And speaking of, don't flirt with my mom next week.

Me: I don't flirt with her!

G: Yes, you do. And the sick part is she flirts back.

Me: LOL

G: She asks about you all the damn time too, "Is Giuseppe going to help with the move?", "How is Giuseppe?"

Me: Don't be such a bitter bitch just because your mom likes me.

G: Shut up! She doesn't like you!

Me: I'ma marry her, don sweaters around the hearth at the holidays and make out with her right in front of you.

G: LMAO. Because it's entirely possible she's into that scenario, all I will say is I'm not calling you daddy.

Me: That's ok, she can do it.

G: LOL. I hate you, that's disgusting.

Me: lol I know, I hate myself for saying it too.

Hypocrite, Party Of Two

I never liked Jared from Subway, and I'm not saying that just because we now know he's a pedophile. No, my dislike of him stems from the fact that I always thought he was a liar. You lost all that weight eating Subway sandwiches everyday? Yeah, right. Bread, and especially the white bread the commercials always showed him tearing into, is full o' carbs and not super helpful for weight loss. So unless Jared from Subway's workout routine consisted of marathoning like a Kenyan runner, he did not lose all that weight on the Subway diet. And now he's headed to prison, where, "Give me a 6-inch" means something very different than what he's used to.

In the other corner of the news today, there's, once again, a Duggar scandal. A popular website designed solely for the purpose of facilitating extramarital affairs had it's data hacked over a month ago, and promptly paid big bucks to keep the information off the internet. But nothing gold can stay and the hackers released everything a few days ago, including names, email addresses, credit card info and the types of accounts people had set up. And whataya know, the pedophile Duggar just happens to be one of those whose info was released. In fact, he had not one, but two accounts set up and he paid close to $1,000 to set up and maintain them, the second account including a $250 guarantee from the site that he would definitely have an affair within three months or he'd get a full refund. Given that he continued on the site long after those three months, it's safe to say he probably had at least one affair during his time on the site. What's even more disgusting is that it would appear the only reason he took a time out from the site was because of the molestation scandal earlier this year. He stopped being active on the site around the same time the first scandal broke. Why would a cheater need two accounts? Because he moved from his hometown to D.C. to take a job with an organization that advocates against gay marriage, amonsgt other things. And god knows we can't let a little thing like moving with our wife and (at the time) two kids to spew hate speech to the masses stop us from having affairs, right?

2015 has been a helluva year when it's come to scandal, so far. I've written about how I don't understand why someone with so much to lose, like a Tom Brady for example, would risk it all for such stupid reasons. The man had a mess of championships already and was Hall of Fame bound and yet he thought it necessary to cheat for just one more ring. Similarly, I fail to comprehend why people in such public positions as Jared and Josh Duggar would risk their livelihood and their families futures for sex. The only thing I can compare it to is a junkie risking their life for one more high. Jared made the media rounds for years preaching about his Subway diet, the most recent (and, as it turns out, last) campaign including his family and talking about how much healthier and happier everyone is now that he's slim and passing on his good eating habits to his kids. And all the while he was trolling the internet with the head of his charity foundation to find teenage girls to have sex with. The Duggar case is a bit murkier since he and his family already fell from grace months ago, but the same basic concepts of risking it all for stupid and selfish reasons apply. While I obviously think the molestation is a terrible offense, and I did not believe he was as" rehabilitated" as his freakishly religious parents claimed, it makes sense that he was on a website like this, and it's almost right up there with what he did in his youth. He substituted hooking up with willing, unavailable women for fondling girls. In general, I don't believe affairs are on par with sexual assault at all, but in his case I say it's right up there because of his circumstances. He was in a relationship with a girl in his teens and when her family found out about his past sins, they promptly ended the "courtship". But his current wife's family were not so smart and charged ahead with a courtship, engagement and marriage, knowing full well what he'd done in the past and, perhaps, believing he had actually changed. Now, years later, his wife is left with nothing but the embarrassment of his molestation and now his (perhaps multiple) affairs. They have four young children now and because of how she was raised, she has very few options about what comes next. If she leaves him, she's single with four kids and likely zero child support since her husband is unemployable because of his earlier scandal. She also has no work experience since the cult she was raised in says women are supposed to be submissive housewives. I don't think she'd leave him under any circumstance anyway, but she couldn't even if she wanted to. Her and her family took a gamble in believing he'd been rehabilitated and they lost in grand, grand fashion. I feel sorry for the kids, not just for the way they have to be living right now, but down the road when they inevitably read all about dad's exploits (and btw, who goes on a cheating website and lists, "Conventional sex" and "Gentleness" as what they're looking for? Evangelicals can't even cheat right). 

Few things grind my gears like hypocrisy. If you're gonna get on your soapbox, especially in a very public position, and tell everyone else how they should live their lives, you damn well better not have a hair outta place in your own. Because if you do, especially in this social media age, it will come back to bite you. Jared's telling people how to get in shape and live their lives and be healthy and what's he doing with all his newfound health? Violating young girls. The Duggars became a damn phenomenon talking about their thrifty, never-in-debt family and preaching about how homosexuals are pedophiles, all the while hiding that their oldest son is engaging in a lot of the very behavior they preach against. Hell, that oldest son and his wife were constantly preaching about how great marriage was and how their marriage was so much better because they'd only ever been with each other. Gays were the devil and straight marriage was awesome and necessary. The only thing that could've added more gas to an already raging inferno would've been if he'd been trolling for gay affairs. And even without that, this is still a pretty big deal. It took just one of those highly touted 19 kids the Duggars were so proud of to bring down their entire carefully constructed empire. As the saying goes, for every finger you point, there are four more pointing back at you. 

People In Your Life, They Don't Know What's Going On

Crazy Aunt: Mijo have you heard of Ace Or Base? They're white
Me: ...Ace OF Base. And yes. Like 20 years ago.
Crazy Aunt: Haha. The look foreign, are they foreign?
Me: They're Swedish. Like a 90's version ABBA. But I bet they would reunite for a billion dollars. Unlike ABBA.
Crazy Aunt: Ooooh yeah. There must be real dirt there if they didn't get back together for that much money. I think that's a white people thing. Your Uncle K still comes to family events and we get along.
Me: ...I don't have an Uncle K
Crazy Aunt: Yes, you do. He was my first husband. This was way before you entered the picture.
Me: If I don't even know the dude, he's not my uncle lol
Crazy Aunt: You never knew your grandfather. He's still your grandfather. *drops the hammer*
Me: LOL. First of all, it's a mic you're trying to drop, not a hammer. This isn't the WWF. And second, he's my grandpa because of blood, not because some crazy woman married him into the family.
Crazy Aunt: Hey! I wasn't crazy back then. Just easy and boozy.
Me: lol Well lookie there, husbands come and go, but your easy booziness remains some 30 years later.
Crazy Aunt: LOL. Now try and tell me we're not related. You were me in your 20's.
Me: Yes. Yes I was. Hell, I still am.
Crazy Aunt: Welcome to the club, mijo.

Teach your elders to text others and they still need a tutorial every time they send a message. Teach your elders to text you and you get ish like this all day long. I heart her.

Every Turn A Surprise, Every Moment Red Letter

I just impulse bought an Xbox One. Then this happened.

G: Can I come over and play with your new toy, can I??

Me: No.

G: Come on, Giuseppe. Let me share that whole new world of gaming with you!

Me: lol Yesterday, A wanted me to share a whole new world of sex with a client. Ya'll are big on that phrase lately.

G: lol Hey, the only reason you get a seat at this table is cuz you pretty. Play to your strengths, yo.

Me: I can show you the wooooorld
Me: Bondage, S&M, sex tooooooys

G: LOL

Me: I can open your eyyyyyes
Me: Take you roleplay by roooooleplay
Me: Over, sideways and under you
Me: On a magic carpet riiiiiide

G: LMAO. Oh my god...
Me: A whole new woooooorld

Me: A new fantastic point of view

G: lol You can pervert anything, can't you?

Me: A whole new woooooorld

Me: Of dazzling positions you never knew

Me: I'll take you anywhere

Me: Let's do it on some stairs

Me: Let me share this whole new world with yoooooou

Me: *drops mic*

G: LMAO! Did you seriously just write all that off the top of your head right now?

Me: lol Yes.

G: That was fuckin' impressive.

G: What a shame you don't use your powers for good.

Me: LOL. And how.

Since You Been Away, I've Been Thinking Of You...

You know what's funny? How one simple comment or question can set you off in a certain direction. Someone asked me the other day what I would wish for if I had one wish available to me. If I could wish for anything in the world, what would it be? I didn't have an answer for the question, so she wondered out loud if I'd take back my accident, and I said I probably would not. Yes, the whole thing was a bitch and has left me with a lot of scars emotionally and physically, but I don't get to who I am now without all of that. Then, she asked if I'd take back the girlfriend's accident. And that's been on my mind ever since. It would've been easy to say that my wish would be to go back and make sure she didn't get in the car that night. That would be the easy thing to wish for, especially considering we don't actually get wishes in real life. But I don't think I would. I'm a strong believer in past lives and I feel like wishing to change either of our fates interferes with wherever we're supposed to end up the next time we circle this here rock. It would be selfish to wish for her back, in a way. In doing so, I may keep her from something better. I say all of that and it sounds like such a mature view to take of the whole thing, and certainly miles away from the view I had years ago. But whenever she's on my brain like she is lately...another part of me feels like I'd jump at the chance to have her back. Miss N is 7 now and, though she and the girlfriend obviously never crossed paths, sometimes she does or says something that reminds me so much of her. It's crazy. Loss it a bitch.

Sit Around And Watch The Tube, But Nothing's On

This one hurts to write. I'm about to mildly trash two shows that I once loved. In fact, I came across a post I wrote a year ago (but never posted) that praised these same shows for being edgy and constantly surprising viewers. Unfortunately, that's no longer the case and I've had to let one of these shows go. Life is hard.
As a film nerd, I tend to over-scrutinize nearly every movie or TV show or even music video that I watch. I have to really be grabbed by a show in order to become a loyal viewer and one of the things that keeps me in the fold is the presence of at least a couple of characters with redeeming qualities. I was turned on to "Scandal" by a friend who became addicted to the first season and soon found myself enthralled in all of its outrageous drama. For those not in the know, "Scandal" can best be described as a telenovela in English, set in Washington D.C. The writing is meh, the storyline is full of things that could never actually happen, and the characters are all over the top. Being that it's set in the heart of politics, you'd think it'd be hard to find someone with redeeming qualities on the show, but that wasn't the case in the first few seasons. There were some characters who you wanted to root for, and even when the story was ridiculously unrealistic, you just rolled your eyes and chuckled at the absurdity and waited for the next week's episode. Part of the reason for this is that the show itself was in on the joke. They weren't trying to become the next great thought-provoking drama and they were aware at how insane a lot of the narrative was. Plus, the acting was usually pretty solid and sometimes outstanding. Kerry Washington should've won an Emmy for her role years ago. But sadly, I don't think she'll be boarding the awards season train again anytime soon. Season 4 of "Scandal" straight up sucked. If ever there were a season of a show to define, "gurl, it was a hot mess", this last season was it. The storylines were not only absurd, but completely outlandish and none of them actually had a conclusion. It was like the writers either ran out of steam or painted themselves into a corner and just abandoned one story and started a new one, or threw the eternal will-they-or-won't-they drama that is Olivia and Fitz at us. And I just found it tiresome. You can only go back to the well so many times and I feel like they have beaten the dead horse that is Olivia and Fitz to death. I don't even care if either of them or happy anymore, or if they end up together. Marry them off or permanently split them and quit playin' games with my heart already, "Scandal". My biggest problem with this season was how they managed to suck the redeeming quality out of every single character. Huck used to be your not-so-friendly neighborhood assassin who wanted to go straight-ish, but now he's just a damn psycho who makes even more terrible decisions than he did when the government owned him. Fitz is the king of the hypocrites and his First Lady, once reliable for some hilarity, has gone MIA. And Olivia was almost completely re-written to be this pathetic chick who can't handle a damn thing. The thing that was always intriguing about her was that she could handle everyone else's business with ease, but not her own personal life. Now she's barely even a part of her own P.R. firm. And enough with her father being behind every door in D.C. - she has daddy issues, we get it. There's no need to have every man she ever beds and every case she ever handles lead back to dad. Sadly, it's because of all this that "Scandal" and I have called it quits. I was done halfway through the season but Y convinced me to finish the race and I can't say I would've missed anything had I not. Maybe the show rebounds next year, maybe not. But I don't really care either way.
"Scandal" and I were in one of those 'I wish I could quit you' kind of relationships. You know the type; you keep hooking up cuz the sex is just too damn good, but you hate yourself in the morning. "Scandal" and I were a fling. But "The Good Wife" and I...we were a legit couple, ya'll. I remember seeing the first promo for the show and immediately wanting to watch it, and the first season did not disappoint. It was so well written and the cases were quite clever, different from any other procedural on television, which is a tough feat to accomplish. Subsequent seasons were mostly good, but season 5 was just disgustingly perfect in its execution. It managed to pull off one of the most shocking plot twists in TV history, another near-impossible feat in today's social media, spoiler alert world. Given that the show is widely believed to only be scheduled to last for 7 seasons, you would think season 6 would be the set-up man and get us ready for the big farewell. Instead, we got what felt like a wasted season. One of the things I adore about "The Good Wife" is how it began by telling us one story, about a disgraced politician's wife who chooses to stand by him during a sex scandal, but has since evolved into so many other things. It hasn't done this by throwing that-could-never-happen-in-real-life stories at us, but by weaving together real world legal cases with the intricacies of the lives of its main characters. And there had been few missteps to this master storytelling prior to season 6. But then, well, then came season 6. I'm behind on a lot of my shows, but had seen some of the reaction to this past season of the show when it actually aired. Having finished binge watching it, I now realize why there was such an uproar within the fandom. It just didn't work. All season long, you saw so many storylines that you thought would end up in one place or another and at the end of it all, they all just fizzled. Much like "Scandal", it was as if the writers even bored themselves with the plot and decided to move on to another one. Alicia ran for office and we spent half the damn season on it, only to find out it was all for nothing. Her law firm went through yet another transformation, with more in-fighting amongst the partners, and for the second time in three seasons, we're led to believe Alicia is starting over yet again. I'm no lawyer, but I would have to think that any big money client worth...their big money isn't going to stay put at a law firm that can't decide who's in and who's out. No one with that kinda dough is going to risk putting their life or their business in the hands of a firm that changes hands almost every six months. And the constant shuffle is wearing on me. I'm tired of seeing the same handful of lawyers bicker over the same issues, then patch things up and be all Kumbaya again. Plus, we got no rhyme or reason this year as to why Alicia ran for office in the first place, and the fact that her ego grew ten sizes during her campaign did not endear her to anyone. Eli's smartass daughter was a welcome addition to the fold, but that's about the only good thing that happened all season. I'm also bitter at how they wrote Kalinda out of the show. She deserved a better role to play in her final seasons, but especially in the last episodes where she was very un-Kalinda-like. Though this year disappointed, I have no plans to break free of "The Good Wife". It's still one of my favorite shows and I feel like they'll get their ish together next year, especially if it's the last one. But it is a shame that both "Scandal" and "The Good Wife" wasted entire seasons on pointless plot lines.

The Good Whore

Me: So this will reaffirm my grammar nerdiness...
Me: I was watching "The Good Wife" and the main character was running for office, when her law firm's email accounts were hacked and the messages posted online for all to see
Me: Some of those emails were sext messages between her and her boss (mind you, she's married)
Me: The media went all cray cray, and her team chose to play it as being harmless flirtation and nothing more to minimize the damage
Me: People are going on about the sexually explicit stuff in the messages and I'm over here like, "But how does no one care that the grammar in that sexting is impeccable? Well done."
Me: Grammatically correct sexting is something I can respect, no matter the circumstances of the people doing it.
Friend: LOL. I can get down with that.
Me: lol That's when you know you're a true grammar nerd
Me: When proper grammar in sexting negates all other misconduct
Friend: (And a whore) lol
Me: But an educated whore!
Me: I'd pay extra for, "You like that, Babu?", instead of, "U like that Babuu?"
Friend: lol So would I. The errors would turn me off
Friend: I'd respond with corrections lol
Me: lol Get out that red pen, gurl

La, La, La, La, La

Me: Buy me a mansion.
Me: With a Starbucks, obviously.
Me: And a spare room for my womensz so I can avoid the awkwardness of the mornings after.
Me: Actually, just buy me Starbucks and a woman. I don't have a problem kicking them out the morning after.
Friend: lol Charming
Friend: Knowing you, you probably make them breakfast.
Me: lol That's what Carnation instant breakfast is for
Friend: lol Do you put it in a to go cup and throw it out the door?
Me: Nah, I says to them, I says, "Yo milkshake is on the dresser"
Friend: lol "My milkshake sends yo ass to the yard"
Me: lol And you like, "this ain't even a large". Damn right, it ain't even a large. I could supersize it, but the sex wasn't that good.
Friend: LOL "You weren't that large"
Me: lol How dare you! This is about the womensz shortcomings
Friend: Make me hungry, you awaken the sleeping bitch dragon
Me: La la la la la, blend it up, la la la la la, she be impatient, la la la la la, bitch hurry up, la la la la la, hey gurl don't hurt 'em
Friend: LOL
Me: These exchanges make life worth living lol
Friend: lol Don't they though? They escalate quickly

Full Circle

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Ok, well actually it was around 2003, so it was neither of those times. But it was quite a memorable time. I was just a young whipper snapper back then, trying to find my way to graduation after the accident(s) tried to derail my progress. It was in the fall of 2003 that I somehow fell into a new group of acquaintances, and how that happened, I'm still not sure. Though the exact details escape me, I do know that all 6 of these new acquaintances were chicks (of course) and the first time we all hung out was when I was invited to help vandalize their friend's car at midnight on a Wednesday (ah, college). Three of these people would remain only acquaintances to me, while the other three would become friends, to varying degrees. Two of them, JM and Jo, were sisters and it was actually Jo, the younger of the two, that I took a shine to first. JM came off as almost all mean girl and was very guarded about a lot of stuff. Jo was outgoing and hilariously inappropriate, which is right up my alley.
Jo was not a classmate of mine, was actually a few years younger than the rest of us, but we really hit it off and became friends. She was attending a different college a few hours down the coast and living in the family home, where JM often visited on the weekends. They were right smack in the middle of a family that included 9 children, the youngest being around 15 and the oldest being in their late-20's, and mom and dad were uber protective of the whole brood. Six of the kids still lived at home, but the others often came by to visit, often bringing along their friends to hang out at the house. In my colleges days, AOL instant messenger was the go to way to communicate and we all used it to fill that time when we should be like studying and stuff. Unbeknownst to me, mom and dad had an AIM account that they shared and, unbeknownst to JM and Jo, they had all of their children's buddies added to their own buddy list and would IM them at will. I found this out on a Saturday afternoon when mom randomly IM'd me with, "Who is this?". I always love when someone messages you and they're the one's asking who you are. I got the vibe that it wasn't a college friend and my suspicions were soon confirmed when she said she was JM and Jo's mother and had heard about me from her girls. She asked a few basic questions and then invited me to some BBQ they were having the next day and I declined, but later ended up going anyway when Jo decided to have a take back her power moment and outsmart mom at her own game. The party had mostly the group of chicks I'd fallen in with, and a few friends of some of the siblings, plus mom to supervise. She and I had a few moments where we talked, but I tried to keep near Jo and stay out of trouble. For some reason, mom terrified me (I'd heard some stories, ya'll). Later that week, I got another IM from the parent's account that turned out to be dad wanting to get to know me a bit, since we hadn't crossed paths at the party. He seemed much more laid back than mom and we found we had a few things in common during our brief convo. He thought I was funny (I made a crack about the Mrs., could've gone either way but landed as I intended) and basically gave me the okay to be a friend to his daughters. But the following Monday ish hit the fan in a major way.
If there's one thing that amused me, it was when JM and Jo were both sending me messages at the same time. Jo had no sensor, she'd talk about anything and everything in graphic detail, while JM would withhold certain details when telling the same story. A CIA agent, Jo could never be. Never was that more apparent than when she popped up on Monday afternoon with a story about how her parents were on a witch hunt for who left an opened, unused condom in a trashcan at the house. These were cool parents, but they were absolutely non-negotiable about sex before marriage, whether it was in their house or not. Dad was concerned, but not looking to bust skulls, while mom wanted the culprit's head on a silver platter and Fonz knows what she'd do if she found out someone had had sex. Jo was like a reporter feeding minute-by-minute information back to the news desk as she told me mom was putting the spotlight on all of the kids and all of their friends until she got a confession of who the condom belonged to. Which, of course, made yours truly a suspect. Jo ratted out just about everybody, saying she knew it didn't belong to JM or any of the teenagers in the house because none of them were sexually active. She thought one of the teens had probably opened one up to see what it looked like and then tossed it away and therefore mom was having a coronary for no reason at all. Still, she advised me not to answer anything her parents sent my way, like an attorney advising their client to exercise their right to remain silent. And I did...kinda. I went undercover for awhile, logging off AIM the minute I saw mom log on. I thought I'd beat the system for a minute there. But nope. Mom was waiting for me one day and started beating around the bush, asking about the nature of my friendship with her daughters and how I'd recently been to the house and that sort of thing. I cut to the chase and said it wasn't mine and I didn't know who it belonged to and got the third degree about how I knew about the incident at all and whether I thought premarital sex was appropriate (spoiler alert: apparently it's not). Fortunately, she had to go soon after and I was somewhat let off the hook. But that didn't stop me from being terrified when I saw mom's screen name pop up a few days later with, "Hey you little troublemaker" (turned out to be Jo messing with me). Eventually, it was discovered the condom belonged to one of the older children who had opened it up and tossed it after seeing it was expired. Shortly thereafter, it was finals week for us college folk and everything calmed down.
That was the last time I interacted with mom or dad. My partying took me out of that group of friends and into another one and, a year or so later, I graduated and left both groups behind. Jo and I reconnected via Facebook a few years ago and pondered the idea of dating for a minute, but ultimately opted to be friends instead. She married over the weekend and I begrudgingly attended. I didn't want to go because I wanted to get home to Miss N, but Y insisted we make an appearance. I hadn't seen or spoken to JM in at least a decade and she seemed blown away by everything I said; that I'm a father now, that I'm no longer king of the party people, that Y and I are still best friends. She was oddly interested in me, more than she was all those years ago. Mom seemed to have mellow a bit over the years, greeting me with a hug and wanting all the details about my fatherhood (I left out that Miss N was a result of premarital sex and I think she assumed I'm divorced). Interestingly, it was dad that things seemed a bit weird with. I'd decided to keep my distance from him when fate intervened. I didn't know any of the groom's side of things, but was still going to go to the bachelor party festivities until I found out that all they were doing was going to a strip club. I begged Jo not to make me hang with them all night and she agreed I could come to the bachelorette party "as eye candy", (leading to that awkward moment where you're mistaken for a stripper. That happens to everyone...right? *crickets*). But before that, they were going to dinner and I couldn't go to that. What's a lad to do? I was relegated to the house, putting together wedding favors with dad. And I found out that he thinks I deflowered JM when we were in college. It probably did not endear me to him when I literally laughed at loud at the accusation. I never even considered JM anything more than a friend and had actually been more interested in her best friend. Dad wouldn't say where he got his intel, but I told him I'd never even thought of dating either of the daughters I was friends with. That didn't go down well either and we sat in awkward silence whilst finishing our work.
I hadn't thought about any of this for eons, man. It's insane, and a little insulting, to think all that happened over ten years ago. And it's kinda funny to think about where we ended up now. Jo never finished her degree and just got hitched. JM was supposedly going to be hitched with three kids by now, but she's newly single, having spent years involved with a dude she started seeing while he was married. Mom thinks I'm a good guy, dad thinks I'm the devil. Life is funny that way. But it was nice to see all the key players again.

You Keep Telling Me Lies, But To Your Surprise...

*sigh* It's always sad when a couple you idolize decide to call it quits. Last year, a close friend of mine and her husband decided to divorce and it seemed so sudden. But they'd been discussing it for months before telling anyone else what was going on. It's true that the only people who ever truly know what's going on in a relationship are the people who are in it (and sometimes not even they know, am I right?). That's the way it should be, really. But with social media being what it is, that's rarely the case. My view is that the less you hear about a relationship on social media, the healthier and happier it probably is. In such an instant gratification kinda world, people take to Twitter or Facebook or Instagram to voice their displeasure about anything and everything, including their relationships. What we forget is that those posts are pretty much indestructible. If you're feeling some kinda way at 4 o'clock, but change your mind at 4:15, it's already too late to yank whatever nonsense you've put out there for the world to see. I witnessed this play out just recently with a few acquaintances. They've been together just over a year and moved into a house he purchased two months ago. She has a child and already had the kid referring to him as "dad". And then she issued an ultimatum just before he went on a work trip last week - propose before the end of 2015 or she would walk. Mind you, she is about five minutes out of her first marriage and he's a few years removed from a marriage and unsure he wants to dive into another one. They argued and it was left unresolved and he departed for his trip. The day after he left, she posted some cryptic tweets about relationships and starting over to Twitter, followed by an announcement that they had split up and it totally blindsided him. He was so pissed by how she went about it, he didn't bother to call her to try and patch it up, instead choosing to tell her to be out of his house by the end of this week. If she had any remorse, she hasn't show it and is already in the process of leaving the property. Something like that wouldn't have been possible prior to social media. They would've stewed for a week until he got back and then started talking again and if it ended, it ended. But sadly, these public declarations are becoming more and more the norm.
Social media played a part in the demise of another couple I just adore. I introduced them so many years ago and they married within a year, eloping to Vegas to do the deed. This was one of those couples that just seemed to click and effortlessly make things work, no matter what came their way. It was the kind of marriage I would want if I were into that sort of thing. Even after a dozen years together, they still adored one another. They went back and forth about having kids for years, a luxury afforded to them by having met and married so young. They're both only in their mid-30's and decided to try for a baby in 2014. When they weren't pregnant after nine months of trying, they went to the doctor to have everything checked out and discovered she couldn't have children. Their chance of conceiving a child naturally, or her carrying a child to term, were less than 1%. This upset both of them greatly, but it absolutely devastated her. In the year leading up to their decision to try for kids, she'd made some radical changes in her life, which included heading to AA to curb her drinking. She wasn't exactly an alcoholic, I'd liken her penchant for drinking to mine for drugs, but she wanted to be as healthy as possible for the baby. She did not start drinking again after they got the bad news, but she did pull away from him and the marriage. They were apart a lot for work and she began posting often to Instagram about her travels and the fun she was having, a departure from some of her previous posts about him and the marriage. He wanted to talk about other ways to have a child, and she went back and forth about it. She'd seem all in about the marriage sometimes, but then at other times she was totally disconnected and they wouldn't speak for days. They seemed to start patching things up around the holidays, but within a month they were back to being estranged and now she made it a point to include her left hand in nearly all her social media posts. And her wedding ring was absent in all of them. He gave several ultimatums, but she just did not care about anything anymore. And then a few weeks ago he said she needed to either be in or out and, if she gave no answer by the following week, he would file for a legal separation. That got her attention and she said she wanted to talk. But what she said was not at all what he was expecting. It turns out she had herself a one night stand with some random guy weeks after they got the news that they couldn't have a kid. And it's devastated her soon-to-be ex-husband. Despite all they were going through, he still adored her the same way he did when they married. He was convinced she'd come around, and she'd told him as much on many occasions. He even asked early in the year if there was someone else, or if there had been at any time during their marriage and she gave a resounding no. But obviously that wasn't true. He's dragging his heels a bit in filing for divorce as he copes with everything, but there's no doubt in his mind that it's over. The irony is that now she's beating down his door to try and work things out.
To say I was shocked when I heard about the affair thing is an understatement. I've known her for close to a decade and a half and in that time we've had many conversations about relationships and why it makes no sense to cheat. Yes, I'm sure she was super emotional in the aftermath of the kid thing, but that's no excuse. Marriage is a commitment and, grief stricken or not, making a choice to break that commitment...you get what you get. And lying about it for nearly a year certainly didn't help matters. I love them both, and I will continue to love them both, but what an unfortunate end to a fourteen year relationship. I can't imagine going from getting ready to start a family to being single again, all in the span of 18 months. And to still be in love with the person you have to cut loose...damn. I guess the only thing you can hope for is that they learned from it and that they both depart with a greater appreciation of whomever they may end up with in the future. *sigh*

I'm Keepin' Yo Baby

A few weeks back, a friend of mine tried to get me to be all Oprah book club with her and read a book about love language (the singles edition, even). I vetoed that, but it made for a discovery all the same.

Me: A feeeeew stolen moments stolen moments is alllll that we share. Yooooooouve got yo mama, and sheeeee needs you there. Though I tryyyyy to resist being laaaaaast on your list. No other woah-mannnnnn's gonna dooooooooooooo. So I'm saving all my donuts for youuuuuuuuuuuuu.
Friend: LOL
Me: I'm convinced my love language is rewriting songs for people lol.
Friend: lol It really is.

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Me: I don't know what's wrong with me. I'm fatigued and I've been abnormally hungry. If I'm pregnant, I'm gonna be sooooo pissed.
Friend: But what if it's mine?
Me: Then I'm keeping your baby. I'm gonna keep your baby, oooooooh.
Friend: lol
Me: Mama B, I know you'll be upset that I got knocked up by your little girl. But you should know by now, I'm having her babyyyyy. You ain't teach that gurl right from wrong. We need yo help, Mama B, be strong.
Me: Mama B, don't preach! We're in trouble, deep. Mama B, don't preach! Yo Jesus poster got me losin' sleeeeep. But I've made up my miiiiiind, IIIIIIIIII'm keepin' her baybayyyyy. I'm gonna keep her baybayyyy, ooooooooh.
Friend: LOL!