rabbit blog Friday, November 20, 2009 OPE FLOATS Just wrote about Oprah for Salon here. I love Oprah dearly. Oprah bestrides the narrow world like a colossus. A note to the woman who'd just had a baby and her husband was working long hours and not helping enough, turning her into a nag in spite of her best intentions: I've been thinking about your letter for months now. I first received your letter right after my own second baby was born, and I wasn't getting any sleep. I really wanted to answer that one, because you sounded depressed and desperate (understandable, of course), but I was too frazzled by the very new experience of having two little kids, which is a little bit like setting your hair on fire, then trying to run a marathon with a raw egg in each hand. Now, though, things are much calmer, I can't find your letter. If you're reading this and that's you, or you're reading this and that might as well be you, then please send me an email describing your situation, and I'll write back promptly with lots of rash thoughts and ill-considered advice -- although in this case I have been considering this problem for way too long. In other news, lately I've taken to scaring all of my friends who are trying to get pregnant with daunting tales of motherhood. Didn't I vow to never do that? And it's really such horse shit, because the first baby was actually relaxing and easy. It was October, the weather was beautiful, I took a few weeks of maternity leave, my mom was here, my husband took paternity leave, I wasn't writing a book, my dogs seemed to shed less back then. The second time, it was different. But now, dude, it is totally great. The baby is like a smiling teddy bear: Set her down somewhere and she stays there, smiling and banging stuff together. I guess she's more like one of those monkeys with the cymbals, actually. The other, bigger one is like a small circus bear. She twirls a lot and watches her dress flair out. She only eats white and yellow foods. She gets grumpy, but that only means you have to make up a song about something, and do a dance to go along with it. I'm a big fan of the Manic Distracting Idiot School of Parenting.In some ways, cocaine addicts would make spectacular parents. In other ways, not so much. Anyway, I'm ready to pass out some shitty advice to anyone who'll listen. Who has a problem for me? Stand up and be counted! And insulted, probably. And steered in the wrong direction. 2:44 PM Wednesday, September 23, 2009 CHEER Working on Chapter 9 of my book right now. "Who's got PMA out there right now?" the peppy cheerleading professional asked us in the high-pitched bark of a Jack Russell. By "PMA" he meant "positive mental attitude," of course. Just the mention of such an important bellwether of a cheerleader's essential vitality sent the whole camp into a nearly orgasmic demonstration of their unmitigated zeal for the day ahead, with some stepping forward out of the crowd here and there to more safely complete a toe-touch or round-off back handspring without kicking someone's teeth out, with girls searching their relatively uncluttered brains for some adequate means of demonstrating just how completely positive and totally overwhelmingly psyched they all were to be there, together, trampling the dew-covered grass as one in the premature heat of a summer morning. 2:15 PM Friday, September 18, 2009 BEST NANNY IN THE UNIVERSE So, your friend in L.A. is about to have a baby, or she just had one. She's not sure what to do about daycare. She calls you, sounding tired and worried. Or maybe she's too tired and worried to call. I have a special gift for your friend in L.A.! I have the phone number of the Best Nanny In The Known Universe. Juana took care of both of my daughters when they were very small. She understands babies. Babies understand her. Babies relax and smile in her presence, making it easier for their (far less understanding and patient) mothers to scurry off to their (often seemingly pointless and taxing) full-time jobs. Handing your baby over to another human being, whether it's a nanny or a daycare worker, can be totally heartbreaking. But if that human being is the Best Nanny In The Known Universe, it's not quite as difficult, because your baby likes her better than you. If you're strong enough to tolerate that fact, then I have the nanny for you. Also, if you hate the idea of having a nanny around, but like the idea of having someone who's really smart and self-possessed and low-key and capable, helping you out and taking care of your baby when you really, really need to take a nap or get a little work done or just leave the house for a few minutes, then, yes, I have the nanny for you. Settling for a half-assed nanny or a chaotic baby room staffed by overwhelmed, overworked caretakers is seriously depressing. It's like a trip to Disneyland: absurdly overpriced and totally soul-sucking. You know what's the exact opposite of that? Hiring the Best Nanny In The Universe. Email me (rabbit at rabbit blog dot com) and I'll give you her magic number. Lucky you! 10:12 AM Wednesday, September 16, 2009 SOGGY Chere Lapin, It's good to know that you southern Californians have escaped incineration by towering columns of hot gas that consumed the surrounding scrub-covered hillsides of creosote bush and sage. We need you, us sweltering southerners, in our too soggy to burn landscaping, termite feasts passing as houses and damp linen suits. You remind us that not everyone has to go around biting their lip while boorish co-workers go on about how "Joe Wilson told Obama what for." Just watch out for the mudslides when the rains come. But here in soggyland, I still have a problem, and not a pretty one. That of the dating 50-something. Our salt and pepper hair and firmly established careers (secured by golden handcuffs) are supposed to give us that air of serenity that comes with approaching mortality. But we have empty nests. And our exes have moved to other cities, leaving us free to mingle without the encumbrance of those icy stares. Yet dating is still pretty much the same game, in essence, that it was in the 9th grade. The one you like doesn't like you. Why do my calls go straight to voice mail? She's leaving town again this weekend. You get the idea. Here's to the hope that some rock hurtling through space will take care of this planet's human infestation. It's really the only answer that appears plausible at present. Soggy in Soggy Bottom Dear SISB, Since the rules of the game are the same as they were in the 9th grade, let me give you the same advice I'd give a 9th grader, since you've probably long since forgotten them, and since most people never learn any of them in the first place. There are lots of reasons she might not like you, and the vast majority of them have nothing to do with you. Sure, she might not like you because you smell, but she also might not like you because she's stupid. We always factor out the bad taste of the object of our desire. We desire them because we imagine that they have good taste, that they think the way we think, that they are special in a myriad of ways, subtle and sacred. But maybe this person just doesn't value smarts and a good sense of humor (assuming you have these things). Maybe you're dashing and sweet but she doesn't really go in for dashing and sweet. Maybe she prefers brutish and lumpy. And never underestimate how flinchy and unnerved most people feel, especially when they're older, when someone is giving them a lot of attention. Isn't this unnecessary? Shouldn't I just go it alone? His gaze reminds me that I haven't bothered to brush my hair today. Wouldn't I rather be eating a nice bowl of cereal in my soft pants? The existential angst sheds a curious, warped light on the whole question of dating. Do I want to put up with someone's bullshit for the few years that I have left? Not that you're THAT old in your fifties. But people are more suspicious. Maybe there's something in your ardor that feels a little bit desperate. Now, see, that's bad advice for anyone: Don't seem so desperate. I fucking hate people who tell you that. But I am desperate, you want to say. Who doesn't want love in their lives? Come on, motherfuckers! If the prospect of true love doesn't make you shake and sweat, what exactly is wrong with you? The sorry fact remains that people don't like people who are maybe too fixated on salvation via another human being. And unfortunately, the people who DO like people who are fixated on love are sometimes just a little off-kilter as well, a little depressed about impending death (or impending PSAT tests, if you're in the 9th grade) or the gloomy specter of continued loneliness. And there's nothing bad about that, necessarily. If you're a little gloomy, then gloomy may be your love match. I know I've dated a few torturously sunny men and to them, I was just one big overthinking bummer. That's no way to live. But I guess what I'm saying is, don't confuse other sources of depression or angst with loneliness. It's easy, as a romantic, to assume that you're down because you're lonely, when really, you're down because you have to make your peace with your place in the motherfucking universe. Personally, I would advise you to sign up for more of the sorts of activities, private and public, that address your growing need for solace and hope and self-soothing. I would make that your primary goal. And make dating more of a passing fancy, secondary to your personal trajectory as an individual. Also, it cannot be said enough: You have to exercise a lot. Not primarily to avoid a saggy ass (although that IS a noble goal), but to keep yourself upbeat in the face of old age, bad dating prospects, and ignorant rednecks. And exercise is the only cure for unnecessary swooning. It makes the mind less obsessive, less broody. Above all, remember: Rejection isn't personal. It always feels like the MOST personal thing, but it isn't. Often, people don't like you because they're not people you would be crazy about, either, if you got to know them a little better. Don't waste your time on people who don't like you or at least don't seem to be really excited to see you again. It's a big drag on your energy, and you deserve better. You're a fine young(ish) rabbit, rakishly draped in linen, composed and confident, unconcerned with the naysayers, undaunted by the sands slipping through the hour glass. You have faith in yourself, you are daring and witty, and you are destined for greatness, even now. Good luck out there, Mr. McSoggerson. I salute you! Rabbit 6:00 AM Thursday, August 27, 2009 TO BREED OR TO BROOD Rabbit: Damn. I turn my back for a few weeks and suddenly the childless whore is married with spawn? Obviously I've fallen down the rabbit hole into bizzaro world. It's really creepin' me out. But congrats. I guess. B Dear B, You think you're creeped out. Every morning I wake up and say, "Whose kid is that yelling and why doesn't someone do something about it so I can get some goddamn sleep around here?" Imagine my alarm when I realize that it's my kid, and not only that, there's another one in the next room, one that's smaller and soils herself every few hours, plus there's a man in my bed, one who seems just as alarmed and out of sorts as I am. Apparently this man and I are having the same crazy dream, only we're awake and it never ends. This morning, my dream involved waking up at 3:30 a.m. to feed a gigantic, bald baby, then waking again at 5:30 a.m. to pump breastmilk using a horrifying torture device that was nonetheless hauntingly familiar, as if I had used it many times before. After breast-torture came my alarming discovery of a 6-lane freeway of ants leading from under the dishwasher into the trash can in my "kitchen." Nightmare-style, I stood unawares, hand-washing the breast-torture attachments at the sink, and felt an ant crawling up my leg, only to look down and discover the 405 of ant superhighways racing under my feet (my bare feet, mothefuckers! My motherfucking BARE FEET, MOTHERFUCKERS!). I spent the next 2 solid minutes brushing ants, both real and imaginary, off my half-naked body while whispering "oh my god, oh my god, oh my god" under my breath, an admirable bit of restraint mid-panic-attack. Then I went into my "bedroom" and awoke my "husband" (still whispering "oh my god, oh my god"). Finally I was able to communicate using the words, "um, sorry, honey, but major, major ant catastrophe unfolding in the kitchen." See how like a "wife" I sounded? Like I said, creepy. After that, I tried to calm myself down by drinking some tea (not tequila) and I thanked my "husband" for handling the ants (instead of mumbling something cynical and ushering him out the door) and I fed the enormous baby again using only my breasts, also enormous. That part was cool. Then the bigger kid woke up and made a series of demands, but instead of telling her to go fuck herself I politely requested that she say please, then granted most of her stupid requests. It was fucking bullshit. Then I drove her to daycare and on the way there I saw a fire of biblical proportions raging in the hills, a column of brown smoke billowing into the already-smoke-filled, smoggy air, and instead of turning on some dreary music to match the apocalyptic mood, I spoke brightly to my child of the great wonder and excitement of firefighters fighting gigantic fires, and my child babbled happily about how she wanted a "little girl hose" so she could fight fires, too. That was patently stupid, but I trilled about what a great idea it was like a lobotomized baboon. Now I invite you to say that I've lost my edge. Please, tell me I've lost my edge, because what I'll say to you is that, rather than worry about losing my fucking edge, I pray to the merciful imaginary gods above that they will take away my edge forever and ever, because my edge doesn't do shit for me anymore. Maybe my edge mattered when I was a childless whore and therefore had to the time to fumble through enormous bins of cds at indie music establishments or to read interesting shit or to ponder big questions while sipping on icy coffee concoctions with my idle friends. But these days, my edge is just something that gets in the way. My edge sets my fucking teeth on edge when I'm vacuuming quickly before I do another load of laundry before I get to work on my column before I finish revising the third chapter of my book before I walk the dogs before I pick up my "child" from daycare. My edge makes me angry and tired and makes me wish I could lay in bed eating cookies and reading bad magazines like I used to. I would rather be devoid of edges. I would rather be round. Rounder. So yeah, I'm creeped out, too. But I still have my edge, and some little sharp, sticky, jagged, rusty part of my edge, the edgy edge of my edge, feels strangely compelled to tell you to fuck yourself, with your "you creep me out" horse shit. You creep me out. So there. I'm not nearly grown up enough to deal with how grown up I am, and neither are you. That makes us equally creepy. So congrats. I guess. Rabbit 10:26 AM Tuesday, July 21, 2009 TWUNKER This is what I want to do. Not tweet (a terrible verb that makes me feel like I'm coated in dirty fryer oil every time I say it), not twat (twittering for long-winded women) but twunk. I want to write 500-word updates and post them on Twunker. Instead of stepping daintily onto your Twitter home page, they land with an ominous THUNK. The sound that tells you you're thinking too much again. Sorry, thunking too much. No, I mean Twunking too much. But what else can you do at 4 a.m.? Meanwhile, you'll be happy to know that my smug Get Up To Write At 4 A.M. plan backfired when I quickly stopped going to sleep at 9 p.m. on the dot, which meant that I quickly started getting upwards of five (5) hours of sleep a night, enough sleep to careen wildly into R.E.M. territory, only to wake after the first disturbing dream about trying to treat your blonde dog's very bad sunburn, which she never got before but which clearly proves that you're an irresponsible asshole. Is R.E.M. sleep designed to wake you up in the middle of the night? How is that adaptive, demon gods of sleep? Anyway, soon after getting 5-6 hours of sleep on a regular basis, punctuated by waking babies and marathon 12-hour writing sessions and frenzied trips to daycare and to the grocery store for sliced ham to feed the children and animals, I developed walking pneumonia. Apparently it was there since the aftermath of my bout with Swine Flu(TM) (not an officially verified case, since my HMO politely instructed me to die at home), a secondary infection that took the opportunity created by insufficient sleep, too much stress and too much heartfelt pondering of the significance of Michael Jackson to fill my lungs with something... well, suffice it to say that you can cough up things that send you to the interwebs in search of a diagnosis real quick-like. On the interwebs, I learned that I had Mycoplasma Pneumonia. I probably should've told that to the people at Urgent Care, who, seeing my devil-may-care, casual attitude (It's just an act, damn it!) put me at the bottom of their priority list. I was told I would wait for 45 minutes then waited for three hours in the waiting room, inquired politely about the wait, was sent to a room and waited for another hour and a half, began weeping openly to anyone who wandered by, was consulted by a doctor who couldn't remark on whether or not a 4.5 hour wait was typical, was given a chest X-ray, then more waiting, other patients coming and going, chickens wandering by, etc. and then, my diagnosis: Mycoplasma Pneumonia. Doctor: You have what we call walking pneumonia. Me: Mycoplasma pneumonia? (Not trying to be a smart ass, just wanted to make sure it wasn't viral.) Doctor: Exactly! Well! You don't need me at all! Me: Is it really adaptive to state the obvious like that, six hours after I walked into this fucking hell hole? But doctors aren't concerned with their survival the way writers are. They know that we'll be at their mercy forever and ever, and there's nothing we can do about it. Mmm. I wish I were a doctor. To wield that sort of power, willy nilly, over weakened, helpless strangers. Delicious. Yes, yes. I know that they see a trillion patients a day. My doctor friends tell me all about the suffering of doctors-- as they're luxuriating between their one-million-thread-count sheets in their gigantic houses as their staff of 3 scurries hither and thither, picking up toys and fixing healthy snacks for the populace. Anyway, I had pneumonia and a shitty cold on top of it, so I stayed in bed for two weeks, wimpering, while my husband ran around the house picking up toys and fixing healthy snacks for the populace and also wimpering. Now my husband has a shitty cold with some fierce bronchial side effects that leave him hacking and hacking all night, which would be sad if not for his unnerving lack of empathy for MY illness (which admittedly had something to do with the number and variety of beverages I seemed to require per hour, prepared to my very rigorous specifications), which he has been loudly regretting since he fell ill. ("Oh my god, I feel sooooo bad for not understanding Just. How. Bad. you felt." "Yes, when I say I feel terrible, I really do. I'm not, um, let's see... A MAN.) (For you young ladies out there who don't know it yet, men are horribly wimpy about sickness. Little known fact among the young. When women get very sick, they sally forth and make themselves sicker. When men get a sniffle, they take to the bed like frail old ladies and whine piteously for days. Accepted, established empirical fact among married women, one that casts a serious shadow of doubt on the usage of the phrase "To Man Up" as in "You need to man up and deal with your shit." Hmm, meaning you need to take to your bed like a wilty little hothouse flower?) So I felt terrible for weeks, and sweet Jesus, it was depressing, too. Having little kids and getting very sick is like entering some extreme alternate reality where you're just a bad, bad person and even though you're so sick that you feel like you're losing your sanity half the time, you're also deeply unnerved by the dustbunnies on the floor and the needy look in your two year old's eyes, which indicate that you're a failure as a mother and as a human being. I know, beleaguered mothering tales are just boring, I fucking agree one hundred percent. But cut me some fucking slack, I was in serious distress for something like two weeks there. Thus, I spent two weeks feeling awful. Then I spent a week feeling exhausted and breaking into a cold sweat every time I so much as vacuumed the rug. This week, though, I feel close to normal. That's why, when I woke up at 3:30 a.m. after a dream about getting way too drunk in a distant city, losing my shoes and my two dogs, and begging strangers for help, I felt relatively well-rested and very thankful that I hadn't coughed up my spleen the night before. Feeling so good, I thought the clock said 5:30 a.m., so I snuck out to the living room to write and didn't discover the real time until after the kettle was already whistling. So, do I go back to bed and lay there, psychoanalyzing my nightmare like a dyed-in-the-wool overthinker/thunker/Twunker OR do I twunk about my stupid life right here? Well, now you know what a bad decision-maker I am, which explains why I ended up with fucking pneumonia in the first place. And by the way, I do recognize that you can't possibly care about such trivialities. But look, it's 4 a.m., I've just recovered from a serious illness, and I just had a very bad dream, a dangerous trifecta of factors, each of which cause extreme self-involvement. I can't merely tweet (oof!) about it. I have to twunk. THUNK! (That's the sound of your enormous thought-turds hitting the interwebs.) See, Twitter is anxious and vaguely neurotic and it only leads to MORE Twittering. Twunker is cathartic and restful. Now granted, no one has any followers. But it's worth it! 4:05 AM Friday, July 10, 2009 ALL THAT YOU HAVE IS YOUR SOUL Dear Rabbit, My boyfriend and I broke up. It's been close to 3 years living together and he ended it. Why? well, the story is long and sad and I will give it to you as best I can because really, I need help because I am lost and alone in a foreign country. I am 30 years old and my boyfriend is 31. I moved to Mexico close to three years ago, alone, and began working at a university here. I met a wonderful, ambitious, determined Mexican man, a chemist, who I quickly fell in love with. Many years and memories have past since we first met and in the past 8 months we began making plans to get out of our current job in Mexico. We had our options. He applied to a post-doc program in Spain and I applied to PhD programs in the USA (all schools with excellent polymer chemistry programs so that he could also continue to study should this be our choice on where to go). Our plan was to weigh our options, see what would be the best fit for us both to be together, and move on together. Why not? We have had a great relationship. Aside from a few speed bumps the first few months we got together things had been great. We almost never fought. We took great vacations together. Shared warm nights and days lackadaisically walking through sun drenched plazas. He became my best friend, my lover, my companion and confidant. Well, I guess in hind sight it wasn't all perfect. He had a lot of hang ups about sex, he never said I love you, never really could muster up any sort of feelings more than a neutral gaze. I realize now that really I was the one putting forth most of the effort in the relationship and he sort of sat back and let me control the reigns until something better came along. Well that something better came along when he was offered the post-doc position to study in Spain for the next 2 years. With that came secrets, lies, untrue intentions, and the sorrow that I am currently in. See, we HAD been planning on him taking the scholarship he won from the Mexican government to study in the institute in Spain to UMASS, Amherst (the number one polymer chemistry program in the United States and I would work on my PhD). This had been what WE had been talking about for over the past 6 months. Me: "Eduardo, what are we going to do? I am scared." Him: "Don't worry, I will try. Just be patient." WE WE WE WE WE WE WE WE WE WE WE WE WE WE WE WE WE WE WE WE WE Cut to us in bed one week ago in a sleepy little village overlooking a busy indigenous market in Oaxaca City. Eduardo is reading a newspaper where decapitated heads of police chiefs hang bloody on a wired fence. Headlines read drug cartels. dead civilians. famous beach resort sprayed with the blood of passer bys. kidnappings. rape. death. Me: "Eduardo, I have to leave Mexico. I miss my family. I am scared to continue living here. This situation is only going to get worse. You have to call about the scholarship. There is no more time to wait. We only have about a month left of the semester." Him: "Ok, I will call about switching the scholarship tomorrow." Well, tomorrow came and went and no call. Another day came and went and no call. Finally he calls about transferring the scholarship. He gets the news that he can not switch the scholarship and then a long night of his I don't knows, and I need to think, and I don't know if I love you followed. It took me by surprise because really, I didn't think that this was going to be the cause of the end of us. We have had a great relationship, or so I believed. That night I slept uneasy, not sure the state of things between he and I. Not sure if I were ready to say to him "Yes, I will forget about me. I will follow you to Spain. I will be your housewife. I will only care about you and your career." In the manias that followed my emotions that next day I went to his laboratory during the work day and told him I wanted to talk. That I would sacrifice all for him because he and what we had were all worth it. When inside his office he left to use the bathroom and I just happen to see a bit of information sitting on his desk. What was that information? It was his visa application and supplemental materials for Spain. He had a doctor's physical and test results dating June 2 (over a month ago he had acquired this), a police report of his crimeless past with fingerprints, money deposited into the bank account of the Spanish embassy for the visa, copies of official credentials, etc...All of this work, all of this collecting of material and organizing of documents was done months in the past. He had told me none of this information. He had told me on many occasions he had to visit the bank or the grocery store but in reality he was going to the doctors, or police, etc...to get things going on his visa. He had been planning all of this months in the past. Behind my back. Without the intentions of 1. coming with me to the USA or 2. me going with him to Spain. He had decided who knows how long ago, that this relationship was convenient enough for him here in Mexico but that that would be it. 2 years and 6 months of building a life together and that was it. Spain and his career was more important than being open and honest with me. What gets me most is that for the past several months he had been telling me WE....but really it was I. I who was worried about out future together, I who was researching post-doc positions for him in Amherst, I who was researching jobs for me in Spain, I who was doing apartment searches both in USA and Madrid, I who was looking at visa regulations for me to live in Spain or him to the USA, I who was constantly preoccupied with what was going to be OUR future, our new life together, our relationship. And he was planning to leave without me anyway. Well, days and discussions pass and all he can muster for an excuse was that for the past four month he had loved me less. Which, I had no sign of THAT. We visited my family in the USA during that time, had taken a vacation to a tropical island together off the Mexican coast, made love, cooked dinners, didn’t have any serious discussions, talked about the idea of a future together. I had no idea. My heart is broken and he can must no other words than I'm sorry. He was my best friend. My companion. My partner. My team. My love. Now I feel he could break me in half with one touch of the hands that once held me in his arms like I was the more delicate thing in his world. So now I am returning to the USA in a week. Yes, I am going to start my PhD and live my life alone again. I am writing to you Rabbit because I do not know how to get over this hurt. I do not know how to believe that the man I loved could do this to me. Could just leave me. Once I return to the USA and he for Madrid it will be like he doesn’t even exist anymore. Like he died. He is a very stubborn man and I know he will not call. He will not write. He will meet beautiful women in Spain and forget me. Forget what I considered the most special relationship I’ve ever had. I have one more week in Mexico and really, other than Eduardo, I have no one here. I am alone. I have been calling family and friends but it’s not enough. I do not know how to forget this. There were no problems I thought we couldn’t handle. No break up I saw coming. I feel like someone sucked out his soul and replaced him with this unfeeling, unemotional entity because I do not understand how he can just walk away from us after all of the times we had together. Hope you can reply, Lost and Alone in Oaxaca Dear LAAIO, Although you might feel like you wasted a lot of time with this jackass, let's review the things that you did right over the past three years: 1) You didn't marry him or have his kids 2) You kept your job 3) You had some new, interesting, intense experiences abroad, that overall, you really have no reason to regret as far as life experiences go 4) You secured a spot in a PhD program in the states 5) You didn't give it all up to move to Spain with aforementioned jackass. Now, these things might not seem all that great or that important. You might not feel that grateful for any of the above at the moment. However, in five years when you're married to someone who isn't a soulless jackass (and make no mistake about it, this ex of yours has no soul), you'll look back and say, "Sweet Jesus, at least I didn't marry that guy," and also "I'm so glad I'm having kids with my husband and not with that soulless freak" and also, "Christ, imagine how lonely I would've been living in Spain, as that strange, heartless man's little woman, without a career or a life to speak of." It will be nice to be with a man who actually has a soul. And you'll see that any relationship created with someone who can't talk about his feelings isn't a relationship so much as a fantasy created out of thin air through sheer force of will. You're obviously someone who can create things out of thin air – you're resourceful and you get the job done. But imagine how nice it'll be to apply that energy to someone who actually appreciates it. Make no mistake, though, it's good to have gone out with jackasses. Because every time you look back and you think, "Wow, I could've been married to that jackass," you'll feel warm and happy inside. Seriously. You may feel very alone, but you won't be for long. You don't know this about yourself yet, but when it comes to love, you settle. Don't worry about how long you'll be alone. Worry about enjoying this time, because it'll be over before you know it. And worry about trying not to settle for less than you deserve again. You'll get the life you want. You will have romance and good things in your life. You don't have to worry about that. What you need to worry about is making good, lasting friendships and creating a life that you wouldn't bail on for some soulless jackass. You spent the last three years filling up your life with one person who turned out to be a serious freak. Don't put someone at the center of everything until they've proven that they take that responsibility seriously, that they're mature enough to handle it, that they're real. Don't do all of the work next time. Don't create anything. Sit back and see what happens. And make sure that, even if you were to get left behind again, you wouldn't feel completely alone because you'd have a life outside of the relationship. It's common, at 30, to shut out the rest of the world and focus on one person. But once you do that a few times, you realize that it doesn't work that well, it's not healthy, and it won't make you happy even if the relationship is great. Again, you're in a good place: You have a great reason to move back to the US, you're getting a PhD instead of following some asshole to Spain, and you're about to start a new life. Him dumping you was the best possible thing that could've happened to you. Getting over the heartache is sort of like being sick for a while: You just have to wait it out. Time passes, you get better. You know that you'll get better, so why make it worse than it has to be? Don't freak out about how alone you are. You're less alone now than you've been for the past three years. You're young and you'll get exactly what you want soon enough. Take care of yourself, relax, be open to meeting new people, and pay attention to whether or not they have souls. At this point, it will be obvious. This is the gift of the soulless man: A newfound sensitivity to soul. Use it. Best of luck, Rabbit 4:30 PM Wednesday, June 24, 2009 CHICKEN LITTLE, CHICKEN SHIT, TASTES LIKE CHICKEN... I'll go ahead and admit it now. Twitter is inspiring me to write more and post more to this (somewhat dusty, borderline pathetic) blog. Of course, I'm also waking up at 4 in the morning like all of the best poets and writers always say they do in "Poets and Writers." And since I got up so goddamn early this morning, I actually have time to tell you a little story about myself, boys and girls. Back when I never wrote shit, I would read those long interviews in "Poets and Writers," where the poet or writer in question blathers on about how he/she wakes up before dawn to pick coffee beans off the... vine? Bush? Then grinds them into a... paste? Fine powder? And then brews them? Snorts them? Then goes for a quick five mile walk? Sprint? Then, after a shower? Bath? He/she settles down and handcuffs him/herself to his/her desk? Stockade? And writes exactly five? Nine? Twelve hundred? pages of his/her novel/poem/essay, after which he/she makes pasta by hand, naps for several hours, makes sweet love to his/her muse (usually the muse is Italian, or a preteen), drinks a huge jug of Chianti, falls asleep and awakes in a pool of his/her own vomit, etc. The point is that those goddamn poets and writers made me think that I had to wake up super fucking early to be a poet and/or writer. This made me mad, because I wanted to continue to drink beer/wine/spirits and get high on weed/crack/meth/life each night until the wee hours. But, here's the thing. It turns out that once you're old and crusty/fat/disgusting/gross/boring you don't have anything to do but run around in circles, stuffing laundry in the washing machine, wiping little asses, buying big boxes of cereal, etc. and you tend to go to bed early because all the little motherfuckers who live in your tiny house with you tend to awake just after dawn, which means that you have to wake up before dawn in order to think straight and not beat them with your bare fists when they make you mad. It also means that you don't choose when to go to sleep so much as collapse at some point and regain consciousness several hours later in a puddle of your own drool. Yes, getting old/crusty/fat/disgusting/gross/boring is awesome. You heard it here first. Anyway, back to the point. Hmm. The point. Oh yeah, something about getting up early to write. So, once you dry off the drool and feed your infant from your (enormously large) breasts, you tiptoe through your (unnervingly tiny) house so as not to wake any of the little motherfuckers (or big dogs), and then you crouch in the dark, tapping away at your fucking computer, as if you're some kind of an actual writer, like the ones you used to read about back when you were young and sexy and still smelled good and still occasionally got fall-down drunk on boxed wine and insulted everyone within a thirty-foot radius. That's right, you've grown up to be just as stanky and irrelevant as those old coots in that creaky, outdated print publication you once treasured and squeezed to your (tiny, flat) bosom, perhaps hoping that their inspired (see also: sad, pathetic) way of life might rub off on you! See how I employ the second person (you) in order to leave the first person (me) the hell out of it? That's a neat trick I learned when I became an actual, real, certified, official writer, which happened when I (you) started waking up at 4 a.m. every morning (see also: 2 weeks ago). So screw Twitter. Twitter can't take the credit for this one, like it tries to do with everything else! This one is all mine. 3:09 PM Tuesday, June 23, 2009 BAD JOB, BUDDY Today I'm looking back on all the shitty jobs I've had: Gap customer satisfaction associate (Would you like some socks to go with that shirt?), Applebee's hostess (Would you like a Megarita to go with that Tater Skin Platter the size of your head?), apartment painter (Why do I keep waking up in this freshly painted room with sharp headaches?). The alienated work scenarios go on and on and on. I created cartoons to lighten up job training handbooks for Wells Fargo employees. Ana Marie Cox was once my boss. Honky career trajectory extraordinaire. But when will I own the means of production, goddamn it?!! 4:02 PM Friday, June 19, 2009 MILKING IT Producing enough nourishment (bonus: in your gigantic breasts) to feed a small human is an immensely satisfying and enjoyable part of being a mother. It is also as time-consuming as a part-time job. If you already have a full-time job (say, writing about tv for an online magazine) and another part-time job (say, writing a book about your insane childhood) and you have another small human (one named Tinkerbell who goes boneless when she's told she can't eat Cheezits for dinner), then nursing and pumping and pumping and nursing can be more than a little exhausting. Yes, it is satisfying to create food out of thin air, enough food to feed a tiny African nation. Yes, it is rewarding to have enormous tits. But make no mistake about it, breastfeeding isn't just a hobby. It's a career. A career that sometimes requires you to duck into a closet, attach suction cups to your (huge) tracts of land, and relax to the gentle strains of "awoooonga, awoooonga, awoooonga," all the while hoping that no innocent human wanders in and is instantly scarred for life. At a time when my (big, large, gigantic) breasts are producing more milk than most small organic dairy farms. I take solace in reading "Blacktating", a blog about lactating by a woman of color, a woman of color who makes me wish I were a woman of color, too, so that I, too, could blacktate. We could blacktate together, and call each other sister and shit. Oh, how very sad it is to be a tragic honky and not a beautiful black woman (with enormous, gargantuan breasts)! Here's The Blacktator herself on a subject I was just stewing about this very morning: "Most men who are successful and wealthy and have kids have a wife at home who is holdin' it down, cooking, cleaning and raising the kids. Women at the top of their games either don't have kids or have a husband who is a stay-at-home dad." Am I completely crazy for only recently having noticed that most mothers who work (hard) and feed their children (from their massive breasts) are going completely crazy? Why, just this morning I was away from the house, writing great stuff, on a roll, really feeling it, and then... I had to rush home and pump (nourishing breastmilk) (out of my big, big, big boobies). How inconvenient! And yet, it's truly awesome, having (extra large) jugs full of (free) milk. Taxing, time-consuming, impossible, but awesome. Lactating in a nutshell. (I'm sure blacktating is even better.) 2:30 PM Thursday, June 18, 2009 I SURRENDER! I'm not a joiner, I'm not a team player, but here I am on Twitter. What do I do now? Any suggestions? What's so good about this fresh hell anyway? I'm experiencing a rare rush of open-mindedness, so please, enlighten me. 11:07 AM Thursday, June 11, 2009 LIFE IS TWEET Twitter is the curse of the modern age. You heard it here first -- or you would've if I had twittered it or tweeted it or whatever the fuck. Look, I just want to warn you that I may be twittering soon, but don't fucking blame me for it because it's not my fucking fault. Personally, I think twitter is the stupidest streak of ass-hattery since hot wings (goddamn it I hate hot wings!). Here's what I don't understand: Why should the writer, a beast made to exist alone, in the dark, stinking up some sorry corner of the world with only his or her bad head to guide him or her, be asked to fire off half-baked thoughts around the clock like some drunk talk show host? Why? Why would we want the writer, dull know-it-all that he or she so often is, to go and pollute our lives with his or her steady stream of opinionated tripe? What scary state of affairs is this, that the jackassery of a nation of blowhards must be broadcast hither and thither just so everyone's "brand" can be "built"? Bad enough that I jumped on the web early (like every third jerk on the streets of San Francisco in 1995) and jumped on the blogwagon in the pioneering days (like every unemployed writer in the universe in 2001). I don't want no part of this goddamn chaotic twittering buffoonitude! Soon, people won't even have to type to twitter, because they'll have hands-free, voice recognition set ups that allow them to broadcast the sorry contents of their empty heads to the entire globe around the clock. Mine would go like this: I want oatmeal cookies. I need a nap. Who's on Oprah today? Yes, that will really help my brand a lot. What's for lunch? Where am I? I want cookies. 12:31 PM Thursday, May 28, 2009 JUST SAY NO TO HUGS Brace yourselves, parents. The new trouble with teenagers today isn't texting or lipstick parties or even MySpace predators. It’s hugging. According to the New York Times, teenagers don't say hi or nod or high-five anymore. They don't even wave or yell whassup? or wink or smile. They hug. Silently. What's even more disturbing, though, is the way they talk about it. “We’re not afraid, we just get in and hug,” offers Danny Schneider, a high school junior who the Times reporter does not describe as emotionally unstable or a social outcast. Apparently teenagers today view hugging as an act of real courage. Like middle-aged couples at a yoga retreat or fragile twelve-steppers, teens go around hugging each other – warmly, affectionately, sincerely, like they mean it -- all day long. What the hell is wrong with them? What ever happened to far more respectable teen past times of rolling houses or sniffing airplane glue? What ever happened to getting drunk on brandy pilfered from your friend's dad's liquor cabinet, then puking all over his brand new couch? Bad enough that texting "ROTFL" has replaced rolling on the floor groping a pubescent boy you've hardly spoken to before. But now hugging has replaced shooting heroin? I'm just not sure I want to live in a world where teenagers are too busy embracing to drive around town beating each other's mailboxes to smithereens with baseball bats. Do these kids really imagine that hugging is a suitable replacement for sticking their tongues down each other's throats? Don't they realize that an embrace will never lead to premature pregnancy or STDs, which build character in otherwise naïve, overly optimistic young people? “Touching and physical contact is very dangerous territory,” Noreen Hajinlian, the principal of George G. White School who banned hugging two years ago, told the Times. Hajinlian, like many school administrators, sees these impromptu outbursts of affection as roughly akin to, say, drinking a 40-ouncer of Schlitz Malt Liquor one night and unknowingly diving into an empty rock quarry. It seems that, for today's teachers and school officials, hugging in the hallways is a lot like huffing spray paint, then riding your cousin's Yamaha motorcycle down a gravel road to see if you can make it fishtail. Personally, I'm not worried about these kids' safety, I'm worried about their self-respect. "We like to get cozy,” Katie Dea, an eighth grader in San Francisco told the Times reporter, who didn't describe her as wildly delusional or a hopeless misfit. Get cozy? Can she be serious? Wait a minute. Get cozy. We're not afraid. Maybe heroin is making a comeback after all! That would certainly explain a lot of the hugging out there. Yes, that has to be it! There's not a hugging epidemic, really, it's just that teens nationwide are wandering the hallways of their schools in a dope-addled haze! Ah, now at least I can sleep at night. 11:53 AM Saturday, May 09, 2009 THE MOTHER WHITE MEAT Happy Mother's Day! A day just for customer satisfaction representatives like me! I can't tell you how gratifying it is for a customer relations expert like myself to see my rapidly growing client base voice its appreciation for my expanded service capacity initiatives! Naturally, my clients don't recognize all of my external responsibilities -- writing this NPR piece about advancing new models of customer service, this Salon piece about the how, if the world were run by mothers, people would live in peace and harmony and there wouldn't be little socks all over the goddamn floor, and of course, a Salon recap of the Dollhouse finale -- but that's because I'm always implementing more immediate client need-based initiatives, such as manufacturing and distributing nourishment to my smallest customer base, or helping Cinderella use the potty. 4:00 AM Thursday, May 07, 2009 HELP, I'M LAZY! Dear Rabbit, Ok, I have been reading you for years and never thought I would write to you. We are probably the same age, and both worked in the Internet insanity of the late 90's while enduring the insanity of our mid to late twenties. We both wondered how our lives spent tied to a computer screen could be tarted up to look so glamorous to the casual observer.  We both lived through the bust we all knew was going to happen. We both got married, somehow got a piece or two of real furniture. Anyway this is why I am turning to you, a stranger to me, and yet someone I recognise, to ask the most personal and specific question a girl can ask. Should I have a baby?  or maybe just asking you how you decided YOU should have a baby. I know, I should ask my friends, but they fall into three camps. There are ones who have. They are no help, they want me to join their little club, even though all they talk about is how hard it is. And how I can't possibly understand their lives. Then there are the ones that do not want to procreate yet and probably won't ever, they want me to stay free and easy so they have someone to call at a moments notice to help them hang curtain rods or cook a roast or go to a show.  Of course the ones trying to make the same decision and we are useless to each other. We are on the same merry go round. Saying: "My life is awesome, why mess it up with a baby and yet I yearn to share this wonderful life with a baby" one second, "omg, i want babies so bad, but it's like jumping off a cliff" the next. Then there is my husband who feels just as ambivalent as I do, I think he secretly wants me to drive this decision. Oh and my parents, they would never tell me what to do. What i know is this, my mother has depression, she tells me how hard having a child was, but that i brought her so much fun and joy. My dad wants a grandchild but tells me, you need to make this decision on your own. They live across the country anyway. We were all set to start trying. Then I had a meltdown. I hated my job so badly, I felt depressed to be still coding websites for guys who liked to get on their computer and work at ten pm to 2 am,  and to keep having to pretend it was all so exciting, keeping up with the latest trends and coding coolness. The thought of being this exhausted and down and then going home to be with a baby made me cry. literally. in public no less. I am a people person, not a coder. I tried different things to try to break out but finally I quit to figure out how to merge my passions with a paycheck, I had a bit of savings, and have contacts for freelance work. I of course had no plan. And in some ways though it  doesn't look like it, it has been a productive year. I have figured out how to have a "life" and not just a way to fill the time between work. Since I have been working in the explosive too much or too little way of contract work. I realised it's me and not just the job that made me unhappy. I have learned how to take care of myself, how to keep myself satisfied if not happy, and how to maintain my sanity. I got a bit of myself back. One thing I did not do however was find a new career path, not surprising in a depression with no plan. Now my savings are depleted and short term freelance work is drying up. I am looking for a full time job - or even long term contract- again, just to land somewhere I can rebuilt my coffers for a while, and have a regular schedule for a while. People keep paying me to code and they pay me pretty well, so back to it I go. Plus now that i feel like I have some coping skills, it's not so bad, even fun. Plus as you said in your brilliant article "how I stopped worrying...", suddenly the fact that a job has a paycheck seems satisfying enough for me. So I will hopefully be sort of stable again soon, and the baby thing is coming up again, i am almost 36 and my husband is even older and the window is shrinking. Also we need to make some housing decisions in the next 6 months, some that maybe semi-permanent like purchasing a home. In case you are wondering there is no way my husband can afford to support me on his salary, in fact the most likely scenario is that he will stay home with the baby for the first year while i work full-time since I pull in a good 30% more cash than he does. I keep agonising over this decision. More stuff that is germaine: I love kids, I am abnormally close to my god children, who I spend at least every Sunday with, and I have a blast with them. i have not been goign out as much or as actively in the past year and i am happy, I don't feel like I am missing anything.  On another note, I love my husband and we have a great marriage with tons of love to go around. And I think my heart wants this, for example. The other day, a very close friend of mine confessed she was pregnant. I was hit with a tremendous sense of magic and joy, and then a fist of jealousy that came form deep within my gut, no not jealousy, maybe more desire. Not the jealousy I usually feel like when someone tells me they love to run and feel like cream is way too rich- that i wish I could be like that feeling- this hit deeper. I guess this is a problem of my head and my heart there is a huge place in my heart and my husbands that wants a baby. Our heads are like, why sign up for all this work and expense when we can spend our time exactly the way we want. Except, what are we doing with our time and money? Nothing really. But I worry, we are lazy and we can't indulge that if we have kids.  I have a hard time deciding what to have for dinner. I am messy and disorganised and can be cranky and what if I am as miserable as my best friend who had postpartum depression. So maybe the real question is, how did you reach this place where you were like, ok, let's go. Wondering Dear Wondering, Sorry about the title to this one. My brother convinced me that one of the Thomas the Tank Engine videos his son watches has a train that says -- in a southern accent -- "Help, Help! I'm laaaazy!" But then we watched the video and he doesn't actually say that, sadly. He says "I'm a laaaaazy diesel engine." Which isn't nearly as good. No matter, because my husband and I have taken to saying, "Help, help, I'm laaaazy!" all the time, particularly since we had a second baby. That and "Sweet Christ." In fact, I find myself saying "Sweet Christ Almighty, my life." over and over and over these days. But I'm a special case right now, because I have a toddler in the high-maintenance princess phase, a baby in the screaming phase, two big dogs perpetually in the "When are we getting our goddamn daily walk?" phase, a book in the "Get 'er done!" phase, a full-time job in the "Welcome back from maternity leave, do you think you could write even more?" phase, a house in the "I need central air and some serious foundation work." phase, a car in the "If you'd like your driver's side window to open again, please deposit $1,000" phase, and a marriage in the "Who can we pay to do all of this shit for us so we can go get fall-down drunk on margaritas?" phase. That said, when I was feeling nervous about giving up my incredibly self-centered, carefree, self-indulgent life to wake up early and wipe shit off some small, pesky human's bare ass, I read something somewhere by a therapist who said that he'd had plenty of clients who regretted not having children, but he'd never had a client who regretted having children. Now, I remember feeling exactly the same way you do about friends who become parents. Parents are tough to understand. "Kids are the best! I'm in fucking hell!" they tell you in the same breath, and they're distracted and fat and far less interesting than they once were. And now I'm one of them. And I was always suspicious of people who urge - URGE URGE URGE! - you to have kids, because kids are SO GREAT! they say, but this desperate glaze to their eyes says, "Be miserable like us, motherfuckers!" But look, here are the facts: If you have a good marriage (important) and you don't feel like you need to fly to Morocco at a moment's notice in order to have a good life, and you're sort of drawn to the idea/feeling of caring for someone/some thing else (or say, you dote on your pets like a crazy freak)... then having kids is great. And fuck it, having kids is just great. Babies are awesome, and even if they're the screaming kind, they're still funny and interesting and they just get more interesting and funny as they get older. Basically, this kind of talk devolves into cliches no matter what. I'm not going to tell you anything you haven't heard before. All I can say is: It works for me. Even when I'm saying "Sweet Jesus, save me from this fucking insane chaos and drop me into the middle of a sushi restaurant, the kind that serves shots of tequila on ice and plays Dr. Dre and is frequented by hot men with lit joints in their hands," it's still sort of mildly amusing that everything has become so fucking tiring and so completely ill-suited for a self-centered lazy whore like me. I can't explain it. It's taxing, but I never regret it. And remember, the only reason I sound at all harried is because I have a 2-month-old who wakes up at night, and a job, and a book to write, and dogs and hairy rugs and shit like that. You're just having one little baby. Babies are easy -- well, easy babies are easy. Lots of babies are easy. And kids, well, they're harder, but they're just really nice, even when they repeat themselves. Like I'm doing right now. One baby, you can handle one baby. Trust me on that. Stay committed to your career path, make sure your husband still has a career, hire someone to watch the kid at least part-time or send the kid to part-time daycare so no one loses their mind at home alone with the kid, and just, well, go for it. Having kids is awesome. It just is. Look, instead of laying on the rug saying, "Shit, what should we make for stupid dinner?" like lazy assholes, you'll be running around in circles screaming "Shit, what should we make for stupid dinner?!!" See? Life won't change that much at all. You'll still be lazy assholes, just like you always were. But you know, the laziest assholes I know are the best parents. I'm not kidding, really. Go fucking figure. Rabbit 4:04 PM Saturday, March 21, 2009 THE GODS MUST BE CRAZY! It's official: "Battlestar Galactica" is the Algernon of TV shows. It started out stupid, with Lorne Greene, banished from the wide open fields of "Bonanza" to float around in space with some red-eyed behemoths, a plucky kid and a robot dog. Reimagined as a soapy suspense thriller for SciFi, "Battlestar Galactica" was transformed into a smart, gripping exploration of the sociopolitical dynamics of a wayward tribe of survivors, searching for a home in a hostile universe. But by last night's series finale, "Battlestar" had returned to its original moronic state, its lead characters condemned to wandering in wide open fields, contemplating procreation with australopithecus, and asking each other, "So, what are you going to do now?" You see, after a hokey stand-off with the eeevil contingent of Cylons led by Cavill, the survivors jumped away and immediately found Earth. They all agreed (for the first time ever) that the best course of action would be to send their ships into the nearest sun (Bad technology, made them do bad things!) then scatter themselves across the planet, where they'll... farm and stuff. Instead of sticking around with his son and Tigh, his best friend of 30-odd years, Bill Adama resolves to live in a little cabin with President Roslin. She dies on the way there -- bummer! -- but he's still determined to, you know, grow beets and shit. Maybe he'll find himself a nice hominid wife and they'll live happily ever after, grunting and gesturing at each other, or at least for a few months until Adama cuts himself on a branch and dies from the subsequent infection. On the bright side, he could get eaten by wolves before then! At least he won't have to contemplate just how stupid it was to leave all of the big weapons and the antibiotics back on Galactica, then send it straight toward the sun. But it all wraps up so perfectly, see? We're all the descendants of a bunch of halfwits and their half-ape lovers. And what proves that better than the "Battlestar Galactica" finale itself? 10:13 AM Thursday, February 12, 2009 JOAQUIN A THIN LINE Joaquin Phoenix's appearance on Letterman last night might just be the most riveting bit of TV I've seen in the past year. Some have speculated that he's depressed, but I'm not sure that justifies his complete unwillingness to offer more than shrugs and "I don't knows" as responses to Letterman's questions. You see, Joaquin, you're appearing on something called a talk show. It's a format in which people come and, well, they talk. By the time Letterman gets mean, we've got his back. "That's it! Get him! Put the little motherfucker in his place!" I'm sure the kid imagines that he's presenting an utterly authentic face to a fucked up, thoroughly false universe. Good luck with that, buddy. 10:54 AM Tuesday, January 27, 2009 BLIMPIE Yes, I am simultaneously manufacturing a small human and writing a book of personal essays titled "Disaster Preparedness." The two projects dovetail nicely. The book is filled with stories from my childhood, stories in which I discover that my parents hate each other, there is no God, the Iran Hostage Crisis is very likely to lead to World War III, and no one can tell you with absolute certainty that the stuff in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (which I saw in the theater when I was 8 years old) will never happen. It's a warm, uplifting, ultimately hopeful tale, in other words. The pregnancy is filled with aches, pains and an odd ballooning of my person that, if I don't dress very carefully, one observer said makes me look "like a truck driver who stops at Hardee's a little too often." I prefer to think of myself as Jabba the Hutt, because I'm huge and disgusting and bossy and I mostly sit in one place all day, eating live frogs. (OK, cherry pie.) Also, I really need one of those pointy-eared, cackling, weasel-looking creatures to sit next to me, like Jabba has -- a little buddy who tosses his head back and laughs in a mean-spirited, nasty way whenever someone approaches Jabba and makes a request that Jabba's not remotely interested in honoring. You know, like "Put down the taco," "Change the diaper on that other kid you manufactured," or "Stop making R&B songs out of the random things I say." (After my husband squeezed a stiff honey bottle into my tea for me, I made up a little song, then my daughter spent a good three days singing, in a scratchy soul voice, "Daddy, can you help me get my honey out?") But late-stage pregnancy is also about bracing yourself against the coming storm, which makes it a lot like much of my childhood. That must be why I savor this sense of impending doom so much! 6:52 AM Monday, December 15, 2008 IN DOG WE TRUST "This is a farewell kiss, you dog. This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq." -- Muntadar al-Zaidi, the Iraqi TV reporter who threw his shoes at President Bush at a Baghdad news conference. My Salon column on "Gossip Girl" and "90210" is here, "Dexter" finale wrap-up is here. 11:17 AM Wednesday, December 03, 2008 WEDNESDAY, WEDNESDAY It's cloudy here in LA, which is cause for celebration around these parts. We like clouds. We revel in the sight of an overcast sky in the morning. We like cold weather -- you know, under 75 degrees? "At least it's cold now," people say to each other in passing as the weather turns gray in December. Now if only it would rain. I wrote about Elvis Costello's new show here, and here's this week's "I Like To Watch," loosely centered around the prospect of bailing out Detroit so they can make more shitty cars for decades to come. By the way, I temporarily solved my archive problem (archives from December 2006- December 2008 not showing up in the archive links to the right) by changing the number of posts per page to 50, which spans the gap, sadly. Personally, I'd strongly recommend anything in the archives from 2002. A tumultuous year in my life, therefore a very good year for blogging. Try June. It's a great day to drink coffee. I want some coffee, goddamn it! 6:35 AM Wednesday, November 26, 2008 AIN'T NO USE TO SIT AND WONDER WHY, BABE Dear Rabbit, When you are in love with someone, and you want to marry them (him, in this case, but whatever), and they want to marry you until one day when they end everything, with very little reason and later offer such reasoning as "You need someone who can take care of you" (true) and "I have darkness" (huh?), how long before you stop wanting to call this person and be with him and have his baby even though every fiber of your stupid, stupid brain understands this would be calamitous and that you almost didn't make it out the first time he broke your heart? It's been eight months. That seems like a really long time. Also, he's a homicide detective. Also, he's boyishly handsome. Also, he was a women's studies minor. Also, he does not know who Bob Dylan is, and I'm not shitting you. Actual line from our breakup: "You tried so hard to understand my world, and I'm so sorry. i still don't even know who Bob Dylan is." It would have been hilarious if I hadn't just vomited I was so upset. Also I so badly want to tell you all the million reasons why he's more complicated than what I just explained, but I have a sneaking suspicion that he is not, actually, more complicated. I have a feeling the details are just unusually interesting. So tell me, smart lady: What kind of time am I in for here? And in the meantime, what can I do when I miss him? Because yo, drinking does NOT work. Broken Dear Broken, I'd suggest listening to some Bob Dylan. Why don't you start with this one? It ain't no use to sit and wonder why, babe It don't matter, anyhow ?An' it ain't no use to sit and wonder why, babe ?If you don't know by now? When your rooster crows at the break of dawn ?Look out your window and I'll be gone? You're the reason I'm travelin' on ?Don't think twice, it's all right It ain't no use in turnin' on your light, babe? That light I never knowed ?An' it ain't no use in turnin' on your light, babe ?I'm on the dark side of the road? Still I wish there was somethin' you would do or say? To try and make me change my mind and stay ?We never did too much talkin' anyway? So don't think twice, it's all right As you can see, Bob Dylan wouldn't have known who Bob Dylan is, either. Or if Bob Dylan did know who Bob Dylan was, he wouldn't care. Bob Dylan wouldn't care about Bob Dylan, even if Bob Dylan (either one of them) knew how important Bob Dylan (either one of them) was to you. Even if you laughed when you found out that he didn't know who Bob Dylan was, laughed and laughed, and then marveled for a while about what kind of an odd little Hobbit hole you'd have to be hiding in your entire life, to be ignorant to such a basic, fundamental detail of American culture. Even if you sighed and took a sip of your beer and looked at him and thought, "My god, we are so very different and it made you a little depressed, but it also made you want to kiss him, right then and there, that wouldn't change his mind. The fundamental problem here isn't one of simplicity vs. complexity. Bob Dylan is at once very, very complex and very simple. He is a man who can look at a complicated, bewildering world and boil it all down to a few heartbreaking images and archetypes. A hard rain's gonna fall, yes it is, and why? The answer is blowin' in the wind, child. So don't worry your pretty little head over it. He didn't want to talk about the complexity in the world, least of all with a lady friend. He wanted his lady friend to lay, lady, lay, lay across his big brass bed. I ain't lookin' to compete with you, Beat or cheat or mistreat you, Simplify you, classify you, Deny, defy or crucify you. All I really want to do Is, baby, be friends with you. Bob Dylan (the real Bob Dylan) wanted to be friends. He wanted to hang out. Maybe make out. That didn't mean Bob Dylan wasn't complicated. Bob Dylan had darkness. But Bob Dylan recognized that many women need someone who can take care of them, at some emotional, symbolic level anyway. Bob Dylan was too smart and self-aware to think for a second that he was equipped to exert that sort of energy for a woman. Yes, I'm guessing and extrapolating, I'm no Bob Dylan scholar. If I were, would you like me more? No, because I would never, ever waste my time writing this fucking blog. I'd be dissecting some Bob Dylan minutiae instead. So here's the question: If your homicide detective were a Bob Dylan scholar, would you like him more? No, you like him because he's more like Bob Dylan, himself, who would never, ever have dreamed of being a Bob Dylan scholar. Not only isn't your homicide detective likely to take care of any woman or study Bob Dylan or discuss the complicated nature of the differences between you, he absolutely refuses to even investigate anything about you. You're incredibly curious about him and his world, because he's so different. Is he curious about you and your world? No. He likes your smile, enjoys the sex, thinks you're smart, can't believe he landed a babe like you. But ultimately, he can tell that he's going to disappoint you. He's not all sunshine and light, after all, but he's not interested in telling you how or why. He doesn't care what you care about, really. He's not interested. He's not simple. He's not worthless. He might be even cooler than Bob Dylan. That's the thing. There are men who are really delectable and incredibly interesting and cool out there, artists and burger flippers and businessmen and songwriters. Admirable, honorable, sweet, interesting men. But do they want to get seriously involved with a smart, complicated, intense woman? No, no, no. They don't want that. No. They are very, very clear on the fact that they don't want that. For your practical purposes, both Bob Dylan and Doesn't Know About Bob Dylan are completely useless after the first-flush, great-sex-on-the-big-brass-bed part, no matter how awe-inspiring and intriguing and sexy and poetic and weird they are. I say that not because I know that what you really want is to get married and churn out babies. That's not what we're talking about. I say that because for you, Bob Dylan and Who The Fuck Is Bob Dylan? should both be as inconceivable, as long-term partners, as you are to them, if not even more so. You don't want someone who takes complicated things and makes them very simple. You can admire this trait in others, particularly when it includes writing some of the most heartbreaking songs in the history of the world or solving a hideous crime and getting a murderer off the streets. But you don't want to share your life with someone who boils things down like that. Nor do you want to be with someone who uses the word "darkness" in a simple sentence, then doesn't explain himself or go into it after that, ever. Nor do you want to be with someone who says, "Aw, you tried so hard to know me, but I hardly tried to know you at all. Oh well. Smell ya later!" You may really love men like this, but that doesn't mean that you should be with them. Because when you are with them, you act like someone who needs a man to take care of her, whether you do or not. Men who blithely refer to their darkness, who boil things down and make them simple? They make smart, complicated, intense women curl up in little balls and weep until they're surrounded by a sea of snotty tissues. It's not "You can do better, girlfriend!" These guys are pretty fucking delicious, let's face it. It's more a matter of whether or not you actually want to be happy, to wake up feeling good. If you do, you have to challenge yourself to look for other kinds of men. Not good men instead of bad men, simply different sorts of men. You want to find a guy who looks at you and sees a person who's as rich and entertaining and fascinating as… well, Bob Dylan. This will require finding a man who actually knows who Bob Dylan is. Not because not knowing who Bob Dylan is is some kind of a crime against humanity. In some ways, it's sort of admirable and intriguing to be that focused and/or oblivious. It's sort of macho, in a weird way, to be unaware of someone that fundamental. But your guy knows who Bob Dylan is, because your guy heard "Shelter from the Storm" once on a rainy night when he was a little drunk at a lonely party in Soho, and he was feeling a little out of place among the very tall women in long black leather coats, and even though he'd heard that song before a few times, that night he thought, "Christ this really is some of the best music ever written." Your guy will be able to tell you that. Or maybe he won't say it exactly that way, on the spot, over a beer, but he'll write it to you in an email one day when he doesn't feel like working. And you'll respond with your own Bob Dylan story, about the guy you knew in college who sang Bob Dylan songs so badly while playing his shitty Ovation guitar that it ruined Bob Dylan for you for a long time. You were sort of indifferent to Bob Dylan, in fact, until this one time after a particularly bad break up, when you finally starting feeling decent enough to leave your apartment, and you found a marked-down copy of "Blood on the Tracks" and bought it on a whim and took it home and you cried through half of the songs on the album and thought, "Fuck, it really is a pity, not to know who Bob Dylan is." Your guy will think this is a seriously nice story, and he'll say so. Now you just have to believe that he exists. And you have to believe that he might not look as delectable to you at first as, say, someone who maybe looks like he has something better to do somewhere, he's not sure yet. Your guy might not have the same swagger that you'd find in a guy who'd ever say, "It ain't me, babe." In fact, your guy will probably turn his whole body toward you when he meets you, and he'll look right at you, and you'll think, "I don't like it when men turn and face me and look me right in the eye and invade my personal space. This guy is nice but he's a little bit too much, he's just not doing it for me." And then, instead of trying to charm the pants off your guy, you'll tell him that you were sick last week so your head is still filled with snot. The stakes will be low, after all, since you don't like him. You'll tell him a bunch of stuff, and he'll listen closely, and then he'll actually make you laugh, and you'll notice that he's actually sort of hot, very hot in fact and how didn't you notice before how hot he was? A week later, you'll think he's sort of a ween. A week later, you'll be in love. A week later, you'll miss the homicide detective. A year later, you and your guy will be listening to Bob Dylan on the couch drinking red wine and talking about moving to Chicago together because your guy just landed a faculty position at Northwestern, and you'll be laughing at the ridiculous line-up of jackasses you dated, before you met your guy. It's not like that's the important part, though. The really important part comes now. Stop charming the shit out of men, and start showing them exactly who you are, from the start. Be honest. Use harsh terms to describe yourself, if you must. Don’t sleep with anyone who doesn't understand that all women can be difficult, all women need hand-holding at times, all women can seem needy here and there. Seeming needy occasionally doesn't brand you as the sort of woman who needs someone who can take care of her. When someone describes you that way, start saying, "So I'm the sort of woman who wants to be taken care of sometimes… let's see, you mean I'm the sort of woman who's actually a woman, not a man dressed up as a woman? You mean I'm the sort of woman who you've known for more than two weeks?" And by the way, when you meet your guy? You won't feel like the sort of woman who needs someone who can take care of her anymore. You'll feel perfectly independent and confident and happy, and your guy will never describe you that way, in fact he'll marvel that anyone ever has described you that way at all. Don't sleep with anyone who doesn't explain himself very clearly, using words. Don’t sleep with Bob Dylan or anyone who doesn't know who Bob Dylan is. That's not your match. Stop courting differences by showing off your smile and your jokes and your flair. Stop acting like someone who's fun, fun, fun. Take yourself seriously. Walk outside and demand that the world see you as you are. Don't pretend. Don't hide. Don't act cheerful when you're not (unless you're at work, in which case, do). Don't act easier-going than you are. You'll be amazed at how relaxed you feel, leading with the truth, showing off your flaws instead of your strengths. Flaws are just as interesting as strengths, and anyone who doesn't see that isn't your kind of person. And let's see, what else? Houses will be even cheaper soon. Buy one. Find a way. Get a really nice rescue dog, and a king-sized bed, and let the dog sleep on the bed with you. Paint at least one room a very, very obnoxious color. Don't sleep with anyone. Learn to make pie from scratch. Listen to Sufjan Stevens "For The Widows in Paradise" or "Casimir Pulaski Day" and cry a lot. You'll have a nice life, and Who The Fuck Is Bob Dylan? will just be a punchline. You'll be glad for that punchline, though, and for all of the punchlines you accumulated in the era you'll later refer to as The Dark Ages – a period that's about to shift into the Age of Enlightenment. Because that's what happens when you fall to pieces in a really dramatic way: You have a huge opportunity to rebuild everything, change your perspective, and be happier than you've ever been. There's nothing wrong with feeling terrible, really, when you consider how good you're going to feel down the road. Just keep believing that you won't settle for anything less than someone who looks you right in the eye and wants to know more. If you believe that, if you make a promise to yourself not to settle for less than that, you'll feel good about yourself, you'll feel good in the world. You will create your own weird, flawed, happy life out of this rubble. You've already started to do it. Good luck! Rabbit 1:46 PM Friday, November 07, 2008 RE: GENERATION I wrote an Open Apology to Boomers Everywhere for Salon on Wednesday, then I walked around the rest of the day with a skip in my step that hasn't worn off yet. If it's naive to think that an American president can make a huge difference in the world, I don't care. I want to feel this way for as long as I can. Obviously the man will make mistakes along the way. But god, it feels so good to believe that he'll collect information and get a second and third opinion and be as honest as possible and above all, do his very best. I think it's possible to sense that about him, and that's one reason why he's been so popular. Not that creepy losers aren't often popular, but let's not think about them now. Right now I prefer to see the world as populated primarily by smart people and loving mothers and adorable puppy dogs. After so many years of gloom about the state of things, I'm going to bask in this feeling of belief and optimism for as long as I can. Too bad I can't just go ahead and love Jesus while I'm at it. Oh Jesus, I would if I could, I swear. Too many years of kneeling in that big old drafty Catholic church just killed it for me. 12:51 PM Tuesday, November 04, 2008 HELL YES! 10:42 PM Thursday, October 30, 2008 OBAMARAMA! I wrote about Obama's infomercial and "Daily Show" appearance here. I was stunned by last night's ad, expected it to be seriously dull, but it had me all choked up over the plight of the average American family. How did so many people land in such deep shit simultaneously? It really did feel like prices doubled overnight, on everything, and suddenly we were all broke. Naturally, Obama's not going to deliver us all from evil simultaneously, but my God it would be nice to see that man on TV regularly instead of the dope we've been wincing at for 8 years now. 8:20 AM Tuesday, October 28, 2008 ASSHATTERY UNLIMITED Those fucking asshats at the LA Times laid off one of their best writers (and a good friend of mine) yesterday, Carina Chocano. How fucking stupid are they? Really, really fucking stupid. Read her latest review for the paper, and then tell me if you'd prefer a simple thumbs up-thumbs down from your typical dumbed-down movie reviewer. If so, you can join the Honky Asshat League of Greater Los Angeles. Show your support for Carina's smart writing by buying yourself (and your serial monogamist friends) her hysterically funny book, Do You Love Me, Or Am I Just Paranoid? I don't think many books of this variety are funny. At all. But Carina's is shockingly, absurdly funny. Buy it. Trust Me. I don't mention stuff I don't like, even when a friend of mine wrote it. Make your day. In fact, buy up all the copies available and force them to do a massive reprinting. If you don't laugh out loud at least 5 times, I will personally send you a check in the mail for your purchase price, which you can apply to your therapy expenses. 8:18 AM Monday, October 27, 2008 FALLOUT SHELTER Wrote about the "Mad Men" finale for Salon this morning. I love that show so much, it makes me want to wear red lipstick and scowl and chainsmoke and hobble around in painful shoes. 12:43 PM Friday, October 24, 2008 RACE RULES Wondering why Obama hasn't lashed out angrily at McCain's attacks? Georgetown professor Michael Eric Dyson, one of the most compelling speakers I've ever seen in person, explains in this excellent interview reprinted in Salon. Go read it, honkies! Then buy his book, Race Rules, and learn a thing or two about race relations in this country. Or, if you got to Georgetown, take his class. Yeah, I'm sure that's an easy class to get into. Did you know I studied under Reynolds Price, Stanley Fish and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. at Duke? Using my powers of imagination! Semester after semester, I would try in vain to get into their classes, and then, when I didn't succeed in making it in or even making it onto the waiting list, I'd sit outside and imagine what they were talking about. Actually, that's not true. I signed up for "Intro to Jazz" instead and then skipped it to smoke bong hits and watch "Ren & Stimpy." I'm ready to get another degree now, honkies. I'm mature enough, curious enough, and I'm not a drunk like I was the last time I attended an institution of higher learning. What should I get a degree in? This is going to be my new way of driving people insane: Recession-blind chatter! Some examples: "Hey, where should we spend Christmas? We can't decide between Itay and Bali. Bill found a great villa in Tuscany, but it looks sort of drafty in the pictures." "Have you been to Chez Panisse lately? I think it's slipping, frankly." "Do you think jacuzzi bath tubs are tacky? I keep saying the imported tile will class it up, but Bill isn't so sure, yet he's the one who insists on having heated floors..." 8:52 AM Thursday, October 16, 2008 QUESTION Why does my archive only go to December of 2006? I can't figure it out. In other news, I've received a lot of great music suggestions -- will publish my favorites here soon. UPDATE: No one is offering any help on this front! But look to the right, scroll down: There's no link to the last 2 years of archives. Why, honkies, why? I can't figure out why this would be happening, and all of that Blogger html is so tough to parse. Any ideas? 1:59 PM Thursday, October 09, 2008 CRASH CRASH CRASH! Brother, can you spare a dime? I think we can safely consider this a stock market crash. The S&P 500 has fallen 42 percent over the last year. The vast majority of that precipitous fall has occurred over the past two weeks. Today, the market closed with the Dow below 8600. I would check the balances on my retirement accounts, but they are quite literally disappearing into thin air! Hoo hoo ha ha ha! Glory be to Jesus! My dad is having a serious laugh over this mess somewhere. He was a pretty conservative investor, having studied the huge market crashes extensively, and wrote a lot about banking deregulation and the role of federal monetary policy before the Great Depression. Too bad his sad little honky daughter doesn't have him around anymore to fill her heart with fear over the instability of the stock market. Ok, then! I think I see what you mean at last! You were right! I was wrong! About everything! We never learn the lessons our parents want to teach us until decades after they wasted their time talking into our empty little heads. Yup, ain't that the truth! Hallelujah, motherfuckers! Anyway, let's make a good Depression soundtrack, shall we? My first nominee shall be "Everything Is Free" by Gillian Welch. Good old resigned melancholy, you soothe me into a calming state of learned helplessness. Ahh, yes. Mmm. I think I'll go make some homemade chai and watch the hysteria on the evening news. When the world is crumbling around you, crushing cardamom pods can be therapeutic. Does that mean I'm officially middle-aged? Is 38 middle-aged for a honky? Don't say it is, you honky motherfuckers! Don't you fucking say it is! Send me your other nominations for the Greatest Depression mix CD, honkadaisiacs! Until then, may the Lord [and Alan Greenspan] bless you and keep you poor and humble, as poor and as humble as the day you was born! Also, send me your personal down-home cures for the Greatest Depression blues. We will make it through this together, honkies and far-more-attractive non-honky brethren alike! (Incidentally, why are non-honkies so much hotter than honkies? Particularly as they age, non-honkies get hotter and hotter, while honkies dry up and crust over like stale white bread. Motherfucker! Curses on the honky gods for making us so goddamn pale and ugly!) 4:42 PM Wednesday, October 08, 2008 BLOOD'S ON FIRE In these trying times, I need some really, really good music. Help me find good music! I love Pinback, Sufjan Stevens, TV On The Radio, The Shins, Arcade Fire. Surely there's something out there that I'm missing. I'm tolerant of odd and interesting and also tolerant of pop, to some degree. Recent releases would be nice, so I can write about it in Salon's Critics' Picks if it's good. But old albums are good, too. Send me some recommendations! (Email below to the right, linked from "write to rabbit.") Speaking of old, also love Thirty Ought Six, Slint, Drive Like Jehu, Elliott Smith, PJ Harvey, Three Mile Pilot. Love Three Mile Pilot. Love. Love. Love. PInback is probably my favorite of all time. Pinback, you complete me. Autumn of the Seraphs, great album. Also love Nautical Antiques and Blue Screen Life. But if you don't have the new TV On The Radio, Dear Science, you'd better go get it, honkies! 9:38 AM FROM NOTHNG TO NOWHERE The stock market is really tanking, motherfuckers. Personally, watching my retirement balance shrink beyond reason is just amusing. I'm not about to retire. (Unlike my poor mother, who just retired and is looking at a seriously compromised budget at this point.) This storm was a long time coming, obviously. You know what pisses me off, though? I thought about moving everything to money market last fall, after reading sites like Another Fucked Borrower for a few years, and I only moved 30%, in accordance with the common wisdom of every fucking stupid financial planning and investment book I've read. I don't why it takes fifty million examples until I'm willing to face the truth: Common wisdom is bullshit. I've decided as much on other fronts. It's just that, when you start to apply that notion to everything -- that no one knows what the fuck they're talking about and you have to follow your own instincts and question every assumption that every mindless stooge feeds you -- you turn into some paranoid motherfucker living in a fucking nuclear fallout shelter in the basement. It's total shit, though, to say that if your timeline is longer than 20 years, you should be in stocks and shouldn't try to time the market. I could've saved my own ass in a big way, just by using my head, looking around, and noticing that the sky was clearly about to fall. Oh, but if your asset allocation is just so, you're better off. Right, and index funds typically outperform managed funds. Just look at the absurdly shitty, flat performance of any S&P 500 index fund over the past 10 years if you want proof. That money could've made 4% a year in CDs, instead it made exactly nothing -- and that was before this latest market plunge. Now it's taken a big hit. How is it that people walk around telling you to aim to double your money every ten years? All it takes is ten bad years, and all of your plans are dashed. And look, you can be right on target, then take a huge hit on the eve of your retirement. Yes, yes, move into bonds, move into cash as you're about to retire. But most advisors only want you to be 40% in bonds at most, no matter what. All of these people are far riskier and more aggressive than they let on, and all of their wisdom is based on the performance of the stock market from the post-war period through the late '90s. The stock market today is a treacherous motherfucking place, whether you're in managed funds, index funds, ETFs, whatever. I know that when you move money out of stocks, you still have to time the bottom and get in before the market rebounds. But I'd rather miss the rebound slightly than sit on the sidelines and watch while the market tanks and my balances fall - something we all knew would happen. And look, when that lunatic bull Jim Cramer is saying we might see the Dow sink to 7700? Regardless of what you think of the man, that's a sign of the times. Anyway, I don't want to belabor the investment thing, because right now I'm just happy to have a job. I'm just astounded, once again, by how ridiculous it is to do what other people are doing because everyone agrees that it's the thing to do. People who don't bleat and trudge along like sheep in the herd are always painted as radicals, paranoids and freaks. Why is everyone so afraid of weirdos and naysayers? God, I wish there were more weirdos in the world. I guess election years really bring this issue out into the open. It's incredible, the amount of pandering candidates are forced to do in order to win. You can't win just by being smart and reasonable and having a fairly sane plan and a commitment to justice. The fact that Ronald Reagan, that lamentable faker, is worshipped while a pure-hearted, deeply just, intelligent man like Jimmy Carter is seen as a failure really lays bare what Americans prefer in their presidents: They love leaders who are deeply full of shit -- you know, in line with everyone else in the spotlight: CEOs, actors, pop stars and other natural-born fakes. 8:35 AM Sunday, September 21, 2008 A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES The news is getting it all wrong, of course. As taxpayers prepare to foot the bill for the rampant explosion of unregulated bundled debt securities, the news casts the whole nightmare as an elaborate bailout of mortgage companies and homeowners. Yes, idiotic lending policies and bad personal decisions played a big part in this collapse, but that's not why Bush and Co. are poised to intercede. They're taking action in order to bail out the risk-takers at the top of the heap, the international institutions and the reckless robber barons of Wall Street who bet on these unregulated debt securities and lost, and should by all rights crumble to ashes as a result. Instead, this country is prepared to spend $700 billion on what? The answer to that is a complete mystery to everyone. Glenn Greenwald summed up the whole slippery mess beautifully: [W]hatever else is true, the events of the last week are the most momentous events of the Bush era in terms of defining what kind of country we are and how we function -- and before this week, the last eight years have been quite momentous, so that is saying a lot. Again, regardless of whether this nationalization/bailout scheme is "necessary" or makes utilitarian sense, it is a crime of the highest order -- not a "crime" in the legal sense but in a more meaningful sense. What is more intrinsically corrupt than allowing people to engage in high-reward/no-risk capitalism -- where they reap tens of millions of dollars and more every year while their reckless gambles are paying off only to then have the Government shift their losses to the citizenry at large once their schemes collapse? We've retroactively created a win-only system where the wealthiest corporations and their shareholders are free to gamble for as long as they win and then force others who have no upside to pay for their losses. Watching Wall St. erupt with an orgy of celebration on Friday after it became clear the Government (i.e., you) would pay for their disaster was literally nauseating, as the very people who wreaked this havoc are now being rewarded. More amazingly, they're free to walk away without having to disgorge their gains; at worst, they're just "forced" to walk away without any further stake in the gamble. How can these bailouts not at least be categorically conditioned on the disgorgement of ill-gotten gains from those who are responsible? The mere fact that shareholders might lose their stake going forward doesn't resolve that concern; why should those who so fantastically profited from these schemes they couldn't support walk away with their gains? This is "redistribution of wealth" and "government takeover of industry" on the grandest scale imaginable -- the buzzphrases that have been thrown around for decades to represent all that is evil and bad in the world. That's all this is; it's not an "investment" by the Government in any real sense but just a magical transfer of losses away from those who are responsible for these losses to those who aren't. Greenwald's column should be on Salon's cover. Who put that idiotic TV critic's ramblings there instead? 9:42 AM Saturday, September 20, 2008 FUBAR In case you're in the dark about just how completely depraved our government's panicked bailout of this financial apocalypse is, check out this excellent and appropriately paranoid article in the New York Times (written by the stepmother of my exboyfriend from college, of all random and largely insignificant degrees of separation). I've been reading her lucid and refreshingly ill-tempered articles on credit default swaps and the other teetering houses of cards that precipitated this crisis for over a year now, and I think it pays for all of us to listen carefully to her message: This mess is hardly about the crappy decisions of a bunch of feckless individuals. It's about taking those crappy decisions (which were made possible, mind you, by the mortgage industry's insane and greedy extension of huge, idiotic, undocumented loans), bundling them together into unregulated derivatives, and selling them to institutions that used them to "get around their regulatory capital requirements intended to rein in risk". Yes, these massive, unregulated, risky securities were used as hedges, despite the fact that they were really "financial weapons of mass destruction" as Warren Buffet once described them. And now the government is stepping in to avert a worldwide financial collapse, but the carnage looks suspicious. Bear Stearns and AIG, but not Lehman? Whose interests do we need to protect, and who's left twisting in the wind? What exactly will taxpayers be paying for? Who will set the value on these complicated derivatives, the banks or the government? Morgenson points out quite clearly that, because there's not nearly enough transparency in this realm, we have no way of knowing enough not to feels suspicious, and unnerved, every step of the way. 2:59 PM Monday, September 15, 2008 SKY FALLING, MORE AT 11 Motherfucker! Train wrecks, natural disasters, financial apocalypso, and David Foster Wallace is dead. On days like this, all you can do is hit "refresh" on the New York Times site over and over again, for the latest tragedies to hit the presses. Just when you think the world can't get any gloomier, fifty crappy things happen at once. Mostly I'm depressed about DFW, one of my favorite nonfiction writers of all time. I figured I'd be reading his books for decades to come. I know everybody asks this question over and over again, but I can't help it: Why do some of the smartest, most talented people end up killing themselves? 4:59 PM Tuesday, August 19, 2008 HEY, HEY DUMMIES! I want to marry you! It's been too long, my loves. I have no excuses, beyond being a self-involved, lazy honky with a house that's filled with ants and dog hair. Summertime drifts in, sweet and lovely, then crushes the spirit with its heat, its thirsty ants, and its drifting dog-hair tumbleweeds. Should I pay people to clean my house? That's what my friends say. They have handservants who come once a week to clean their floors 'til they shine LIKE THE TOP OF THE CHRYSLER BUILDING! But can I stomach such a thing? Do I want my daughter to know that white people need not get on their hands and knees and clean, when illegal brown people can do it for them for one low, low price? Also, can I afford it? No, I cannot. But should I hire people to do it anyway? Because it's out of control? Because I don't write my own frivolous, self-involved shit anymore, because every free second must be spent busily sweeping or vacuuming or setting that Roomba (the lazy maggot!) to work somewhere? And do you know how long Roombas can survive in a truly hairy environment? About three months. Then their cleaning modules must be replaced. But the parts are always on backorder for three months! That's three months without a robot slave to help you tackle your fucking hairy floors, honkies. UNACCEPTABLE! I need a robot ant assassin. A little guy who buzzes around, electrocuting ants, and then sucking them into his ant incinerator. You see, we honkies feel more comfortable bossing around robots, even when the brown people need the work. It's just too unfair, making some human being who's already living badly scrub my disgusting toilet. I can't handle it. Besides, I deserve to do demeaning work! I don't deserve to be free from my daily battles, no matter how much they consume my supposedly-otherwise-worthwhile brain with their tedious trivialities! I am as lowly as my robot maggot! I'm the one who rescued a fluffy dog in the first place! I made my bed of floaty white dog hair, now I'm the one who should have to lie in it! OK, someone tell me about their real problems before I float away on a sea of soft-pawed, trifling concerns! 9:40 AM Monday, May 12, 2008 L'ETRANGER Dear Rabbit, Why do friendships fall away as we get older? Perhaps maybe life just becomes too complicated. Or maybe it always was more complicated – and we just didn’t want to admit it. Long ago, in a land far away, I was a young attorney of 25 living with my first husband in a big, beautiful house in the suburbs. My husband was tall, handsome and successful. My job was fun, challenging and financially rewarding. We were secure; we were young; and every day on the California coast was clear, warm and sunny. Just one problem: I was unhappy. I didn’t really know why, mind you. I generally supposed I was suffering the pathetic self-involved malaise of the young and spoiled; and maybe that was all; but, to be honest, there were also real underlying problems. My mom was very ill with an incurable case of pancreatic cancer. My husband, though seemingly very sweet and totally devoted, had odd habits and would – from time to time – disappear for hours without sensible explanation. (I later found out that he was having an affair with an intern in his office, Bill Clinton style. Classy. I didn’t know those details at the time - - but what spouse can’t correctly guess at the gist of such things?) I felt guilty being down; but couldn’t help it. In truth, the suburbs seemed sterile and depressing. I missed the city and the friends I’d left behind there. I spent way too much time wondering about all of the other parts of life that I was failing to explore while I sat in my little office each day, cranking out formulaic briefs and memos for cases that no one cared about. There was, thankfully, one bright spot. Shortly after we wed, my husband’s best friend Marc came to visit. He had been practicing law in New York, but his fiance wanted to move to California. So he moved out a few months ahead of her to find a job and a place to live. As a practical matter, though, for those first few months, he lived with us. Oh, Rabbit – what a joy this turned out to be! Marc was funny, adorable, and painfully charming. We liked all of the same books, songs, movies and art – we were on the same wavelength every day. We were the two people who would keep talking long after everyone else at the party had left or passed out on the couch. There were times when we stayed awake all night talking. He was the (completely platonic) spark in my day. Soon enough, his fiancé moved out and soon the four of us were spending all of our spare time together. Movies, concerts, long walks, drinking, traveling, philosophizing or loafing – we were inseparable. My husband and I were the only friends who attended their brief wedding in Vegas. It was a peaceful and magical time. I was still burdened with the sadness of what I described above, but something about this special friendship with Marc made it all more bearable. Here was someone, at last, who at least understood why I felt as I did – about work, the suburbs, everything. Someone whose company made each day sunnier. Yes, I’d had plenty of boyfriends in college and law school; I had even found one that I loved well enough to marry; but Marc was the first man that I really felt “got” me. Before I met him, I suppose I didn't even know such a feeling or connection was truly possible. (As I say: I was young.) Then, one New Year’s Eve 2003, everything changed color. My husband and I were hosting a big party at our house and nearly everyone was drunk, as the holiday requires. I was feeling blue and Marc was doing his best to cheer me with his usual humor and charm. Then, and I’ll still never understand exactly how this happened, but I remember that he said something unusually kind to me – something that suggested that he couldn’t stand to see me sad because he believed I was the most amazing woman he had ever met. Our eyes met and – I stopped breathing. Suddenly, and without fair warning – I was in love. And, with no words – gestures – nor anything more from him, I knew that he felt the same. Mind you, Rabbit: there was never anything physical between us. Not on that night -- nor at any time thereafter. There were no stolen moments of passion; no frank confessions of our feelings. Even if left alone for hours on end, we never so much as held hands. We discussed that we might have liked to do so; but were both focused on our honoring our existing commitments and that never changed, even as the feelings between us deepened. We continued on and I used to think that anyone with eyes could see what was happening; but we kept ourselves in denial, if only because no one had the guts to imagine facing the trauma of doing anything differently. Time passed. My mother died. I separated from my husband and filed for divorce. It was the right move, but still a trauma. I lost the ability to concentrate at work. My mind started to falter and buckle on me. I was fragile and hadn't yet developed the tools that one needs to cope with life's inevitable series of challenges. The most common and reasonably to be anticipated tragedies in life -- death of a parent, failure of a relationship -- left me overwhelmed. I finally hit a low point and I remember feeling that I understood why some people just gave up on life. At the lowest point, when I really couldn’t imagine continuing, I was sitting on the floor, knife in hand, talking to a suicide counselor who was begging me to think of one thing that would make tomorrow worth trying. I could only think of Marc’s face; but, at that moment, it was enough. That was literally the low point of my life. The good news is: it was all uphill from there. After that, I moved back to the city to follow my dreams. I changed careers -- made new friends -- traveled the world -- happily remarried and had a fantastic little kid. It couldn't have turned out better, truthfully. My life truly turned around. These were very happy years. I never talked with Marc or my ex-husband again; although, surprisingly, I did hear from Marc’s wife from time to time. Their life sounded good: they still lived in the same pretty little small town and had two sweet and wonderful children. Everything, truthfully, seemed to work out for the best all around. Resilience! But you can see where this is going, can’t you Rabbit? Here we are, 15 years later, and I suddenly receive an email from Marc, my long-lost best friend Common sense says to avoid opening it, but curiosity gets the best of me. We begin to correspond. He is lonely and needing someone to talk with – much the same way that I had felt when first I met him 15 years prior. His life is good; but he has no truly close friends and his best friend – his wife – has been seeing other people. Our situations, in a way, have flipped; and I see the opportunity to repay an old debt – to lift his spirits in the way he used to lift mine -- and we begin talking every day. It is very fun, of course. I won’t deny that it brings me intense joy. But who can resist wanting to know the real answer about everything that happened back in the day? Of course he raises the subject (perhaps the real reason that he wrote in the first place?) And this time, with so much time and space between us, I see no reason to lie about my feelings. Yes, 15 years ago I loved him and I’m happy now to confess it. He feels the same and remembers every moment of our past friendship with the same fondness – albeit with added tension and some regret – that I do. Needless to say, we are both relieved and feel that a hole in our hearts has been mended. It is comforting and warm. Until, of course, the inevitable (?) happens. His wife taps into his email account and reads all of our letters. She is hurt and angry at the thought that he had feelings of love for me during the early days of their marriage. Even more angry that he should reach out again all these years later to find me. Marc tries very hard to argue for days that he and I should continue to talk, but I am skeptical – afraid of causing more damage. Eventually, it becomes too much for both of us; but he is the first one to draw a line in the sand and say that, until he and his wife can resolve their issues, we should probably stop talking. I agree. That was one week ago and we haven’t spoken since. Somehow, despite all good intentions, I have lost one of my oldest and dearest friends – for the second time. So, my question is: Rabbit, what have I done wrong? How did I lose such a dear friend – not once, but twice? Was I wrong to be honest? Should I have realized that my feelings still had the potential to cause harm? Would it have been safer to take them with me to the grave? I had such naïve hopes this time, Rabbit. That our friendship could be conventional and without complication. I really thought there was a hope we were heading in that direction. That our spouses and children could someday be friends with each other. That our family could see their family twice a year and grill hamburgers in the backyard. That at least, minimally, we could enjoy each other’s company. Talk about books and movies. Talk about kids or the weather. It wouldn’t really matter. Given how challenging it is find a good friend at this tricky middling stage of life – someone who really knows or understands you and is going through all of the same things – it could have been very fulfilling. For what it is worth: I have told my husband this whole story. He was very kind and supportive. ven supports my friendship with Marc and he wishes that everything could have somehow worked out differently for us. He has been great about trying to lift my sprits. He is, quite generally, awesome. I love him and -- just for the record -- have no intention of ever leaving him. But I also wonder this, Rabbit: is there a flavor of love that should or must be ignored and written off as irrelevant? Twice Lost Dear Twice Lost, Well, first I have to admit to a prejudice against corresponding with long-lost-friends/ lovers/ wannabe lovers out of the blue, fishing for a taste of intrigue, pondering what might have been, revealing true feelings, revisiting the past, etc. Even though these things might start off on pretty solid ground – “Hey old friend! What’s happening with you these days?” -- both parties are always clear on the point where it slips onto shaky territory. “How did you feel back then? Wow, I always thought that…” You start walking down that path, and things get weird fast. We all google old boyfriends and wonder what they’re doing, without thinking twice about it. And every now and then, maybe someone contacts you out of the blue, and it sends you back to how you felt a long time ago. Things always seem unduly romantic when you look back at them from 15 years later – or unduly tragic, or unduly mysterious. They’re larger than life, particularly when your life consists of wiping shit off a small person’s ass several times a day. I think that when your life is stable and predictable, there’s some part of you that wants to be back in that unpredictable, rarefied space where a look makes your heart drop, where you feel powerful and alive and full of lust for someone you can/can’t/shouldn’t have. When you make mundane decisions and complete mundane tasks for a family every day, occasionally your subconscious mind, at the very least, wants to float free in a heavy, romantic, swooning, exotic, youthful mire again. So your eyes met, and you stopped breathing. That’s how you described the all-important moment when you both knew you were in love. See, these are exactly the sorts of relationships that we tend to get nostalgic and romantic about: Platonic relationships that never went further, affairs that ended prematurely, even people we always had crushes on, way back when. You’re craving that one split second BEFORE you fuck the guy, and nothing more. Most of us are hung up on that moment, thanks to being flooded with its supreme significance through every minute of our waking hours on earth. But keep in mind, just two seconds later, you’re breathing again while Marc fumbles with his boxer briefs, and you’re worried about that scar on your back. It doesn’t get much better than the minute your eyes meet, and you know. That’s the pinnacle, but it’s just one tiny moment, blown out of proportion. If you’d actually dated Marc, you’d know that he was careless with people, tended toward self-obsession, and farted incessantly in bed at night. And personally, I have to say that I distrust the man or woman who goes out looking to find old friends or lovers and ends up waxing nostalgic via email night after night as his/her marriage falls to pieces. That’s the easy road, a distraction from the hard work of sticking with someone, or even deciding not to. In my opinion, if the other person clearly isn’t telling their spouse, that’s a red flag. If they’re obviously in love with the idea of you and have no idea what a bossy bitch you can be, you’re just an escapist fantasy dressed up in sensitive, intellecutal sheep’s clothing. It’s nice to get verbose, heartfelt emails from anyone, but sometimes you really have to look at the whole thing in the cold, hard light of day. In many ways, you’re as glorified and imaginary as someone he met in a chat room. Yes, you bared your souls, way back when. And what’s the answer, break off all connection to old friends and old lovers? Probably not. But when the correspondence starts to feel even a tiny bit sneaky or addictive, it’s probably not all that good for you or him, since you’re both married to other people. If you mention your spouse but the other person doesn’t like talking about him (or about his spouse), if there’s a lot of “If only we knew!” and “Too bad the timing was wrong!” and rehashing of those one or two magic moments, if you’re laying out your life philosophies like you just started dating or just fell in love, then you’re whipping up intrigue. You’re manufacturing mystery. You’re stirring up a cheap imitation of romance. You’re wanking – not waxing – nostalgic. And look, we’re all human, and our souls want what they want, no matter what our hearts and minds are committed to. Even if you cut all contact with ex-crushes or dangerous strangers out of your life, you still might go to bed at night and have a dream about fucking George Clooney. (If you’re lucky, that is. If you’re unlucky, it might be the mailman, with his unsightly patches of body hair and bad teeth.) No one is perfect and pure, not even Jimmy Carter. The best thing for all parties is to keep it to yourself. When people get online and try to get some reassurance or some charge from exlovers or excrushes – it’s an act of fantasy, in my opinion. It’s not about a real connection. Dressing it up like it’s this whirlwind, magical thing is wishful thinking, and it’s sort of self-indulgent and it probably just means that he needs more from his wife, or needs more from his life, and you want to make some change as well. It’s probably not a big change – you’re happy now, after all. Maybe you just want to share your thoughts and ideas with old friends – just not this particular old friend. He may be the absolute greatest, but I doubt that he’s really, truly all that important in the big scheme of things, and I don’t think that losing your friendship with him deserves all that much mourning. It’s sexually charged for him, he’s lonely, the whole thing operates in his life in a totally different way than it operates in yours. It’s nice that your husband is trusting and recognizes your need to connect with an old friend, but Marc isn’t even a reasonable or safe person for you to befriend, for the sake of your marriage, even if his wife were ok with it. Avoiding screwing up your marriage is partially a matter of avoiding situations where the lines are blurry. If your husband said to you, “I’m going to have lunch with my friend M. She truly understands me. We never slept together, but I always wanted to. Oh well. I hope I can be there for her as she’s going through this tough time.” I think you’d laugh in his face, then hide his car keys. Your soul can want what it wants. It can want George Clooney or the mailman or Marc. But you have choices about which fantasies you feed and which you wave goodbye to. So you’ll never get to know what it would be like to be with Marc. And now you don’t get to share anything with him, and you don’t get the charge of seeing his name in your In Box (Honestly, sometimes I think that’s half of the appeal – breaking up the monotony of your work day and interrupting the mundane realm with something that has the illusion of romantic divinity.) Buy the book “Soul Mates” by Thomas Moore and read it – he writes very convincingly and poetically about the crazy shit that our souls crave as we get older, things that have nothing to do with our everyday lives. Before I read that book, I didn’t even like the word “soul” all that much – too New Agey and, well, middle-aged-sounding. But it’s a really great book about figuring out what forces are working on you when you’re in crisis, and finding ways of feeding your innermost needs and desires without toppling your entire apple cart to do it (in most cases, anyway). Moore is pretty open and loose about why we want the things we want, and his whole tone is much less dismissive than mine, so you’ll like it a lot better than this response. Like I said, I’m prejudiced about this stuff. I feel strongly that people wander into dangerous territory all too often, when really, all they want is some way of connecting with someone outside of their family or marriage, or some way of expressing some part of themselves that’s been latent for too long. Having a marriage and a kid doesn’t mean you stop wanting to be a person in the world who’s recognized and has her own power and her own desires and ideas. And as women, we have to face the fact that we go from being the most electrifying presence in the room to being ignored completely almost overnight. I still feel great now, sure, but I’ve watched my mom go from being flirted with everywhere to being treated like a clown or dismissed outright without even opening her mouth. Women have a fucking hard road, aging-wise – it’s totally unhinged and unjust and downright creepy, really. But I think it’s smart to look at these things early, and ask ourselves what we want to continue to do, the things that sustain us and make us feel like vital, important and full of possibility. Jesus, I’m talking like a really annoying yoga instructor now! You know what I really think? I think that the attention of some married man from your past is beneath you. Yes, I know it’s just a friendship. But come on. He’s just some guy. If I or one of your girlfriends met him, we’d say, “Oh, him? Whatever.” He could be George Clooney and we’d feel that way. The fact that some guy gets hard when he thinks about you – and let’s not dress it up as much more than that, because no matter how wonderful and enduring your friendship was, it wasn’t important until he got lonely and his wife slept around. The thing with Marc, it’s overrated. What you really want is to feel that you’re hot shit, regardless of what anyone else thinks. You want to feel important, and charming, and pretty. You want to have all that energy back, the energy to write long, long emails about your beliefs and your ideas. You can write those things to your husband. You can write them on a blog. You can write them in a journal. If you made time to write long emails, you can make time for something else – long emails for you. Because this is about doing something for you, being who you are outside of a mother and wife, expressing yourself and putting yourself out there and feeling like you’re making your mark. If you do these things for you, then they aren’t an escape, they aren’t addictive or compulsive, they help to sustain you, they strengthen your confidence and your sense of self. This isn't about Marc. It's not about an affair. It's not about friendship, or helping out an old friend. It's not about your marriage. It's simply an existential crisis. Hurray! Existential crises are fun and legitimately romantic and full of possibility, and - bonus - they don't wreck your home life or anyone else's. You're at the beginning of a new path. All you have to do is get to know yourself better, and make some new, fresh decisions about how you want to spend your time, and organize your thoughts in new ways. You're ready to try new things, to get stronger, and to feel more alive. Good luck! Rabbit 4:40 PM Friday, May 09, 2008 SHINE THE SILVER AND THROW OUT THE GOLD Rabbit; Sometimes when I look back on my glacial maturing process, I excuse it away by saying, my parents had eighteen years in which they systematically fucked me up, and that I simply needed as many years un-fucking myself. If you do the math, Rabbit, that landed me squarely in my mid-thirties. Now I’m in my early forties and in the interim I have gone thru this shedding process you speak of in your latest posting concerning the “disappearance” of -- presumably -- long-term friendships. I belong to a group of about a dozen and a half friends and spouses from college who’ve been together for as much as twenty-five years now. We’ve celebrated that friendship in hundreds of ways, year after year with engagement parties, weddings, divorces, religious-conversions, births, hospitalizations, deaths, gay comings-out, activist demonstrations, at New Year’s weekends, on ski-trips, in car accidents, one-on-ones, in crushes, as roommates, at goings-away, returns, promotions, the whole array of life’s experiences. The longevity of this group has been an amazing feat, but now, as I look back, it was probably due in large part to the ways in which we filled out certain positive and negative familiar (and familial) roles. It’s a highly successful, largely creative group. Between us there are a couple self-made millionaires, philanthropists, news producers, film directors, book writers, book publishers, television actors, professional songwriters, and movie professionals. On any given week we have sought the emotional and professional generosity of the others, and have received it in boatloads (WARNING: Don’t send your kid to a cheap school that doesn’t boast a wide mix of social classes). It is also a boozy, intimidating, dark-humored group, whose certain members can be vicious, biting and cruel. We would all make the perfect subjects of a book about how a particular college group stood and/or didn’t stand the trials & tribulations of time. Over the two-dozen plus years many of us spent a lot of time re-enacting with each other bad relationships with our alcoholic, emotionally arrested or otherwise undeveloped parents. Personally, I spent a lot of time fretting over this group’s often withholding or seeming disapproving opinion, not ever realizing that it wasn’t they who’d moved away from me -- in little sub-cliques within the group -- but that without a meaningful event I had grown apart from some of them. I simply hadn’t had the inner strength and courage it took to make an obvious break. I was needy and unmet. However, over the last few years eventually I did. It helped that in that time I also moved, picking up a lot of long-lost and fresh blood, got married and inherited many quality friends from my wife. Wonderful people; the kind of people I’ve come to thoroughly enjoy outside of my original little group. Smart, funny, generous, open, curious, supportive, enthusiastic, soulful people. People you can get really excited about as you imagine a bright future spilled out before you. It’s hard not to compare the two. If I look back on it honestly, I can see myself desperately searching for a deep connection I was never going to get; a repeat of my relationship to my family. It was so nice when some of those relationships -- not all -- eventually evolved into just the thing I was searching for -- perhaps too eagerly -- all along. It was just as well that some of them fell away. My wife describes this dynamic in her own life with long-haul relationships, many from college. She says she thinks those people with whom relationships didn’t evolve were the ones where they’d froze their impression of her when she was struggling and then an adjustment was never made to make room for the newly emerged person. Perhaps respect was lost in all the listening that was endured. Perhaps it was easier to slap a simple label on it. Perhaps the evolution that did occur disrupted the pecking order, who knows. I’m sure it’s something caveman. Either way, it is what it Is - life. And, what’s more, it’s not over yet. What I mean to say is, I’m thrilled to have made it through my struggles (with more to come) and to have arrived here beside this wonderful person. You’ve heard it before, Rabbit, from your mother probably, but it bears repeating, because it’s no less true thirty years later: sometimes, perhaps, we simply need new friends. What do you think, Rabbit? Your Pallie-wallie Dear Pallie-wallie, New friends, new friends. I have trouble wrapping my brain around the concept of new friends until I meet someone new I really like and want to spend more time with, which doesn’t happen all that often these days. So, while I agree in principle (and certainly the new friends you describe sound solid), there’s something distasteful to me about the whole concept of comparing new friends to old friends, whether as silver vs. gold or as people who don’t meet your needs and don’t inspire you vs. people who do. Maybe that’s because, ideally, new friends should really have nothing at all to do with old friends, just like developing a little crush on your secretary shouldn’t come to bear on a long, happy marriage. Of course new friends -- who never saw you through your most achingly stupid and immature times, who never heard you blurt out something angry in a weak moment, who haven’t come to understand you as a complicated, flawed, but well-intentioned human being over the years – are always going to seem much more generous and easygoing and reasonable than old friends, just as you’re going to appear to be much more generous and easygoing and reasonable to them than you do to people who’ve known you since you were a total wreck. And while it’s absolutely true that there are those old friends who will always put you in a tiny box of your worst flaws, or they’ll be disappointed that you’re not a drunk loudmouth anymore (so boring!) or they’ll just annoy the fuck out of you with the same old problems and obsessions and short-sightedness that they’ve had for years, a lot of these stumbling blocks can be circumnavigated or even addressed along the way, with enough mutual trust and a forgiving enough attitude. I guess what I’m trying to get at is that, while I know exactly what you mean when you describe outgrowing a group dynamic that’s condescending or aggressive or competitive or unfair or just doesn’t serve certain individuals in the group, and I totally understand the notion of feeling needy and unmet by people who really, truly will never, ever get you, no matter what you do or say, I feel certain that the generous, lovely new friends you describe nonetheless have just as many dysfunctional twists and turns in their pasts, you just have the privilege (or misfortune) of not knowing about them. Furthermore, just as you might not be served, as an individual, by your group of old friends, you should take pains not to confuse the group dynamic with the actual personalities of the individuals in question. It’s easy enough to say: “Those motherfuckers, with their nasty, overachieving, competitive, condescending, judgmental ways!” But then you look at specific people, and you’ll see: This guy is my friend, and if I drop him completely, eventually I’ll feel the loss of that friendship. For me, personally, any friend who’s remained in my life since I was in my 20s or earlier gets a free pass to piss me off and annoy me indefinitely. Any friendship that’s adaptive and resilient enough to have made it this far in spite of plenty of mistakes and some ill-chosen words on both sides deserves my continued generosity and devotion, in my opinion. I’m not talking here about a group, of course – groups sometimes survive even where individual friendships inside the group would never have formed in the first place without the group to hold them together. I’m talking about people who know me very, very well, and I know them well, and we’ve listened to each other enough and challenged each other enough to feel like family to each other. But groups of friends are different. They have unspoken codes of behavior, and tend to favor a blind all-for-one attitude while frowning on open, honest, emotionally relevant dialogue and/or a direct confrontation of problems that arise. Let’s face it, pallie-wallie, when it comes to groups, we’re all needy and unmet in one way or another. Keep revealing your innermost feelings or following your compulsions to express yourself around your new friends, and I’m sure you’ll hit similar walls. None of us can mature fast enough to be seamlessly OK and healthy in the company of a wide range of personalities that’s guided by invisible codes of behavior and shared beliefs. And don’t even think about pointing out one of those invisible codes or notions to anyone in the group – groups of friends are, by their very nature, composed of team players who have no interest in dissecting how the group actually functions, or which parties sometimes get the short end of the stick. Ah, but I’m making it all sound so malevolent, when it’s all human nature and group dynamics (which spring, at least in part, from the family dynamics of the individuals involved). I guess what I really want to say is that you can make a careful, thoughtful decision about whether or not to remain friends with this old friend or that old friend, but throwing out an entire group in one fell swoop and then admiring the superior qualities of a new group, a group which, conveniently enough, is already in the loop thanks to your wife, sets off a few red flags with me. Keep your old friends or don’t, but the new ones certainly aren’t a replacement, any more than a flirtatious secretary is a replacement for the lifelong friend and caring partner you find in your wife. Maybe they’ll evolve into old friends, over time, and maybe they’ll generously accept you, warts and all, without being biased by your past struggles. But right now, compared to your old friends, these people are strangers. They’ll piss you off and disappoint you, too, and you’ll really only know if they’re actually friends or not once you’ve been through a little shit together. I mean, Jesus, some people really, truly come through when the shit hits the fan, and others completely disappear. The healthiest-seeming motherfuckers in the world are sometimes the most avoidant and passive-aggressive of them all, under duress. You’re happy and content and grateful right now, though, and you seem smart and reasonable. I’m really just drawing conclusions and drawing lines in the sand where none exist, for my own gratification. Look, it’s my fucking blog, Pallie, and I’ll do whatever the fuck I want with it. God, why do you always have to be so judgmental? This isn’t about you, for once, OK? Whatever, let’s just talk about it later. I’ve gotta go. (Click.) Hi, Pallie? Whatcha up to? Really? Hey, you know, it’s so funny, I was thinking about you and I realized that I totally went off on my own little trip for a while there. I get it. You were just saying that sometimes old friendships die for a reason. I agree with that. And if a friendship is really unjust and poisonous and wrong, it can really pollute the waters, emotionally speaking. Every now and then, someone writes to me, and I can tell that their entire microcosm is shitty for them, that they can’t relate to anyone they know, even though there are probably tons of people out there who would be so much better suited to them as friends. It sounds like you’re in the right place already. I just want to take this time to advocate for the old friend. Sure, I’ve dropped old friends, and old friends have dropped me, and rejection sucks and sometimes moving on is the only sane thing to do. But those old friends who know your whole history, who put up with your quirks, who tolerate your occasional obsessions, who are absolutely there for you when big things are happening? Those people should be treated very, very well. Those are the people who, when they get dumped, you leave your kid in the other room with your husband and talk to them on the phone for an hour, then blow off work the next day to talk for two more hours. You throw them parties, you buy them stuff, and if they’re single, you listen to the mundane details of their day-to-day lives, because single people need to unload these things on someone, and they need to know that you’re like family to them and won’t judge them for being a little longwinded occasionally. I’ve fucked up friendships, dropped friendships, bailed on people, offended people, annoyed and alienated friends to no end, so I’m not saying I’m fucking true blue across the board. But I do think there’s something to be said for really, really knowing which friends in your life are a top priority, and then committing to those people and honoring your commitment to them, no matter how inconvenient or annoying it is sometimes. Old friends are really important and necessary and precious, that’s all. Maybe some of us need new friends, but do we simply need new friends? In most cases, it’s not that simple. Rabbit 2:58 PM Sunday, May 04, 2008 THE BEAN EATERS I wrote a piece about bracing for a recession here, in case anyone is interested. It was at least partially inspired by something I wrote here on Ye Olde Rabbit Blogge, so that's a nice reminder that Ye Olde Rabbit Blogge is a vital and important part of my life as a "writer." ("Why" would I put "writer" in "quotes"? What the "fuck"?) I've been thinking a lot lately about how friendships change, mature, grow saggy and disappear in your mid to late 30s. Anyone want to hold court or gripe loudly on this subject? If so, I'm all ears. I don't know how I developed such a taste for unfettered whining, but I have quite an appetite for gripes of all stripes. Unfettered whining is a banana split for the motherfucking soul. 8:35 PM Monday, April 28, 2008 APRIL SHOWERS BRING MAY GLOWERS Dear Rabbit, I'm an older mom-to-be (38) expecting her first baby in late June and I'm dealing with a problem that might as old as the hills but I'm hoping you'll listen and help me out anyways. It's the baby shower and all the hopes, dreams, and bizarre traditions that go along with it. Things have gotten out of hand and I don't know what to do about it. I'm a fixer/helper by habit but this seems pretty unfixable. I've always been sort of uncomfortable with the concept of a baby shower anyways. But now that I'm in the throes of the last trimester I understand better where they come from. People love the idea of new life and the ones carting it around inside them are too exhausted and stressed to prepare adequately on their own. So when my friend "Megan" offered to co-host a baby-shower for me and asked me to hook her up with any one else who wanted to do the same, I was thrilled. She doesn't really know any of my other friends so she wasn't able to contact them directly. A few months passed and none of my three oldest, closest friends stepped up so I sent Megan the email addresses of a bunch of people who had expressed some interest in participating and included these three girls. That's probably when the unpleasant feelings started coming up for me. Something along the lines of "I'm asking people to host a shower for us? Yuck." Within a few days, five more people had volunteered to put something together for us. And in the process, I caught wind of something that immediately made me a lot more uncomfortable. "Sarah," who couldn't participate for various reasons, let me know that Megan had told the rest of the folks that part of shower hostessing was chipping in on a big gift for the parents. Well, Megan's financial circumstances and background are very different from most of these other five girls. She's a sales rep from the suburbs and they're a filmmaker, students, an admin assistant, and a full-time mom whose husband is in the faltering real estate business. When I found out about the "big gift" I got nervous and, while I didn't disclose to Megan the tax returns of my other friends, I said to her, "You know I consider the shower the biggest gift of all. Anything else from the hostesses would just be bonus." A bunch of us were also in the midst of planning a shower for another friend and I sent Megan the master plan for this shower and said, "This is the kind of thing I'd like." It was very simple. Just a bunch of potluck dishes. I even asked that the invitation mention that hand-me-downs and gently used items were preferred. I thought she got the picture but come to find out a few days before the shower, through Megan herself, that she found the rest of my friends' ideas and budgetary constraints "naive" and not only was she having the thing catered but the big gift had been purchased, apparently before finding out what if anything the rest of the ladies could contribute. At least one of these girls had sent her an email stating clearly that she was very upset with how things were going. Megan claims that she shared this information thanks to the influence of two margaritas. I sort of regret buying said margaritas or asking her how things were going. But I sort of regret the whole thing. When I saw the turn things were taking, I took certain steps to make my preferences clear but I also told myself "These ladies are all adults and they can take care of themselves. They also know me and how thrifty I am. Surely they'll put their feet down before anything gets out of their comfort zones." But now it sounds like that didn't happen the way I thought it would. I mean, none of my friends have the wherewithal to ignore their budgets. So then I thought, "Megan could have adjusted her ideas based on the limitations of her co-hostesses." but it sounds like she hasn't and is going to end up eating alot of the cost. And that in the meantime she might've guilt-tripped and shamed the other hostesses because of their preferences and limitations. I'm afraid that I'm facing one friend who is resentful for having spent too much and others who are resentful for having been pressured into spending too much. I feel this desperate need to fix this situation and apologize to every party. But I also feel like I need to explain to everyone besides Megan "This is not my fault!! This wasn't my idea" And even to Megan, I want to say "I told you I didn't want a big gift. I told you I wanted a low key, pot luck style food situation." I sometimes tell myself I could have managed this situation better if I hadn't let them do it on their own. But that's really a lie. The planning got into full swing right around the time I hit 28 weeks and my energy just bottomed out. Plus I had massive amounts of work to do too. If it had been up to me I probably would've just let the whole thing slide. I just feel terrible. I'm going to resist the temptation to ask other people how they felt about what happened because, at 32 weeks, I can't deal with the guilt right now or the stress of trying to make things right. I keep thinking "Well clearly I'll just have to fete these ladies right when it is their turn." But I wonder if you've got any ideas about how to deal with the current situation in a thoughtful and mature manner that doesn't involve guilt, defensiveness, finger pointing, or "I told you so"s. Thanks, Needs the Stuff but Not the Stress Dear NTSBNTS, Sweet Jesus, do I know what you’re going through. First I had a last-minute shower thrown by a friend who took pity on me (“Oh my god, no one has planned you a shower yet? What the hell?” “Oh, showers are dumb.” “No! You have to have a shower! It’s an absolute crime to have to buy all that crap yourself!”) I offered to have it at my house because she had a studio-sized house and a toddler and I didn’t want to stress her out over a total act of charity, but then she sent out an invitation from “Friends of H” instead of listing her name. Immediately, my other friends sent out similarly even more pitying messages (“Are you ‘Friends of Rabbit’? You shouldn’t have to throw your own baby shower!”). Then another friend insisted that she MUST throw my shower, at her place. She loved baby showers, she had always wanted to throw one, and it only made sense. I said she should talk to my other friend, but that I felt pretty sure that the other friend probably would love to be let off the hook for the whole thing, since she had a very demanding job and a very demanding toddler and was only stepping in to save me from an uncertain baby-showerless future. So the shower-loving friend took over, sent out an invitation, then left the country for a week . For the next two weeks leading up to the shower, confused invitees emailed me with questions, so that basically did feel like I was the one hosting my own shower, a task that not only felt like a total fucking scam (“Here’s the list of shit I want”) but that I had about as much proclivity for, in my 9-month-pregnant state, as an elephant has for hosting a tea party. Day by day, I felt guilty and embarrassed and stupid and pathetic and friendless and yet, I knew that anything I said to anyone would make me look like nothing less than an enormous (literally and figuratively), whiny, ungrateful, disgusting loser. The day of the shower came, and I wanted to call and say I was sick, but instead I waddled in, had a fruity virgin cocktail, surveyed the fresh flowers and the homemade empanadas my friend had stayed up all night making, and I felt incredibly grateful and happy and guilty, of course, but mostly just thankful that I had such great friends. Here’s the thing you have to remember: You’re pregnant. Even if you could ascertain what was going on (which you can’t), you’re still going to feel much more responsibility for the whole thing than you should. Yes, it’s always terrible when a rich friend asks poor friends to pony up for anything, and it sucks when it’s done in your name, for your benefit, when all you want is a pile of hand me downs. But this is the way showers are: Someone other than you is planning the whole thing (ideally). Whatever they plan, you have to go along with it. I’m sure Abby or Ann Landers would tell you to intervene and gently inform the host blah blah blah, but fuck it. You’re too big and pregnant to successfully maneuver through that minefield. It doesn’t matter if your friend asks too much. It doesn’t matter if your other friends gripe to her and to each other. All of that has nothing whatsoever to do with you. If some friends want to say, “I’m buying X my own gift,” they can do that. If others want to say, “You’re a soulless yuppie hostess whose asking too much from us,” that’s their right. You need not concern yourself with any of that. You’re a human manufacturing plant right now, and diverting energy away from your basic function will only cause a world of pain and grief for everyone involved. I realize now that mistakes were made along the way to my baby shower, and look, I never want anyone else to plan another party for me, unless of course it’s a surprise party and I don’t have to think about it at all until there’s a crowd of smiling faces and a margarita the size of my head staring me in the face. But mostly when I look back at my shower I think, “Wow, so many of my friends really, really wanted to do the right thing for me.” Both hostesses were totally well-meaning and heroic in their efforts, and I’m sure I stepped on their feet numerous times along the way, in my clumsy, stomping, confused-animal state. When events like this are planned, friends end up criticizing the way other friends handle things – they’re not friends with each other, and they all think they know what’s best for YOU. It’s not just the cost alone – believe me. Your friend will balk because someone took the reigns in a way that they wouldn’t have, because they know it would make you feel bad if you knew. But right now, you need to pretend you know nothing. Ask the hostess to keep you in the dark. Just tell her you can’t handle it, and apologize for whatever trouble comes up. If other friends hint that your hosting friend is being obnoxious, smile and say, “She means well” and assure them that they should do whatever they feel like doing, you’ll be happy with hand me downs or used clothes or just seeing everyone right before the baby comes. That’s if they mention it. If they don’t, don’t bring it up. Trust me, it doesn’t do any good to get wrapped up in it. Again, you’re pregnant. You’re prepared to take action and wage holy jihad over the slightest offense. Someone could say to you, “I just saw a lost kitten down the street” and you’d spend the rest of your week looking for it (trust me, I know this from experience). This isn’t your battle to fight. Leave it alone. Don’t touch it. Don’t think about it. Know that you’ll show up, the food will be wonderful, everyone will be freshly showered and smiling, and you’ll open a bunch of crap that scares the hell out of you but really does come in handy down the road. Be gracious to everyone. Believe me, the less you gripe now, the easier it’s going to be to enjoy the whole thing later. Everyone already knows that YOU wouldn’t have squeezed money out of anyone for anything. But even so, don’t forget that the misguided yuppie friend, however uncool, really wants to do the right thing, too. She can’t imagine not writing a check for whatever amount a hostess requested. That’s her personal code, and there’s something to be said for the friends who just hand over money, even if they can’t afford it, in order to be a good, helpful citizen. Haven’t we all choked up a big chunk of money for a birthday dinner and then lived on credit cards for the rest of the month, simply so we didn’t have to rock the boat and make other people uncomfortable, particularly on someone’s birthday? Even though we all think that we alone can determine the right way and the wrong way to handle these things, everyone has a different opinion based on their background, and there really aren’t clear guidelines on how to act, no matter what Ann and Abby say about it. So goddamn it, go to that shower and eat that damn good food and enjoy yourself! Gush over it, open the big present and gasp and make everyone feel great about the fact that they’ve been eating beans all month for you. It’s not your fault, and fuck it, enjoy your day in the goddamn sun. As a 37-year-old mother of a 18-month old, I can tell you, a catered party in my honor sounds pretty damn good right about now! Not that you’re an ingrate. I wouldn’t relive that baby shower weirdness again if you paid me. But look, it is an absolute crime to have to buy all of that crap yourself. (And anything you don’t get as a present, you should borrow from someone if you can. The first host of my shower insisted that I borrow a whole room full of stuff, and it was the nicest and most life-saving move I can possibly imagine.) But you know what will really make you feel ok about your situation? Another queasy baby shower story! Come on, I know there are tons of them out there! Send ‘em my way – rabbt (at) this url. Good luck with your new human! Rabbit 10:27 AM Wednesday, April 16, 2008 GUILT TO SPILL Dear Rabbit, I am a reasonably successful guy in the age group between boomer and X-er. My job is reasonably well-paid, but nothing obscene. It's also insecure, and I could lose it at any time, though its not actively under threat. This matters, since I am married, and have 3 young kids, who will be an impressive financial burden once they start to get closer to college age. Plus there's the whole "planning for retirement" thing, which I am trying to be very proactive about. All in all, the situation is, if not under control, then at least within some semblance of it, assuming I remain steadily employed for the next 20 years, and don't develop a cocaine habit. The problem in this happy little American dream story is, like the typical American schmuck that I am, I can't get along with my mother-in-law. She is of the genus, Irresponsibilis Depressis, a repeat offender at binge spending, borrowing against her house, losing the house as a result, and moving into a smaller place. Lather, rinse, repeat. To the point that now she is actually living in a (fairly nice) subsidised housing project, but one where admittedly not many of the other residents are Ivy graduates and former Fulbright scholars as she is. Additionally, she regards me as quite the villain in her current housing situation. In fact, I do theoretically have the wherewhithal to bail her out of these messes. But of course that money is supposed to be my kids' tuition money, my retirement money. Generally, it has been a pain in the ass to go and earn it over the past twenty years while she has been sitting on her kiester eating bon-bons and spending money on quack medicine, spur-of-the-moment consumer electronics purchases, and home remodeling. In spite of my evident disdain for her lack of foresight in getting into her bind, I did once buy an apartment that adjoined hers, as well as replacing her car recently, and sending her several thousand dollars over the years in emergency funds. Nevertheless, I am the bad guy, because I really just won't give her free access to my checking account. I even went so far as to put the proceeds from selling that apartment into a special fund, and I'm collecting the income from that fund for her eventual nursing care, its up to $20,000 bucks now. Here's the question: What is my moral obligation here, and am I meeting it? Is the fact that she's not happy, and thinks that having more money would make her happy really my problem? Yes, its true she's basically broke. But even when she has had money she hasn't been any happier. She spends it, which provides a momentary distraction, but she soon returns to misery, but with less money. Eventually she (just 70 now) is going to get sick or break a hip, or just drift into senility. Someone is going to be on the hook to pay for it. That someone is me. There are other kids, but they are all academics who don't have enough for their own lives much less hers. Her ex-husband whom she ditched 25 years ago, doesn't seem particularly eager to pony up big either. Reading over the above, I'm sure you'll ask why I don't mention her daughter, my dear wife, in this whole discussion. Unfortunately, she has sort of washed her hands of responsibility for her mom's happiness, except at those times when the emotional blackmail becomes very explicit and intense, at which point she passes the buck to me, to pass the bucks to her mom. She and her sisters have more or less given up on the notion of really helping their mom. She refuses any sort of counselling or medication, except for quack counselling at expensive meditation retreats, and quack medication such as blue-green algae based cures. (not joking.) Wondering How Guilty I Should Feel Dear WHGISF, Obviously you shouldn't feel guilty. If you'd done nothing in the past, if she were rotting away in a terrible nursing home and no one was visiting, if she weren't someone who spends every cent that's given to her immediately, then that would be another story. But what are you supposed to do for her? Buy her a place? I'm not really sure that the kind of woman who blows her nest egg and blames her son-in-law for it can be trusted with such gifts. If she were grateful and kind to you for the stuff you have done, if she had, over the years, tried to plan and save and be careful to take care of herself, that would be one thing. If she simply wanted more company and companionship, well, that's something that should be taken into account. But she doesn't want those things. She wants to sit around and bitch about what a bad guy you are, because she has nowhere else to put her self-loathing. Let's look at her kids: If they were remotely inclined to help, they could figure it out. They could discuss it, pool a little funds, and make something happen. Academics aren't well paid, but they are paid, and most people who plan and are careful can save money. If your wife came to you and said, "Look, I think we have to do something." then you'd have to consider it. But what is she doing? "It's your call"? So you can take the blame? I don't quite understand her role, but it sounds like she needs to take responsibility for her part in this. She shouldn't allow her mother to target you, if really, this stems from her crappy relationship with her mother and her mother's shitty relationship with money. Maybe she feels that, since you're extremely responsible with money (which it sounds like you are) then you're the one who makes the call on this. I don't know, though. This is her emotional equation, not yours. How can you be expected to make a good decision about someone who's merely a big pain in the ass in your life, who has no lasting emotional ties to you (thanks in large part to her bad attitude)? Your wife needs to define what she is and isn't willing to do -- for her own sake and for yours. Even if it's just a conversation between you two, you need to figure out where she stands in relation to her mother. She's going to freak out if her mom dies and she doesn't know if she's done the right thing or not, and she might blame you in retrospect. She needs to sort through her feelings and be clear about what she wants and what her boundaries are. But that's her work, not yours. Look, you've got $20k set aside just for your mother-in-law. Other than considering long term care insurance (maybe she's too old to afford such a policy) I don't see what you can do. I would maybe add to that fund a little more, so that you know you can bail her out of TRUE misery if needed. But what more can she ask for than that? Obviously she should've saved for her old age and not blown her nest egg, and obviously her kids are the ones who should be having tough conversations about what to do in case of emergency. Your wife needs to discuss it with them before something bad happens again and no one is prepared to handle it. You mentioned having to pay for college eventually. I assume you're putting as much as you can into some 529 funds for your kids -- this is one way to put the money out of reach, really, and maybe that'll also serve to assuage your guilt somewhat. If you've also been working for 20 years and haven't saved all that much for retirement yet, you'd better be maxing out your 401k and IRA contributions. Once those two things are taken care of (And personally, I'm a fan of throwing a lot into a college fund when a kid is small and then not worrying about it -- who wants to lament the cost of college for 18 years? Better to really scale back your spending now and relax moving forward) and you're making progress on paying off your house by the time you retire, then you can think about your mother in law if you want to. But retirement and college money are sort of essentials -- you can't really short change them without screwing your kids OR yourself and your wife. Now, if you have all kinds of money left over after that, and that makes you feel guilty, I suppose you could consider how you might improve her life. You could sit down with her and talk about what she really needs to feel better. Or you could just visit more often and see if that calms her down. Maybe she's just lonely and she copes by griping about money. But you know, some people get a hint that you're doing ok, and they're just twisted up inside over it. They want all that MONEY you have socked away! And you're so CHEAP! Not surprisingly, they're people who spent all of THEIR money already, and even if they made the money you did, they'd spend it all and want more regardless. Really, screw her. She sounds awful. Let your wife define the boundaries there. Sure, if you feel like you're the one person capable of sanity on that front (and honestly, it sounds like the other kids are either avoidant or they dislike their mother and want to maintain strong boundaries and keep her out of their lives), you could do what you can to clarify what might actually help her. But if you've already done that and she's still angry, fuck it. Don't let the fact that one person hates you make you unhappy. You're just a reasonably good, responsible person who expects to be treated with respect, and this woman is an anomaly in your life. This is really your wife's problem to solve. If she really really thinks you two should help more, after looking deep within herself, then obviously you'll consider that. But don't let this woman compromise your future and the future of your kids just because she's angry and has nothing better to do than blame someone else for all of her mistery. Best of luck. Rabbit 12:25 PM Wednesday, February 06, 2008 WHAT DO WE WANT? COOKIE! WHEN DO WE WANT IT? NOW! From an article in The New York Times about a book called "The Happiest Toddler on the Block": [A] toddler throwing a tantrum over a cookie might wail, “I want it. I want it. I want cookie now.” Often, a parent will adopt a soothing tone saying, “No, honey, you have to wait until after dinner for a cookie.” Such a response will, almost certainly, make matters worse. “It’s loving, logical and reasonable,” notes Dr. Karp. “And it’s infuriating to a toddler. Now they have to say it over harder and louder to get you to understand.” Dr. Karp adopts a soothing, childlike voice to demonstrate how to respond to the toddler’s cookie demands. “You want. You want. You want cookie. You say, ‘Cookie, now. Cookie now.’" 12:07 PM THE CONSTANT CHAUNCEY GARDNER Dear Rabbit, Thanks for the HuffPost link to the satire on Obama. Baldwin's bloviation couldn't get around the fact that this was a genuinely funny takedown of Obama's magnificent nothingness and coy dancing around race. The Obama phenom reminds me of nothing as much as the movie and book "Being There." An emptiness that empty people yearn to believe is somethingness. RW Dear RW, Yes, calling Obama "YoMama"? That was fucking genius! I laughed and laughed and rolled on the floor laughing, and then I picked myself up and dusted myself off and proceeded to live in my happy little racist honky bubble for the rest of my pathetic life. Hurray! Why does silly Obama repeat that stupid word CHANGE all the time? What's so important or special about CHANGE? OK, fine, we're stuck in two wars with no end in sight while creeping closer to a third, we've run decades of international diplomacy into the ground in a few short years, we're sliding into a major recession, we're fucking the environment and our legislators are thoroughly corrupted by corporate interests. But still. CHANGE! What an empty word! And HOPE. Why would we cling to HOPE, when clearly our country is HOPELESS? What's that guy Obama's fucking problem anyway? Rabbit 10:35 AM Monday, January 28, 2008 RACE TO THE BOTTOM Aww. It's so comforting to know that America is just as racist as it's always seemed. No, it's not all in your head after all! Just take a gander at this wonderful bit of comedy, pointed out to us by Alec Baldwin, who blogs for Huffpost and also... let's see, he has a career doing something else, I can't remember what. You knew it was only a matter of time. But don't listen to me, go read Baldwin's news clipping. Do it. Trust me, it's eye-opening stuff. You really don't want to miss it. You'll feel like it's 1968 all over again. Whether that gives you a thrill or makes you sick to your stomach really depends on your constitution. Welcome back, racism. I hope you're ready to get your ass handed to you, because we're not going to put up with your horseshit this time around. 3:39 PM Wednesday, January 16, 2008 AUTOMATIC BREADMAKER Dear Rabbit, Two summers ago, I met a wonderful woman, in a thousand ways my perfect match, and in a thousand other ways better; ethical, compassionate, witty & gorgeous too, a good family girl. Before the end of the year, my plan was to ask her to marry me, but in recent days there's been a little hiccup. It seems shortly after we moved in together, around the time we first started talking casually about marriage, around the time her financial situation hit an all-time low -- probably out of desperation -- she became aware of an nagging unexpressed expectation that I would pay for what were previously considered joint expenses, then when the marriage became truly imminent we would merge all our assets, just like her parents had done, and then her sizable debt -- she has a sizable debt -- would suddenly become our debt. But instead of mentioning any of this, or her need for a loan from me, allowing me the opportunity to be generous in a way that I've never shied away from -- gladly paying for all our dinners & lunches out, all our new furniture, our nights out/vacation expenses/sometimes the fuel in her car -- she just let our other joint bills (gas/electric/phone/groceries) passive-aggressively pile-up in the coffee jar, resenting the fact that I wasn't being an even bigger, generous, manly-man. I should back up and report that my girlfriend is no manipulative, advantage-taking brat (like I said, unless her recent financial woes have changed her for the worse). She’s never previously been anything of the sort - which makes this situation all the more confounding! We share the same profession. We share the same socio-economic background. We make the same money when we're both working. She knows I have no secret stash that would settle all this. In fact, we talk about the limitations of our profession and how in short order we're going to be out on the streets if we don't back ourselves up with several impossible real estate purchases or career shifts (we've considered going to graduate school so that we might someday end up with a real benefits package). I've been very out in the open with my limited finances, and yet my generosity is unprecedented; that, according to her. In fact, every month I put away the difference between my last apartment's expenses and my current one’s. So far I've saved a few thousand dollars, and each month I report to my girlfriend what I plan to do with that money; with no uncertain amount of cockeyed optimism I tell her I plan to put it toward a down payment on a house for us. Me! The big man! Mr. Big Shot! Who am I if not a mensch? And yet now I find myself having to roll out that good guy resume, having been denied the opportunity to be that guy -- and more -- before she started building up a preposterous unspoken position for why I should start paying down her debt, and judging me in the interim. Suddenly I feel unappreciated and insulted. Rabbit, did she set me up? Was I setting myself up? Did we pull a number on ourselves? She has a vague awareness of the irrationality of her expectations. And in keeping with that has pursued as many as three different tacks when restating her feelings on the matter. She cites the modeling of her parents; her dad was the single bread-winner while her mother stayed at home. My girlfriend even recounts a traumatizing event when her father dragged her by the ear as a child to show her all the things in the house he’d paid for; how dare she complain about not being allowed to go with her friends on a ski trip! I see this awareness as promising, but I'm hoping for more before I propose marriage. I have a buddy who's been sitting on an engagement ring for nearly three years, waiting for his girlfriend to somehow qualify in his eyes. I don't want to be that guy. Sure, money worries me (people’s relationship to money is deeply personal, vague, and remains largely unexplored - it looks as though I’ve avoided the inevitable for too long). The truth is, I might even get reactionary when confronted with being thought of as anything other than my highest ideal, and, in this case, at the proposition of footing another person’s debt. But more than that, the level of bad communication here and accompanying unconscious, subterranean, activity, terrifies me. This morning we made plans for couples' counseling -- she complained that she hadn't the necessary tools to go after this. In the end, it's a fairly common problem I'm sure a lot of 40+ year old couples coming together for the first time run into, right Rabbit? It's hardly infidelity or homicide or bulima or shoplifting - as far as troubles go, it doesn't rank, right? But still... I don't want to go into this thing without a fairly unencumbered horizon. Or without an awareness of my role in things. You wanna know what I REALLY think, Rabbit? I think even the best people, the most enlightened ones even, are still rife with so many parental issues they can barely walk straight. I see it in people I work with. They're so proud, it kills them that they sometimes require a handout (or less: the benefit of a colleague's experience); making themselves open to attacks of inferiority; they'll do anything they can -- including setting-up an otherwise gracious individual -- than to face their small measure of dependence. Hence my girlfriend’s arbitrary decision to keep paying her half of the rent. To do otherwise would have been too ego-deflating for her, and in her mind, would open her up to poisonous attacks that never, in reality, come (certainly not from me). And you wanna know something else, Rabbit? I think even the most enlightened other kinds of people can’t stand the possibility that they might be considered creeps, they bend over backwards to make their partners happy, even to the detriment of the relationship. That’s what I really think. But more importantly, what do YOU think? (I’m only pretending to know everything). Your loyal servant, Not A Creep Dear Not A Creep, You don't sound like a creep, you sound like a loyal servant -- a role that might serve you even worse than being a creep would. In every single relationship on the planet, the two parties involved eventually have to confront their very different views of money and ways of handling financial challenges. It's rare that this process is incited by anything but strife. Money just isn't something that you sit down and discuss all that often when you're dating or even living together. Until there's a snag, you suspend disbelief, assuming that you're compatible and you're both generous and there never will be a problem. Those couples who argue about money? They don't get along about anything, they just use money as an excuse to throw some plates at the wall. Eventually, though, if you're in a serious relationship, the money issue comes up. First of all, the landscape has changed drastically since our parents were young. Very few individuals can single-handedly support a spouse and pay for the expenses of an entire household without a second income. Housing costs are too high for that. Add to that the fact that we live in a country that's utterly twisted when it comes to money, where ordinary people with ordinary incomes are tempted every few seconds to spend more than they can afford. Despite the crumbling housing market and the perils of easy credit, I still get at least two offers of massive home equity loans every day. These days, we're led to believe that we're incredibly frugal if we're putting a little into our 401ks and have a tiny, tiny bit of money saved for emergencies, instead of being in serious debt. If you have a two or three thousand saved, that doesn't mean that you're a penny pincher. It means that you should probably try a little harder to save more. You're right that money is always unconscious, subterranean, uncharted, difficult to understand, and often terrifying. Even if you and your honey are fantastic with money, I think you have to work hard, in any relationship, not to allow money to come between you. You have to work hard to even come close to understanding someone else's approach to money. For example, you cite your girlfriend's experience with her dad, showing her all the shit he paid for, as reflecting her awareness of her preconceptions about money. Even if she's aware, though, what I see is a bad precedent: She hated having his generosity lorded over her, yet her actions make it clear that she's anxious for you to assume the same role. Even though you've steadfastly refused to resent the responsibility you've had to take for all of your extracurricular expenses as a couple, even though you've demonstrated your generosity over and over, she's still ready to push you to take responsibility for everything. Sure, she's paying half of the rent (stubbornly? Why is that stubborn?), but she's saving all the bills in a jar. She wants you to take it all off her hands, like a good husband does. Now, these expectations don't make her a bad person, of course. But some unconscious part of her emotional make-up is compelled, somehow, to push you into the role of beleaguered head of household. If you give in to her guilt-inducing, "Be my hero!" breakdowns, you'll end up on the wrong track. The issue is not whether or not you'll help with her debt. If you're determined to marry her, listen, you're going to help chip away at that debt whether you like it or not. That's just the way it works. You won't be able to make any kinds of goals for yourselves until you both make a serious, long-term plan for tackling the debt. But that doesn't mean that you're not helping her to conquer her debt. If she can't acknowledge that you're helping, that her debt is setting your plans back a few beats, that she was irresponsible with money and now you have to work together and deny yourselves the things you want to clean up the mess, then she wants a magical dream husband, not an ordinary man. If she can't say, "OK, you're right, I screwed up, I really, really need your help, and I'll be very thankful when I get it," then she's cornering you into taking responsibility for her indefinitely. Some people do this without wanting to. I worry, though, about what happens in five years. Does she want to have kids or adopt? In some part of her mind, are you going to keep working while she takes time off to have kids or to be a housewife? It doesn't sound like you'll be able to afford that anytime soon, but is she living in a fantasy world about how marriage will save her from the working world? A startling number of women have this fantasy, even when all the facts point to its impossibility. If you don't gently assert your boundaries now, you'll become the kind of person who'll drag his kid, by the ear, and show them all the shit his hard work has paid for. And as a natural born loyal servant, you're custom-made to become an angry, whiny martyr. I'm not saying she consciously wants you to be that person, or that you wouldn't consciously fight that tooth and nail. But without a concrete plan, without a close look at the problem, you and she both want magic to happen. You want to magically be the hero, and she wants to magically be saved. Neither of you want to have to discuss money, you want it all to be romantic and pretty without any need for talk. So, first and foremost, you have to give up on being the valiant hero, and your girlfriend needs to face the fact that marriage is not going to solve her money problems forever and ever, amen. You don't have to accept these things simply because you don't have enough money. This part is important, so listen up: Having more money doesn't make this picture any different. Somehow, when money is involved, no one gets to be the hero, whether they're incredibly generous or unnaturally cheap or ridiculously resentful, whether they're incredibly rich or totally poor. Money rips off the red cape, sooner or later. It won't let you save the day. Rich guys who can pay for everything end up feeling crappy about it at some point. Poor guys who can't do shit end up feeling crappy. Someone like you, who's careful, can't save the day, but you'll try and try and you'll hate yourself for failing, and eventually you'll hate her, too. That doesn't mean you don't have a decent relationship, or that you shouldn't marry her. It doesn't mean that you should angrily tell her she's trying to make you into her father, she's nuts, she's got issues, whatever. Don't get dirty where money is concerned. Be gentle, but be clear about what you're committed to and what you need from her in order to help. You have to assert very clear boundaries, and stick to them. If you're busting your ass to fix this problem, she can't go out and spend money on random stuff. You have to agree on a budget. And I don't really see why you should pay for all of your meals and vacations. Because you have a penis, you have to pay for the extras, when you make the same amount? I'm sorry, but times have changed. She wants to be treated as an equal, doesn't she? The price of a liberated man is, oh, about half of that expensive dinner bill! Again, don't go and lay down the law or anything, because that's laying the groundwork for the kind of dynamic she had with her father. Just go to counseling, like you planned, and sort through this stuff. Try not to get too ugly about it. People don't have a lot of control over their freakiness with money -- it's by nature irrational terrain. Be patient. But assert your needs, and try to come up with a plan, together, for getting back on equal footing with money, agreeing on what your goals are in the short and long term, and setting up a savings and debt-pay-off schedule. Also, a bit of gratuitous advice? Get married in someone's backyard, or rent a huge house at the beach for a week and ask close friends and family to chip in instead of giving you a wedding present, or hire an In-and-Out Burger Wagon to cater an event at a park. Don't add $20k to your shared debts for one day of semi-stressful fun. Everyone in your family will admire your restraint, trust me, and they'll have just as good a time at a low-frills party as they would at an overpriced hotel that serves shitty food anyway (and caterers are usually even worse at making 100 great meals at once than hotels are. Unless you pay out the ass for a caterer, which you shouldn't, the food will probably disappoint you). Personally, I'd rather have a great burger than a cold piece of overcooked wedding chicken any day of the week. I can tell that you're already committed to this woman, and you really think she's a catch, so I'm definitely not advising you to rethink that commitment. I do think you need to press her to be honest, and you need to pay close attention to her ability to listen and understand you and make room for your emotions when you're being honest. If she gets angry every time you express yourself, and she stubbornly holds onto this picture where you're the hero who fixes everything? Well, she doesn't want a marriage to a mortal. She wants to move into the Barbie Dream House with Ken. So be very kind and sweet to her throughout this tough time, but be firm and assert yourself with calm confidence. It's crucial to your happiness that you stand up for yourself and shed this notion that you can or should be a hero, because you'll end up a very unhappy, angry (albeit very loyal) servant. Very best of luck to you and your honey. My guess is that you two will be just fine, and that this will be a really rich (though difficult) time that will help you to grow even closer. Rabbit 12:30 PM Friday, January 11, 2008 HARD TIMES Are spreadin' just like the flu! Watch out, home boy, don't let it catch you! P-p-p-prices go up, don't let your pocket go down, When you got short money, you're stuck on the ground, So turn around, get ready, keep your eye on the clock, And be on point for the future shock! When I was in the 9th grade, this shy kid on my bus named Devo let me borrow his tape of Run-DMC, and this was my favorite rap on the tape. When the other kids on the bus heard us whispering the lyrics together, they'd say, "That shit is old!" like we were assholes to be stuck on a rap that came out 2 years earlier, but we didn't care. Devo needed a friend on the bus because he was sort of nerdy and really big - maybe 250 pounds and 6 feet tall. I needed a friend because I was one of maybe three white kids on the bus, plus I was a cheerleader, which meant that two days a week during basketball season, I wore a cheerleading uniform to school. Getting on that bus in my fucking tiny skirt, some of the girls would glare at me like maybe they should kick my ass, so I tried very hard to demonstrate that I was just some chumpy white girl with no ego, no pride, and nothing to prove. Some of the apartments we visited were seriously shitty-looking and pretty crime-ridden, so even when kids yelled that I had skinny fucking chicken legs and anyway there weren't enough black girls on the cheerleading squad (2 out of 10 were black, but the black-white split at the school was probably more like 40%-60%), I reminded myself that they had every reason to want to kick my ass, lily white bitch who didn't live in the apartment complexes and but for some reason caught the bus there. (My dad lived in the school district, but I lived most of the time with my mom, so I caught the closest bus to school about a mile from my mom's house.) Today I can't get those Hard Times lyrics out of my head. Why does talk of recession put me in such a goddamn fine mood? I've been cleaning the house more often, and planting stuff in the yard, and looking for ways to cook cheap meats. I've always wondered about London Broil: What the fuck do you do with it? A few days ago I found a marinade on Epicurious, soaked that slab of beef in it overnight, and my god, it was tasty delicious! $3.99 a pound! Put that in your blog and smoke it, crackers! Hard Times will put you on a natural trip! Earlier this week I was buying 80-cent bags of beans at the grocery store when a woman came up and pointed out a 15-bean soup mix. "This looks pretty tasty," she said, enthusiastically. "15 beans!" (When you go to the grocery store at 10 a.m. on a Monday, people really like to chat with you. It's sort of like the Friday-night pick-up hours at the Marina Safeway in San Francisco, only with coupon-clipping retirees.) "Yeah, that does look pretty good," I said, sociably picking up the same bag. I was feeling anxious about money and procrastinating my column. It felt good to talk to a stranger about beans for some reason. I was not only buying beans, you see, I was discussing various bean-related options with other bean buyers. Then the woman noticed the $2.69 price tag. "Too expensive!" she said. I stared at the bag in my hand guiltily. It did look good, and $2.69 didn't seem like that much. Then again, all of the other bags of beans were 75 or 80 cents, which meant that $2.69 was downright criminal. "You're right!" I said, putting back my own bag. "You have to buy beans at the Mexican grocery store. They're cheaper," she told me. For the rest of my shopping trip, I tried to think like the woman who refused to pay too much for beans. Four dollars for half a gallon of milk? Isn't that obscene? $2.99 a pound for pears? Maybe my kid should try to develop a taste for apples this winter. Pork butt is so cheap... Maybe if I cook it for long enough, covered in honey, I could puree it and then form it into a loaf of some kind... Now, some might say that I've become a mediocre, budget-minded, wife-and-mother type of fuckwad, and maybe I have, but let me tell you something, crackers: There is joy in this pathetic, groveling domestic role, particularly when your spouse shares in the demeaning slow-cooking and butt-wiping routine. And you know what else? Being a sad little recipe and coupon clipper feels sort of invigorating and honorable when our once-great nation is falling on its face and we're about to slide into a recession. Hard Times, got a pocket, all in change! It puts a kick in my step, somehow, throwing all my goddamn pennies into the change machine and coming away with $32. I like knowing that I can't afford to move and I can't afford to quit my job and I can't afford to think about the boundless possibilities that the universe has to offer, I can only afford to wash my own stupid floors and eat leftovers and lose weight so the clothes I already own don't look like shit on me. Honestly, I sort of thrill to a recession. But you know what makes me break out in hives? When people start talking about a "return to glamour." I distinctly remember this talk, in the late '90s, and how it made me want to kill with my bare hands. Or how about when people start loudly musing over when they'll start with the Botox, or wondering if they shouldn't sell their crappy house, since it's worth over half a million now, and buy something for $800,000 instead, as if it makes even a tiny bit of sense to take on an additional $300k in loans. Or maybe... maybe they should just sell their house and retire to fucking Costa Rica! I actually know people who did this, cashed in something like $400k, quit their jobs, and moved, and now they're learning to farm and meditate (Personally, I would lose my mind in 5 minutes, living in the jungle with nothing but self-loathing and a steady stream of existential crises to keep me busy.) How can you feel sane and healthy when you're preoccupied with all of the possibilities presented by your massive stores of accumulated wealth? How can you be happy when the world is your stupid oyster? Plentitude doesn't become us, crackers. Ah, but scrimping and saving is a wonderful, humanizing force in the world. And doesn't it follow that we should all loathe the military-industrial complex at this particular moment in history? Doesn't it make simple sense that we should have a bone to pick with the establishment, that we should be thirsting for revolution? It's about time we stopped reorganizing our walk-in closets and started fucking shit up! I'm sure that, wherever he is, Devo feels the same way. 12:53 PM Tuesday, January 08, 2008 BEST BLOG POST EVER! I think this may be the best blog post I've ever read. 8:10 PM Sunday, November 11, 2007 VIRGIN VOYAGE Dear Rabbit, I know you are very busy grappling with motherhood, your job, etc. But hopefully, your perspective can help me solve a problem that simply will not budge, and is threatening to take over my life. I make a good living as a writer, but I'm also a (struggling) actress in L.A. I've experienced some success this year-- booking commercials, a few tv shows. It's tough, but I knew it would be. It's also worth it. My biggest challenge I never saw coming. I'm 30 years old. I've never had a "real" boyfriend, and I've never had sex. I've come close, and I almost always want to, but my brain stops me: Who is this guy really? Is he going to disappear once the sex is over? Will I bleed, will I cry, will I run screaming from the bed? What if I tell him I'm a virgin, and he (understandably) thinks I'm a freak? I think I understand how this happened. Growing up, my father was, at best, sexually inappropriate towards me (that is such a weird phrase, but I don't know any other way to put it). Looking back as an adult, I think my mother had an inkling of what was going on, and I do believe she tried to stop it. She also stifled any shred of my sexuality that may have emerged in junior high and into high school. I was not allowed to shave my legs, use tampons or wear tank tops-- even to sleep in. (I had big boobs that developed quite early. I later had a breast reduction.) I was also not allowed to shower (I could only take baths). My mom caught me once, using the shower instead of the tub. I was punished. And she ordered my father to disable the showerhead. This was never said aloud, but I knew, just knew, that to my mother, showers were something women did, not girls (I have a big brother, and he was allowed to shower.) By the time I got to college, I was brainwashed. My friends had boyfriends, but I did not see that as an option for me. I simply could not fathom it. I truly believed that no man would see me in that light-- and I accepted this as fact, without anger or self pity. Kind of like accepting your race or gender. It was just a matter of fact. I was 19 when I kissed a guy for the first time. It did not go well. Something very strange happened: My body shook uncontrollably. My heart pounded, I began to sweat and felt dizzy. It literally felt like I was being attacked. I just laughed it off. I did not know at the time that it was a panic attack. And, for years, it would happen every single time I was close to a guy. Unless I was drunk. And then I felt nothing at all. I remember exactly when it finally hit me that something was not right. I had just moved from NYC to LA. Sitting in my new, empty apartment, alienated from my family (they were not happy about my committment to acting, or the pursuit of it) -- I began to remember all those rules I had to follow as a child. Or not so much remember them, as thought about them for the first time with my adult mind. I was both dumbstruck and pissed off. What the fuck were those rules all about? Why was I not protected from my father? Why did my parents not encourage even limited interaction with boys or even mention the idea, for fuck's sake? Is this why I never really dated, even after college? I called my brother and when he confirmed everything I remembered, I sobbed uncontrollably. Then I worked on fixing it. Which consisted of faking it. I simply pretended I was the kind of girl who was used to male attention and comfortable with it. And it worked. The panic attacks stopped-- at least the physical part. But four years later-- I'm still not really a dater. I do go out with guys, when I find one I like. And I've discovered I am very sexual. But-- it never goes further than a few dates. Hence, I never feel comfortable going "all the way." I know what you're thinking: She's not ready. But I am! Truly. I know sex isn't going to make me a different person, and I wouldn't want it to. This isn't about self-esteem or peer pressure (does that even exist when you're 30?) I think I'm smart, and funny and a great friend. I like me. I don't want to have sex to fill a void. I want to have this very normal and common experience, before it's too late. I've tried every road I can think of. I'm on that crazy web-dating site. I go to parties and charity functions. I'm in therapy. She tries, but she doesn't get it. She implied that it might be time to just do it with anyone. Maybe even pay someone. Which only made me feel worse. Why should that be my only option (besides waiting-- which I cannot do any longer.) I'm not going to get into how "pretty" I am. I will say that I am an attractive person. I have friends, a social life, a solid career-- and I'm generally happy. This situation, however, sucks. And right now, I feel powerless to change it. I could just do it, but I'd have to live with the fact that it happened that way, after all these years. And I resent that I can't seem to meet a guy, date for awhile, then have sex, when there's some sort of mental and physical connection. On the other hand, I'm convinced that if I wait any longer, things will get much worse for me mentally, or I'll shut down altogether. I feel like I was asleep for so long, then something woke me up. Now I'm ready! But all I hear is crickets. I used to find this whole thing absurd and hilarious. But now it's not funny. Not at all. I don't want to be a 40-year-old virgin. Shit, I don't want to be a 31 year old virgin. Please help, Ready Ready Ready Dear R. R. Ready, You present a tough problem, because you're following the same avenues as most single people your age (online dating, parties) and you're taking advantage of the right resources (therapy), but you're going through all of the same difficult things with this lead weight on your ankles: The weight of an emotionally (if not sexually) abusive childhood, the weight of inexperience, and the stigma and side effects of those two things. You refer to your relationship with your father as "at best, sexually inappropriate" and then talk about how your first kiss gave you a panic attack. I think you can safely classify yourself as a victim of sexual abuse. No matter what actually happened with your father, both of your parents treated sexuality as if it had the power to destroy the known universe with its terrible, dark forces. On top of that, you weren't really conscious of the severity of the problem until relatively recently. That's the kind of insidiously depraved upbringing that can actually be more haunting than straight-forward physical abuse (assuming that wasn't happening as well), because it's never addressed. leaving you to try to manage the huge conflicts and emotions and confusion around it without even consciously acknowledging their existence. This is the stuff that major personality disorders are made of. So, never underestimate how wildly dysfunctional your upbringing was. It's a really good sign that it doesn't just seem "funny" to you anymore - making light of it is a coping strategy and defense mechanism that probably saw you through some seriously trying times, but now that you want to look at this mess head-on, it's good that you're honest about how ugly it is. Also, give yourself serious credit for getting through this without fucking shit up, big time. You have a pretty solid life, good friends, a decent career -- I would never have figured all that out, in your circumstances. Obviously you're tough and a hard worker and you have a big heart that's able to let people in despite the injuries of the past. Given the strength of your character, I have faith that you're going to meet this next challenge and figure out how to face it and grow and learn from it. I know that's cliché, but I really do believe that. But first, I have to say something that you probably don't want to hear: The first time, whether it happens when you're 18 or 38, is more often than not a disappointment. In my opinion, it's unfortunate that the first time is mystified and romanticized so much, because it just sets people up to feel shitty about it. Why? What if you'd never eaten a ham sandwich before? Do you think you'd instantly adore ham sandwiches, after your first bite? Probably not. Why should your first bite go down in history as the most important? The thing is, the first time is never all that important to anyone who's had plenty of good sex since then. That's why people say "Why not just get it over with?" Because so many things can happen, before, during, and after, that undermine that original experience. Even if you're wearing white chiffon and all the tiny candles are lit and it's like a scene straight out of "The Blue Lagoon," the chiffon's going to get stained, the candles are going to set the bear-skin rug on fire, the girl's going to feel like she's gross or a disappointment for not exploding with passion, and the guy's going to come too early, roll over, fall asleep in three seconds, and not call the next day. I think even sexy teenagers in love on a desert island are disappointed afterwards. The first time just doesn't come off the way it should. And look, that's also why it's tough for someone to take on being YOUR first. They know you'll probably be disappointed, like they were, the first time. It's just heavier for you than it is for the other person, and when the other person knows that (without really knowing how they feel about you), it's a big weight to bear. You have to look at your long-range plan here, and remove some of the pressure from the first time. You don't want to have sex once, you want to have a sex life. You want, possibly, a good relationship. To get there, you have to accept that it's going to be a rocky road. You cannot guarantee anything about the first time: that it'll be an outpouring of love and physical communion, that you'll even enjoy it. You have to try a few things that probably won't be as great as you expect. You have to spend time with people you might not like a few months later, and risk getting your heart broken. But you have a good life, you're on solid ground. This stuff isn't going to break you. Part of you wants it to happen so you can stop feeling stigmatized by the fact that it hasn't happened yet. I don't know if you should walk around telling people or keep it to yourself. All I know is, you have to respect your own path and communicate that respect for yourself to other people -- friends and potential boyfriends or partners -- so they will respect you, too. You have to stop making yourself feel crappy about this, and stop trying to make your past OK, and just say: This is what happened. This is part of who I am. But that doesn't mean you're scarred for life. You can emancipate yourself, but part of that emancipation is going to lean on your continued faith in yourself. You look at yourself and say: I'm strong. No matter how this next part goes, it's not going to define me. This could be a big, fat failure, but that doesn't mean that it'll stay that way, or that my life will then be a tragedy. Look around at the people you know. If you could see a little film clip of each of their first times, you'd laugh your ass off, and then cry and feel so bad for them. The first time is, by nature, tragicomic. It's just a pathetic mess. It rarely works out. Most people want to forget about it. Luckily, with practice, with other partners who are actually a better match, the first time is erased like something you scrawled on a sandy beach decades ago. Who the hell cares? No one cares. No one is watching. No one remembers. I would encourage you to see the whole thing as an experiment. Sure, guard your heart. Ask for what you want -- don't be afraid to do that. But put it in perspective: This is a journey with more than one stop. Things can and will go wrong. You're strong enough to take this risk now -- you weren't before. Remember how strong you are, to be here. Many, many people would never have gotten this far. You think I'm wrong, but I'm not wrong. You're humble, you have a good heart. Men are going to be crazy about you - the only reason why that hasn't happened yet is because you haven't been ready yet. Now you're ready, and all you have to do is try. Go on dates, make out, see where it goes. Don't do anything you don't want to do, but just follow the flow of things without always allowing the sports announcer ("LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, COULD THIS BE IT? COULD THIS BE THE FIRST TIME?") into the room. Just live. We all have stuff we're afraid of, that we haven't tried yet. This is your corner of not-knowing, fear, anxiety. Ease in. Know that it probably won't be perfect, or even all that good. Accept that you might not be in love enough. Or wait until you are. But open up to all of the possibilities. Don't rigidly wait for something that looks perfect or feels perfect. You might wait forever. And it sounds like you've done enough waiting. You have to try to meet men, become friends with a few of them, hang out as friends, and see how it goes. Try to be honest and open and present yourself as you are. That doesn't mean that they MUST know you're a virgin, necessarily, it just means that you're open to making a real connection with them, without pressure. Cast a wide net, and get to know some people, either through online dating, friends, whatever. Don't just do what you always do, be open to talking to new people and making new plans. Vow to say yes to every proposed activity that comes your way, just to see if you can learn something new, even if you don't think you'd like the guy. Just show up, and see what happens. Be safe, of course, and don't force it. But try to get to know some men, and to see them as potential friends first. Remember, you're not a freak, you've protected yourself over the years. Look, maybe that's what kept you from losing your mind. Maybe that's how you developed good friendships and a great career -- by pursuing those things and staying away from the volatile nightmare that lurked in your sexual thoughts, memories, notions. But now you're ready to throw open the doors and just see what happens. Use that sense of humor -- you'll need it. It's going to be hideous and bad and lonely at times, but eventually it'll be great, and you'll fall in love, and you'll be past this, ready for the next big challenge. It might take a while, but you'll get there, and you'll look back the way the rest of us do, and cringe. And then you'll push it out of your mind, and you'll go walk the dog with your husband and kids, and someone will fall and skin their knees, and your husband will say something that's fucking retarded and you'll be annoyed, and the little imperfections and tiny tragedies will rise and fall with the tides, but mostly life will be damn good. But today it's time to accept your frailty, be vulnerable, be proud of yourself, be honest, be brave, and stick your neck out. You can do it! Rabbit 5:03 PM Sunday, November 04, 2007 CHILDLESS WHORING Dear Rabbit, I'm wearing my Childless Whore shirt. You’re my favorite. Okay, enough of that. I need your help. I used to be a serial monogamist, but that wasn't working out well for me with the sorry series of bad relationships I'd added to my resume. I decided it was time to try out my single sea legs. They're faulty. I’m excruciatingly bad at dating and/or being completely alone. I've now been single for about 3 years and I've never shown worse judgment. I just ruined another opportunity to get to know a man by sleeping with him on the first date. Shocking, but it blew up from there and of course, I'm the one left feeling like the asshole. Thinking, "Gee, why doesn't he have any respect for me? That’s odd.” I've decimated any hope of us even exploring a friendship now by trying so hard to ‘fix’ it and all I’ve accomplished is making it hopelessly embarrassing for myself now. Don't get me wrong here, I certainly think he played his part in this destructive, childish dance we've just done. Let's face it though, women are the keepers of the sex. It's my final say on giving it up or not. After that fatal first mistake though, when things got scary I ran away as fast as I could (told him we couldn’t be more than friends. I didn’t tell him the real reason: because I have such a fear of drama and arguments now.) which infuriated him. Then I spent the next two weeks trying to make him see that he shouldn’t be angry with me anymore. He, on the other hand, berated me in front of our friends-complimentary swearing included. We met through mutual friends. He treated me with a self-righteous anger in front of others only to later call me to proposition me to come over to his house and have sex with him again (I’m ashamed to admit that I found that sadly flattering. Ugh.). The responsibility of being the keeper of the sex is proving to be too much for me. I'd like to think I'm not promiscuous, but that doesn't make it true. Where has all the self-respect I thought I had gone when I go out on a date and become doe-eyed and weak-kneed at the thought of a man finding me attractive? Certainly the copious amounts of alcohol I imbibe on a date to calm the old nerves doesn’t help me make good decisions, but is that the only issue? Am I choosing the wrong men? Do I have pathetically cliché self-worth issues like all the girls I see around me?!?! I think my bumbling, overly-eager attempts to make things better come off as desperate (are they?) and have the added bonus of making me feel so ashamed when I over-analyze them later. I’m not even honest with my girlfriends about the extent to which I’ve gone trying to ‘fix it’. It’s just too embarrassing. All of this and I should probably be focused on the fact that I’ve had to take a semester off of college for financial reasons. I’m putting myself through college at 26 (got a bit of a late start) and still feel really lost about my major. My bills are late. I work in a pub, which isn’t the best environment for anyone. I drink way too much. I worry about shallow things like my weight and clothes rather than focusing on accomplishing the goals I’ve almost set for myself. Right now I feel immobilized and lost. I probably shouldn’t even BE dating. I know you’ll slap me with a good if brutally honest answer. Help. Thank you, Rabbit. Doomed to Repeat My Mistakes Dear DTRMM, Let's start with you forgiving yourself for your mistakes. You shouldn't feel shitty about yourself for them, because we've all made them before. It's not easy to be a twenty-something, smart, vaguely neurotic, sometimes impulsive woman who, at some level, wouldn't mind stumbling on true love, in all of its confusing and hard-to-read forms. Every woman I know has, at one point or another (if not for a full decade), fallen into behaving like a fun, easy-going sort of girl, replete with multiple tequila shots and witty banter. And why the fuck not? But with tequila in your blood, you will be sleeping with him, all better intentions aside. Again, why the fuck not? Well, some small part of your brain remembers why not. No matter how legitimately cool (and cute and smart) you are, most men will wake up wondering if you'll invest too much too soon, and even when they're interested, that makes them flinchy. Your less fun, less easy-going self immediately recognizes the flinchy glances at the door, the enforced "Hey, it's casual, see ya around" exit, and that self, the more neurotic, perhaps slightly controling, more serious, more lonely self, tries to "fix it" by acting ultra-casual, by clarifying this or that, by hoping to nail down a future encounter, by proclaiming the whole thing a friendship and nothing more, or by doing all of the above at once, thereby coming across as half-insane. This is where you scare them off, where we ALL scare them off: We're at war with ourselves, and we're intent on lying about what we want, to ourselves and to them. Trying to fix it makes it messier. And then he gets mean in front of friends, and you try to fix that because now your whole reputation as a cool girl (not a psycho chick! not one of those!) becomes threatened. This is where you try to "fix it" in ways that you don't tell your friends about: you make dumb calls, you say stupid things, you snoop, whatever. You make manic, obsessive, stupid moves in order to regain control of something that you were never in control of, from the moment you had that third tequila shot. So, let's be fair: We've all done this. Forgive yourself. You're not a bad person. You're not even all that insecure, necessarily, or you're about as insecure as the rest of us women. Women always have insecurities and bluster and fears and swagger in strange layers, just like men. Don't worry about having more or less than anyone else. It's safe to assume that this stuff is acting on everyone you know right now, just in different ways. So don't beat yourself up. You're fine, you've got a lot going for you, and you're definitely good enough and smart enough and people like you. You know that. But you're not the sexiest, most entertaining, most wonderful, charming, thrilling, scintillating woman on the planet. Just give that up right now. No one is going to fall in love with you over the course of a night of hanging out, therefore you're never justified in going for it, if what you're really looking for is someone who likes you a lot. Forget being the hottest woman in the room. Forget being the coolest. Forget being the one everyone wants. Not only isn't that you, that isn't anyone. And the women who pull that off? You don't want to be them, trust me. They have so much ego riding on that shit, and eventually, it comes back and bites them in the ass. It's nothing to strive for. It has no value at all, in fact. Give it up. You're just you. You're great just being you. Now for the tough part: You should stop drinking, and quit your job at the pub. Your self-esteem is faltering and your life is slipping downhilll because you're feeding your delusions of grandeur with alcohol. You have a few drinks and you're pouring drinks for tons of guys and you think you're the queen of the world. You're not. You wake up the next morning and start trying to forgive yourself for being a drunk and fucking some guy, and then you try to fix it. You're working really hard at a bad balancing act. You can't expect to make firm decisions about anything and then get wasted and carry them through. As long as you keep getting wasted regularly, your bills will keep being late, you'll get into credit card debt (if you're not there already, I'm guessing you are), you'll never go back to school, and you'll keep going out with guys who insult you in front of other people (I don't care what's going on with you and him, that guy definitely isn't a good bet). I'm sure you make good money at the bar, but you'll blow it all if you keep working there. There's no way someone who drinks too much is going to control their drinking while working at a bar. Now you're thinking: "She thinks I'm an alcoholic, and I'm really not! She's misreading this whole thing." That's not actually what I think. I think that you're going to take a mediocre path with your life and with men and you're going to think less and less of yourself, if you keep doing what you're doing now. Practically speaking, you're going to go into a slow, 10-year downward spiral, and then you're going to have to join AA and chainsmoke on some street corner every night with world-weary, wrinkled, exhausted, desperate human beings like yourself for the next 10 years after that. Even if it doesn't reach that low point, you're going to waste 10 years of your life to lame men, untrustworthy but entertaining friends, and a go-nowhere but ego-boosting job. Wouldn't you rather quit your job, try to find work in a sane, promising environment, explore your talents, be honest with yourself and dare to present yourself as who you are, warts and all, to the people you meet? Get a normal job and stop getting drunk, and then you can actually have 2 or 3 drinks now and then instead of giving it all up entirely. Get a normal job and get yourself out of debt, and you can go out with men who like you for reasons that have nothing to do with your bad-ass demeanor or pouring skills in a low-lit dive bar. Stop drinking so much and you won't jump into bed for no reason and you'll feel better about yourself, and there'll be nothing to "fix." And look, for anyone else reading this who doesn't have a drinking problem like you do, let's talk for a second about trying to control how a guy feels about you: You can't. You will never change any man's opinion of you by trying to do so. You can't spin things over and over. You can't call him and act like you're too busy to talk and you don't care. You can't make up for having slept with him too soon. And if he rejects you, it's not personal and actually has nothing to do with your relative quality as a woman. He made some choice. Who fucking knows why? Who is he, anyway? Who knows? It has nothing at all to do with you. Just stop it. Stop trying to control his view of you. Don't you care at all about your view of him? Don't decide so fast that he's the one you want. Wait and see. Let him prove himself. Don't touch him. Keep busy with more important stuff. I'm not saying that you won't get carried away and decide you're in love too often - we all do. Just don't try to fix everything and make everything work out when it really shouldn't. We women always think that, when we feel bad, we need to DO SOMETHING. No. Don't do anything. He knows you like him. He knows plenty. Look over the information he has, and be honest with yourself. He always has enough information, and if he doesn't, he can come to you for more information. Do not volunteer what you think, what you feel, what will make it all better for you. He doesn't want to live in YOUR little world when you lay it all out for him before you even know him. Stop drinking, make a few male friends (friends only), be honest about who you are, (sentimental weak sometimes needy bossy, whatever) and get another job. Make your self-image and your finances your new project. You may have to ditch some friends, too, because chances are they all drink way too much and would prefer that you stay in that category. Spend more time by yourself. Work out more. Try to enjoy feeling healthy. Sign up for some classes, meet some people. Don't expect them to be as entertaining as the drunks you know. It's fine to know boring people. Hell, it's fine to BE a boring person. And really, there's something about being boring. Over the long haul, it makes you more interesting, more trustworthy, more lovable, more real, sexier, and happier. I guess what I mean is that when you're not afraid of boring, that means that you've set your ego aside. In your mid 20s, your number one job is to get over yourself. (Some of us take another 10 years to do this, actually). You have to stop wanting to be the star. You have to stop looking for people to fall madly in love with you across a dark, smoky room. Love and real life don't play out like some Brad Pitt vehicle -- and look, that lie didn't even work for Brad Pitt! You're really young and everything in your life is still pliable - don't wait until things get really dark and ominous and you feel like you have nowhere to turn, because it happens. Get out now, because you're losing your self-respect, and you know it. Don't spin anyone's view of it, either. Just be honest with yourself, and with your most trustworthy friends. Don't talk about it to men you don't know. Don't tell the guy you slept with, who insulted you in front of your friends, about any of it. You're not changing so people (men) will like you more. You're changing so YOU will like you more, because you're starting to dislike yourself. Again, we ALL do this. All of us. The mid-20s are tough in this way. There's too much fun to be had, but everyone is hopelessly shallow. It's ok to indulge every now and then, to feel young, whatever. But you're looking for ego rewards and cheap thrills all the time now, and you're life is quickly falling apart. 2008 could be the best year of your life, if you start being really honest with yourself and stop being afraid of showing the world who you really are. You don't have to be the coolest girl in the world, you just have to be you, and people will love you in a real, lasting way, a way that's currently eluding you, just for that. You can be vulnerable, and flawed, and kind, and dull, instead of being aggressive and funny and hot. You can be regular. You can be ordinary. You'll never be ordinary, in fact, as long as you stop struggling to be extraordinary looking, seeming, acting. See how working at a bar plays into this illusion? Stop begging for ego doggie biscuits, and start nourishing your true self. Did I just write "nourishing"? Sweet Jesus. I sound like a fucking guru. Please forgive me. Anyway, good luck out there. Give us an update in a few months! Rabbit 2:28 PM Monday, September 17, 2007 THE POWER OF "OW!" Yo, rabbit! In one of your recent conversations, you talked to the no-boundaries guy, and suggested he'd learn how to lead a good life. Can you tell me how this is done? I have no will-power or passion, at least not consciously (sometimes, when I talk about a certain book I read I catch myself being passionate). I am in love but very very joyless in my life. I should shave, but don't, because -- what the f***? Wouldn't make a difference. I know I should eat better and take care of me in order to care for the ones I love dearly, but can't. Instead I feel guilty for being such a failure in being me (since I don't really feel me, I can always blame me for that -- being shitty in being me). It all seems so pointless. I have a shrink and suffered from chronic anxiety and depression and am still on meds (for over a year now). I am outwardly successfullish, I guess, being the CEO of a creative agency (don't know either), yet fail to develop any drive or hope for my future. I feel deeply loved by my family (who I see too little) and friends, but withdraw more and more. I bought this book Cary Tennis recommended -- The Lifelong Activist -- and its the saddest experience ever for me to read it. I don't care enough to be active or I care too much, I don't know anymore. I just feel like a statue of salt. Problem is: I am not twenty, I am 33 now. I should have figured all this out. Instead I have been turning in circles for the last 10 years. I feel like such a bore, because of it Hey, but I like reading your stuff! You are a dreamboat! Chapeau and all, Being Bad Being Me Dear Bad Me, First, and most importantly: When you wake up in the morning, before you let any bad thoughts enter your head, get up, get out of bed, and go work out for at least 35 minutes. You could run, but if I were you, I'd get in the car and either go to the track, go to a running trail, or go to the gym. My feeling is that depressed/anxious people need to be around other people when they work out, because they need distractions to keep their bad heads busy. You won't like this advice, I know. Working out seems pointless, you have no will power, or you already work out a little but you bail a lot then hate yourself for it. It's a drag, it hurts, and you've never liked it the way other people do. Plus, isn't it beside the point? No. If you're depressed at all (or if you're unemployed, retired, a writer, someone who works from home, even if you just happen to have a slightly flexible schedule) you MUST start your day with a workout 5-7 days a week. You can talk all you want about why you aren't happy and what might make you happy, but I'm telling you: Depressed people have to work out, period. You must work out. All that talk is wasted unless you at least commit to working out. Yes, I get it. You're too depressed to work out and eat right. Very interesting. I know how you feel. But you have to work out. I don't care how you eat. Just work out. Yes, you have to. Make a commitment right now to work out almost every day, first and foremost. You can't skip this step. It's just an unfortunate aspect of your chemical make-up. Some people don't require it, but you do. Next: Stop freaking out about how bad you are at being alive. Stop feeling shitty and guilty all the time for being lazy and negative and wishy washy. I do this, too, and it's really tedious and such a waste of time. Of course, thinking that it's tedious and a waste of time adds to the problem, so when I'm really, really annoyed at myself for being lazy and lame, when it's starting to make me anxious and weird because I feel ashamed of myself for being such a freak about the smallest things, then I force myself to do two or three things I've been dreading (I'm down anyway, how bad will it really feel to do something annoying?). Then I promise myself that after that, I'm going to take an hour or two off work and do the laziest, lamest thing I can think of, like going to the mall or eating a hamburger or getting a pedicure. There's something about doing something really pointless that helps when you're feeling avoidant and down on yourself. It sort of defies logic, but it does work. Now of course you're going to say, "But I don't even care about hamburgers or pedicures! There's nothing I want to do." The point is that you have to create a little bit of time in your life when you're not supposed to be doing anything else. There's no goal. You have plenty of time. You're just existing. You're eavesdropping on conversations, but you're not comparing your lackluster attitude with the enjoyment and enthusiasm of others. You're just hanging out, listening, taking it all in. OK, here's the other thing: The book about activism. I totally understand why Cary would suggest this -- it makes sense. He probably thinks you could benefit from having an outward focus. He wants you to stop thinking only of yourself. I also understand, personally, why it would depress you to read it. The other day, I was reading a special "Family" issue of "Real Simple" magazine that my sister-in-law gave me because she was done reading it. She said there were some good quick recipes and cool ideas in it -- and there were. But when I looked at the pictures of cute families, along with their first-person descriptions of "bedtime challenges" and possible solutions, when I perused the easy birthday party ideas and the cute star-shaped waffles and dinosaur-shaped quesadillas, I wanted to jump off the nearest cliff. It's not just that I don't feel like I'll ever be the kind of mom who can make dinosaur-shaped quesadillas. I never expected to be that person. What's odd is that, when I look at those pictures, I imagine those mothers, with their clean houses, cool clothes, and well-adjusted children who never have the hardship of eating a quesadilla that isn't shaped like a dinosaur, and I feel sorry for them. I picture those moms cutting out the dinosaur part of the quesadilla, and then eating the non-dinosaur part themselves, and I want to cry. There's just something so sad about so much perfection. On the one hand, I feel bad that my family life will always include dustbunnies and dull lunches. On the other hand, I can't even aspire to doing better, because it looks so freakishly cheerful and wrong to put in so much effort. It's like I think that life's big disappointments will only be made worse if the house is perfectly sparkling clean and even the food is relentlessly cheerful. And yet, some part of me feels that I should want these things that I don't fucking want. These are, admittedly, the neurotic tics of Westerners who have the time and money to think that they should be solving problems that no one else in the universe considers problems. In the rest of the world, if you've got something to feed your kids, life is good even if it looks like a pile of dung . What I'm trying to say is, it's the notion that you're not living well that drives you into the ground. You have to let go of this idea that you have everything you want and you're just an ingrate who can't enjoy it. You should be an activist, you asshole! That's just another "should" to add to your long, guilty list. Psychologist Victor Frankel had a program for depressed clients that was a lot like a labor camp. Inevitably, hard work and very little free time would cause these people to enjoy their free time more and more. That's not a value judgment, mind you, it's a statement of fact: People do better when they don't have the time to let destructive thoughts and comparisons rattle around in their heads. In other words, your problems will not be solved by thinking. You need a very practical plan. You have to impose some unbearable, taxing structure on your own life: First the workout, then you do a few things you've been dreading or avoiding, and then you take a break and do something lazy. All the while, you're not allowed to think about the past or the future, and you're not allowed to compare yourself to the imaginary happy, effective people in your head. A bad thought comes, and you say, "I'm not thinking that way today." and push it away. Some therapists will have you believe that you have to go with your feelings. Maybe, but it sounds to me like you don't need that right now. You need more good habits, and less bad thoughts. Just start small. Work out, do 2 or 3 hard or pesky tasks (maybe one of them is shaving? whatever you want) and then stop in the afternoon and do something pointless. Go to the drug store and wander around reading labels. Go see a movie. You don't have to like it, it just has to be something a little bit new, and you can't think heavy negative thoughts while you're doing it. Do this every day. Then, in a week or so, pick up a copy of "The Power of Now." The language will turn you off, but you just read it from cover to cover anyway. This book doesn't hold all the answers, but you need to know what it means not to think. You need to hear about what it means to be alive, pure and simple, and you need to understand that, if you live in the past or the future, your thoughts will naturally wind their way into a knot and torture you. You sally forth without your bad habits - bad thoughts, self-hatred, etc - and you'll be amazed that life is actually reasonably interesting. And you will be passionate some day. But stop thinking about passion now. Passion is a lot to hope for, it really is. Most people never manage it. People out there aren't that incredibly happy, don't be fooled. It's sad, but true. You have to work hard to be happy -- you don't work hard at being happy, you just work hard, period. Lazy or not, if you don't want to feel shitty all the time, you have to get off your ass and go through the motions as much as possible. Follow instructions, read, sleep, get up, sweat, do more annoying tasks, etc. This advice is probably a little bit jumbled, but I do feel strongly that this existential angst that you describe is solved not by coming up with some reason for living or trying, anxiously, to locate your passion. I think the solution lies in very mundane, practical changes to your habits. Good luck with it, and please let me know how you feel after a week or so. Best, Rabbit 11:24 AM Sunday, August 19, 2007 BAD NEWS JANE SAYS Dear Rabbit, I have a pattern, dating back to middle school, of having a female friend who is a real jerk. These jerks aren't my only female friends. I've been lucky to know lots of really cool girls. But I do fall into these friendships with impossible to get rid of girls and each time I am left in a moral quandary about how to handle it. The latest I'm going to call Sally because I've never met anyone with that name. Sally is such a jerk. I can't go out with Sally because she is so unpleasant to people. She talks over them, she tells long and pointless stories, she makes insulting comments about people when they are standing close enough to hear, she brags about herself, she says nasty things about big segments of the population without checking to see if anyone around belongs to those segments, she is always bringing up inside jokes and references that exclude people, and she won't let anyone (meaning me) get a word in edgewise. Sally and I were friends as kids, and she moved back into town when I needed a room mate. She moved in and quickly attached herself to my hip. Sally invited herself along no matter where I went or who I was hanging out with, and as a result I started getting really unhappy really fast. I couldn't meet any boys, because if any came over to talk to me Sally would monopolize the conversation and usually insult them. People who had been inviting me out stopped doing it because Sally was sure to come along. I moved out, which was really difficult to do. When I told Sally I was moving out she accused me of trying to end the friendship and leaving her stranded. She cried a lot. She said she had a history of being dumped by female friends. As you can probably guess, Sally had talked to me a lot about how insecure she feels, and I even suggested seeing a therapist. Sally said there was no point to seeing a therapist, because her problem is that she's insecure and she already knows that. Since I've moved out I've been a lot happier. I still constantly have to dodge doing things I don't want to do with her, because she'll call me up and say "This is what we're going to do saturday night, aren't you excited?" But I feel like a scumbag. Because Sally tells everyone I'm her best friend and I am absolutely not. Even were she a nice person we don't have similar interests. Even though she is really rude and awful to me (things about me she has made disparaging remarks about: my hair, my clothes, my college, the food I eat, the tv I watch, my dog, my boyfriends) I feel like I'm being a coward by slinking off and not being straight with her. I can't figure out a way to say, "Hey, you're insecure because people don't like you because you're mean to them. You need to be nicer to people." I think if I said that to her she'd accuse me of being just like those other girls who dumped her, and cry, and tell everyone that I'm an awful person. And I bet those other girls who dumped her are a lot like me. How do I stay clear of friendships like this? Am I a jerk for slinking off without a big confrontation? None of my relationships with guys have been this way. Sally is the fourth 'friend' I've had like this. Although besides the four out and out jerks, there have been lots of female friends I haven't been so hot on over the years. By the way, I am my mid twenties, way too old for this kind of girl drama. Thanks, Not a Junior High Girl Hi NAJHG. I remember one summer back when I was your age, I was standing in the kitchen in my apartment, in a totally shitty mood, complaining about something to my boyfriend and maybe even partially blaming him for it, since he was the only person in the room. When I finished, he looked at me and smiled and said, "Hmmm. Bad News Jane is back, huh? Well, nobody wants to play with Bad News Jane on the playground, you know why? That's right, because she's bad news. Your friend is a serious Bad News Jane. Even though she knows she's insecure, she's too proud to take a long, hard look at herself and say, "OK, I'm insecure because people act like they like me, but they really don't. They're afraid of me and that pisses me off, and I refuse to change! OK, but I'm insecure partially because I know no one wants to be around me (even though I am pretty entertaining and they're just pussies!)." There's a lot of inner conflict in this picture. Obviously Sally wants to pretend that the world is a cruel place where great people like her get shafted all the time. Plenty of us are prone to telling that story, particularly in our 20s when we're just starting to figure friendships out instead of expecting them to run smoothly with little or no maintenance. But the equation is very simple, actually: Nobody wants to play with Bad News Jane on the playground. She comes out to play, and everyone runs away. Now, I've had lots of difficult friends over the years, and I've been a difficult friend, too, and there is a difference between someone who just talks a lot of shit and is occasionally self-involved (sums up about 50% of the smart women I know) and someone who is insulting, weird around groups, and causes trouble for you. I feel bad for Bad News Sally, though, because she really doesn't get it. She sees you as her only friend, and she relies on you and has no idea what's going on. I know that sounds unbelievable, but it's true. So many harsh people have no idea how harsh they are. I'm sure she thinks she's just very honest. And let's face it, most people are serious pussies who don't want to hear anything truthful about themselves or anyone else, they just want to play nice, batting the little smalltalk kickball back and forth until the bell rings and recess is over. When I was 25, the fact that people walked around, talking about nothing, being polite and avoiding conflict made me really angry. I wanted to stir shit up. I wanted to talk about heavy stuff, or gossip, or get down to the nitty gritty. I had lots of friends, but I was still lonely and I had a bad attitude and I was suspicious of people. All perfectly natural, at that age, but it's also perfectly natural for people who are reasonably happy-go-lucky to steer clear of someone like that. I know I steer clear of suspicious, angry people now. The point is, you need to tell Sally that she's too harsh and it doesn't work. Tell her she insults you too much, and she probably doesn't realize it or remember, but it's unpleasant. Tell her these things very gently -- for christsakes, do not write them in an email. Tell her over the phone if you have to. But she needs to know, gently, that she really needs to work on her anger and her lashing out. I would NOT go off on her, even though you could and would like to and will be tempted to once you start talking. I just think you need to say, "Look, you make it really hard to hang out with you. This is not just your personality, either. You're making bad choices, you're cruel and you're merciless. You really do need to sort some things out so that you don't feel like hurting other people all of the time." Life just isn't that boring that she needs to stir things up constantly. Maybe going out drinking with 20-somethings is boring, but if that's the case, find something else to do, don't take it out on everyone else. You don't need to announce that you're avoiding her. She can figure it out. I wouldn't even announce that the friendship is over - you've known her for a long time. This is just the next step, telling her the truth and seeing how it sits. You just need to say: "I feel like it's my duty to tell you this, because it feels dishonest not to discuss it. I know it'll make you mad, but I think there are a few things that it would help you, in the long run, to hear." Ooo, it's tough. I know. But if you go into it with the right spirit (do not call when you're mad!), you can say what you need to say without injuring her unnecessarily or sending her on the war path. And if she does freak out, oh well. She really does need to grow up and look around and know that she's got to deal with herself if she wants to have friends and a happy life. It's sad, because I'm sure she really is in a fog about who she is. It's so easy to be in a fog in your 20s. Everyone's out drinking and hanging out, and you get rewarded for being loud and controversial and fucking shit up. And it's fun. She might not even have bad intentions -- although the talking shit within earshot thing is pretty extreme and nasty. But no one really calls you out when you're young, and people want to be entertained. Most of the really difficult people I've known sort of faced themselves in their late 20s and got their shit in gear. There is hope that she'll figure her stuff out and really become a nice person, once she's humbled into reevaluating her current social formula. But she does need you, her only friend, to help her see the truth. No one else is going to help. And then you can move on. Agree to have coffee here and there, but refuse to hang out with her in situations that will make you crazy. She's an old friend of yours, so maybe you'll want to stay in touch. Maybe not. But the only way to know for sure (and to not be haunted by your disappearing act) is to be honest. If she flips, then you know she can't handle the truth, therefore she's not someone you can maintain a friendship anyway. Or, maybe she flips and then figures it out and comes around and asks to hang out again -- that'll be a good sign that she's a more humble person or has done some hard work. But either way, you have to talk to her, because right now it's bothering you, you feel guilty, and you know you're the only person who CAN talk to her. If you were only friends for a year or so and then you figured out she was nuts, I'd say to hell with it, but you've known her for a long time, and you owe it to your history together to be straight with her, even if it means you'll have to endure her attacks. Either way, rest assured that people get much more bearable and easy to handle in your 30s. Not only that, but you learn to spot the Bad News Janes from a mile away, and avoid them like the plague. They're a lot of fun, sure, but it's not worth it. That said, though -- Ugh, I have to throw in this caveat! -- I do believe in holding on to Bad News Janes who you have a long history with. Slowly but surely, your friendship can evolve into something that's really worthwhile. It might take some space and boundaries and mutual respect and patience, but it's really great to stay in touch with really old friends. I have a few friends who used to be pretty unhinged, and I think they'd say the same of me, but we've figured it out and our friendships are so important to us now. We've been forced to be honest at times, to shut up at other times, but most of all we've learned accept each other and to learn from each other. That probably sounds idealistic, and Sally might not be much of a candidate for that. But you won't know either way until you tell her the truth, with as much open-hearted humility as possible. She'll hate it regardless, but even if she shuts you out, it's an important thing for you to do for yourself, to honor the history you have with her and to be open to the possibilities and the unknowns of friendship. Rabbit 12:09 PM all contents © the rabbit blog 2001-2009

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