The Infideli-Diaries - Pt. IV (B)... Over and Done With

Pt. I / Pt. II / Pt. III / Pt. IVa / Pt. IVb

Infidelity Lesson #8 : you've heard it from health teachers, public service ads and that one weird friend who always winds up nursing a Yoo-Hoo while the other partygoers embalm themselves with ethanol.

"You don't do things drunk that you wouldn't otherwise do sober... it removes inhibitions, not free will."

This may or may not be true. I certainly hope it isn't. The "facial lacerations due to impromptu pole-dancing" incident, for example. I'd feel a lot better if that could be credited solely to Captain Morgan's sadistic little parrot.

When applied to infidelity, however, it’s dead accurate.

You don’t do things with your crotch that you haven’t already done with your mind. The aching tension leading up to sex can be more pleasurable than the act itself. The somewhat-different tension leading to infidelity can - and is - infinitely more damaging than the act itself.

There are few blissfully happy philanderers. There are plenty who claim to be, but they’re delusional, psychopathic or a zesty combination of the two. There’s always… something. Nagging doubt. A tiny stone in the shoe. “What if?” The act itself may seem startling, like a pissed-off wasp in the living room. But guess what? Somebody had to leave that window open in the first place.

It’s not a disease, it’s a symptom. Illicit sex and lies aren’t capable of creating long-standing marital unease… but they’re damned good at laying it bare.

It’s not a stain, it’s a solvent… like alcohol, or turpentine. The things it leaves aren’t nearly as important as the things it strips away. Self-delusion, doubt, avoidance, complacency, capitulation… the thin film holding the whole rickety contraption together… gone, baby. Gone.

(Free will? That, you keep. Compliments of the house and/or a laissez-faire supreme being).

No matter which side of the triangle you're on... no matter who you love, who you're fighting for, who you grope... you're grasping at ghosts.

---

By the time the big revelation dropped, it seemed laughably small. "That... that was it?" marvelled my then-husband, "I thought you'd, like, killed somebody or something."

It was a tiny and hellish circle of awkwardness, that morning... something scribbled in the margins of Dante's notebook. Soon to be separated, we'd spent our respective weekends cheerfully vow-breaking. We hadn't expected this. I hadn't expected a crisis of conscience. He hadn't expected that I'd return home early, discover him and his girlfriend snoozing, tearfully demand her ejection from the marital abode.

Exhausted, minorly-unhinged, snot- and mascara-smeared... it wasn't one of my better moments. It's one of my favorites, however. It was the morning I finally knew that my husband and I were no longer together, in any sense of the word.

---

"... that was it?"

I was huddled under a blanket on our bed, intermittently crying and yawning. My soon-to-be-ex was sitting next to me, patting my hair, attempting to get to the bottom of my unpleasant little surprise visit. After an hour of false starts ("Swingers' convention? What?"), I finally 'fessed up.

"What do you mean, 'that was it'?" I squeaked, "I slept... with... a married guy! That's not a good thing! That's not me! At least I thought it wasn't!"

"Was this before, during or after the swingers?" he asked, half-yawning, half-sighing.

"Um... before. It was a busy weekend," I said, squeezing my eyes shut." In true type-A form, I'd kicked off the revelry early. The weekend's first conquest occurred far from the woods, on scratchy industrial carpet... with the infamous Mr. Married. My conscience apparently hadn't enjoyed things quite as much as my body. If I'd known that Married would be part of my life for months to come, my sunburnt little head might've just exploded.

My husband's head seemed detonation-ready itself... with exhaustion, frustration and... was that... boredom? "I guess I don't see what the big deal is... why you're reacting the way you are."

"I didn't think I was like that... like... y'know..."

He sighed, patted my head, muttered something vaguely reassuring. I nuzzled my sticky face into the pillowcase, felt sleep begin to slide across my shoulders... the most unambiguously welcome touch of the weekend.

Just as it all went blurry, it all became clear.

He wasn't particularly interested.

He was concerned... sort of. He was worried... a bit. He was bemused by the seemingly-unremarkable source of my hysterics.

But he wasn't interested... not in rug burns, sordid details or existential crises.

I'd raged against infidelity all along... but it wasn't the problem. I'd lost him long before he'd found someone else. He could spend hours with her and still crave more. He couldn't spent five minutes with me without growing bored. It wasn't me. It wasn't him. It was us. We could date, marry, even raise a child... but we couldn't summon up an iota of heat between us. And why do we cheat, if not to re-spark the fire in our own eyes, and to see something kindred in another's?

"Howyoudoing?" he asked, breaking our lull.

"Think I'm a little bit better," I muttered, curling into a ball and closing my eyes. It was an awful morning which ended like a fantastic night... tired and sticky, bruised and confused, slipping simultaneously into sleep and something which might just be understanding.

Infidelity Lesson # 9 : to thine own self be true. All others, take on a case-by-case basis.

If you must pick one virtue from the pantheon... choose kindness. Try to wheedle your way into two or three... but if it must be one, kindness.

Never say never. Never say never again. Never let your guard or your expectations down, unless you'd like a surprise confrontation with Nevers #1 and #2.

Even if you've cheated for the entire game, deal that last hand honestly. Forgiveness. Top-down. One for them... one for you.



Credits: special thanks to M., S., R., and M. ... couldn't have done it without you (insert double-entendres where appropriate). Enormous flaming kudos to my family (for not disowning me), for my friends (for being wise and patient in light of my sporadic idiocy/immaturity) and the internets (your comments are like Good Dog's sweet potato fries... sweet soul-sustenance with a side of garlic aioli). Extra-special shout-out to Bob Mould and Sugar, whose "Changes" has been on perma-loop throughout the entire Infideli-Diaries.

The Infideli-Diaries - Pt. IV (A)

Pt. I / Pt. II / Pt. III / Pt. IVa / Pt. IVb

"Well here we go again, you've found yourself a friend, that knows you well
But no matter what you do, you'll always feel as though you tripped and fell
So steady as she goes"
- Raconteurs, "Steady As She Goes"

Suburbiaville's sleeping. The birds are silent, the grass slicked with dew. The sun has just peeked above the Target sign. The August humidity will be brutal in a few hours; right now, the air's just the tiniest bit shimmery... sexy underwear in fog format. Thanks to a few early-rising type-As, the town's parfum is an intoxicating combo of gasoline and fresh-mowed lawn. I breathe deeply. Rest my head on the steering wheel. Count backwards from ten. Then scream.

"FUUUUUUUUUUUCK!"

At an hour when most people have yet to pay a visit to Mr. Coffee, my world has already disintegrated into ludicrous intensity. Some people are prisoners in their own homes. I'm a prisoner outside of mine. My husband's boxy little SUV sits in our driveway. Snuggled alongside it is a shiny, unfamiliar sedan. While I can't tell for sure, I strongly suspect that the vehicles' owners are similarly snuggled... sharing the same IKEA mattress which has been brutalizing my spine for years. Me? I'm parked across the street, bawling in a dumpy little Civic. I have a set of house keys. I've got my name on the mortgage statement. I've got more irrational fury than a squad of drunken strippers. I've got every right to go in the house. I need - more than anything, it seems - to go in the house. So why can't I seem to move?

---

It's Sunday, six o'clock AM. I was ostensibly meant to spend this weekend camping - communing with nature, unburdening my soul to sympathetic squirrels. While camping did occur, it was by no means the defining event of the weekend. The previous forty-eight hours were, bar none, the most debauched of my young life. There was rum 'n Coke, sex 'n drugs, bad and really, really bad. Boundaries were pushed. Taboos were flaunted. The word (well, make that "pseudo-word") "WOOOOO!" was utilized, unironically and repeatedly. Milestones were reached, celebrated, lasciviously rubbed against.

My first solitary weekend since my son's arrival.

My last weekend before moving out on my own, turning the already-massive disconnect between my husband and myself into something tangible.

The first time in years that I'd violated my personal code of ethics.

The first time I'd - so help me god - semi-inadvertently attended a swinger's convention.

The last time I would turn to my spouse when crisis hit.

---

I wasn't due home until Sunday evening. At four o'clock in the morning, however, I reached a point of bucolic breakdown. I was hungover, sunburnt, confused, teary-eyed, alarmingly sore. I was in dire need of comfort - of both the "emotional" and "sleeping surface not studded with chisel-like rocks" varieties. Under the guise of "having to write about that cah-raaaaazy swingers' convention", I busted down my tent, bid farewell to my companions and hit the highway.

I drove home at roughly the same rate that I drove myself out of my mind… which is to say, terrifyingly fast. “I’m not even sure who I am anymore,” I muttered, rhythmically clenching and unclenching the steering wheel, “Who the fuck does these things? Me, apparently? What was with the swingers? Why did I whip off my top? Why did I do that? And that? Do I hate myself? Should I?”

The Pennsylvania Turnpike was an endless ribbon of industrial ugly. The sunrise was Thomas Kinkade by way of Egon Schiele, freakishly luminous smears of orange and gray. They were a perfect external complement to the contents of my head, which grew progressively nastier over the course of the two-hour drive. By the time I screeched to a halt in front of Thumbscrews Manor, I was a twisted, smoking wreck.

"I need my husband," I hiccuped, wiping my eyes on my tank top... then catching sight of the other car. Her car.

And whaddya know... apparently, so does someone else.

Life in the Thumbscrews household has been monumentally awkward over the past several months. We are bright kids, both fully aware that we're separating (and most likely divorcing). We're attempting to remain civil during this odd interstitial period, both for our small son and our sanity. We've given one another our blessings; our respective extracurricular activities now occur sans subterfuge. I've been staging my own controlled-scale rendition of "Girls Gone Wild". He's been seeing OtherWoman at every opportunity. Despite occasional spots of friction ("So... who'd you do for lunch today?"), things have been strangely copacetic. I shouldn't be surprised (I'm not due back for another 12 hours! Those crazy kids are in love!). Nor should I be infuriated (my own "camping trip" having featured more penises than squirrels).

So why am I falling apart?

---

"Pick up your phone! Pick up your phone! I need you, fuckstick!" I mash the numbers into my cell again... by my count, this is the eighteenth time. At this point, I'm actively arguing with his voicemail . "You can't pick up the phone right now? Can't pick it up because, oh yeah, you're fucking someone else? Pick up anyway! Never stopped Paris Hilton! And she's got her own fragrance! Do you have your own fragrance? 'Eau de Fuckstick', perhaps?"

And so it goes. Spew bile at a prerecorded greeting. Wail into the upholstery. Hate my husband. Hate myself. Hate my car ("I'll bet the backseat of an Accord would be big enough for me to properly curl up and die!").

I decide to get a hotel room. HBO, clean white sheets, $15 club sandwiches... these niceties may very well stave off total jibbering insanity. I drive to the local Holiday Inn, only to find that frugality trumps self-preservation. "Eighty bucks to sleep two miles from my own damned house? Hell, no... I'll show you where to stick your so-called Continental breakfast...muffins, nothing but muffins... always..." I sniff, driving back home.

On a whim, I activate the tiny SUV's car alarm. The neighbors are annoyed. The lovebirds are not roused.

I decide to seek guidance from above. I've never held much truck with Yahweh. Radio waves, however, are a different story.

Seconds after flicking on the radio, I start giggling.

"Steady as she goes," advises Jack White, "So steady as she goes."

I love this song. Always have. I also love "Under Pressure", which immediately follows.

"This is our last dance... this is our last dance... this is ourselves... under pressure."

When Jack White tells you to stay steady, you stay steady. When Freddie Mercury tells you to jump, you say, "How high?" Or perhaps, "How fabulous?" Whatever the case may be... you take action.

I walk up to the door and ring the bell. Seconds later, my husband appears, bleary-eyed and bathrobe-clad.

"Huh? Why aren't you camping? What's wrong?"

Tears immediately dribble down my face. "I had to come back. Muh-make her go home. Right now," I sob.

Amazingly... he does.

ROUSING CONCLUSION COMING SOON...

The Infideli-Diaries - Pt. III

Pt. I / Pt. II / Pt. III / Pt. IVa / Pt. IVb

She had a heartful of love and devotion
She had a mindful of tyranny and terror
Well, I try, I do, I really try
But I just err, baby, I do, I error
So come find me, my darling one
I'm down to the grounds, the very dregs
Ah, here she comes, blocking the sun

- Nick Cave, "Do You Love Me?"

Infidelity Lesson #6 : the Bad and Ugly aspects of infidelity do not blot out the Good, whether it's emotional, physical or an amalgam. People don't cheat because it makes them feel awful... they cheat because it makes them feel fantastic.

Remember chicken pox? You'd examine the situation afterwards, marveling at how you could've knowingly inflicted that much damage. At the time, however.... giving in, scratching that itch, feeling the release... the potential for a few little scars seemed so, so worth it.

---

There are aspects of gastronomy which would seem right at home in a sleazy horror movie. From foie gras to Frank Perdue, humans have a well-documented history of brutalizing our intended dinner. Unparalleled in the annals of animal cruelty, however, is the treatment of the ortolan. This diminutive songbird is a legendary French delicacy. Its method of preparation is also legendary, so uniquely sadistic that the bird's sale is officially banned. Banned, my friends, by a nation that has celebrated both Jerry Lewis and the guillotine. Clearly, the ortolan's fate is a good deal darker than that of your average Oven Stuffer Roaster.

Death is merciful. Those who would dine on the ortolan, however, are not. Thus, the bird is taken alive. Depending on the whim of its captors, it is either blinded or kept in constant darkness (in order to disturb its sleep/wake cycles). It is force-fed a rich diet of oats, millet and figs. When sufficiently plump (up to four times its initial size), it is drowned in a snifter of Armagnac. It's tossed in the oven for a few minutes ("rare" comes quickly for something the size of a dinner roll), then removed and placed before the diner. It is at this point, startlingly enough, that the whole too-hot-for-Food-TV Grand Guignol really gets interesting.

The crackling-hot ortolan does not pass go. It goes not collect $200. It does not relax atop a bed of herbed couscous.

It is deposited directly in the diner's mouth. Whole. Skin and bone, muscle and miscellany. And how might this sadistic little snackie taste?

Apparently, transcendental. Firsthand accounts tend to disintegrate into theatricality mere seconds after, "... I closed my lips." It's all succulent aromas, rivulets of ambrosial juice, tiny explosions of multisensory bliss.

It’s one of the Western world's greatest culinary adventures. And - contrary to what Visa commercials might have you believe - it can only be bought with cruelty. You get fifteen minutes of carnivorous ecstasy. A shy little warbler gets a week of suffering. This is an openly-acknowledged aspect of ortolan-lore. One consumes the bird with a napkin over one's head, the better to "hide your cruelty from the sight of God".

Do you do it? Do you understand and acknowledge the cost... and still open your mouth? Or do you take the moral high road and order the trout?

I know what I'd do. I don't fully like or understand it... but there's no question as to my decision.

Modern moral dilemmas are so rarely black-and-white. We're haunted by our actions, our inactions, and our ambivalence. Perhaps it's easier for some - people who are more confident, less thoughtful, stronger-willed... maybe just "better". Of course you don't eat the ortolan. You don't cheat on your taxes. You don't court avoidable catastrophes. You never, EVER sleep with someone else's spouse.

And then there are the rest of us. Standing in front of the bathroom mirror, cheeks flushed with shame. Listening to this eminently-correct lecture float through the walls. Laughing and crying as we floss bits of wickedness from between our teeth.

---

For an activity directly contrary to the DeBeers Corporation’s primary mission (wedded bliss and walnut-sized solitaires for all!), infidelity has a hell of a lot of facets.

It can be spun as monstrous, selfish acting out. Fucking your girlfriend in the same bed where your wife routinely cries herself to sleep. Sending your lover home to his wife with the faintest of scratches still traversing his back. A horribly decadent mash-up of larceny and gluttony; taking another man's daily bread for your own frivolous midnight snack.

It can be viewed as a tiny and perverse act of self-heroism, as per Nietzsche, Ayn Rand, the entire back catalogue of Rush lyrics. Raging against the machine, the status quo and the dying of the light. Daring to take a tumble down the rabbit hole, safety, sanity and decorum be damned. Striving for something better, hotter, more dangerous, more interesting, more... more. EAT ME and DRINK ME, indeed.

It can seem inevitable. If you live in a first-world nation, your comfort and happiness hinge in large part upon others' suffering. The factory-farmed chicken you eat for dinner. The child laborer in Laos who stitched your $5 t-shirt. The solider who stepped on a land mine to ensure that you'd be able to refuel your Range Rover on the cheap. The guy working in a sheetrock factory in Arkansas for fifty years, destroying his body so that you can live in a house ten times the size of his apartment. "MADE IN CHINA" (in a sweatshop). "MADE IN THE USA" (ditto).

Why does infidelity seem worse than shopping at The Gap? Because it's a conscious choice, for one. Those who remain oblivious to the human cost of their comfort can be accused of apathy at worst. Adulterers are more purposeful in their flirtation with (and seduction of) disaster. Then there's the "indulgence" angle. Covering one's ass is a necessity (albeit not in stain-resistant microfiber). The rewards of infidelity are pure decadence... vulgar luxuries of the worst stripe.

Or are they?

---

Infidelity Lesson #7 : minimizing the importance of [love / sex / affection / companionship / compatibility] in your relationship is a damned good way to ensure that it metastasizes into something hugely important later on down the line.

I’m sorry for so many reasons. Committing grand larceny of the romantic sector. Violating the trust of an innocent party. Letting my various "issues" overgrow, snaking out tendrils while I hid behind a gauzy curtain of pleasure.

Do I regret it? Do I view it as a stupid accident? Do I think for a second that it was preventable? No, no and no. If I’ve learned nothing else, it’s that patience and moral fortitude alone are not enough to soothe certain aches.

May you never ache that deeply. May you never need so ravenously. May you never have to choose between your principles and your sanity.

It’d be an exaggeration to say that he saved my life... although during several pitch-black nights of the soul, he was the mini-Maglite which held me over 'til morning. He was a friend, a confidante, a voice of reason, and an ideal psychological sounding board. Because of him, I'm a little stronger, a little saner. I have a slightly-clearer idea of what I want from my relationships and my life. My MP3 collection has been greatly enriched. I am much, much better in bed.

"I want a boyfriend-lite. Or maybe a lover-deluxe," I told him shortly after we met. That may've been coyness on my part... but I got all of that, and immeasurably more.

His wife got betrayed.

She'll never find out. How do I know? I just do, implicitly. The layer of abstraction disturbs me. I'm not sure if it makes the crime less odious, or if it only makes it seem that way. Was it like swiping CDs from Best Buy... or like slipping the ortolan a Valium before going to town on it? It was neither of these, and nothing else I can analogize, either.

It was, as you might imagine, complicated.

He had needs. I had needs. I'm not going to diminish them via description... "Sex" can have a million and a half connotations. "Companionship" and "affection", when absent for sufficient time, can produce the kind of bone-deep, screaming cravings usually associated with narcotics. One can withdrawal from all sorts of things... and that itch, that maddening fucking itch, is always present.

I was uniquely suited to scratch his. He excelled at scratching mine. There was never any question of him leaving his wife - he was clearly in love, albeit a darker and more complicated form of it than is typical. I managed to keep my feelings trimmed back to a bonsai-like level of manageability. One does not endure a lifetime of frustrated crushes without acquiring a few useful skills. It was a contradiction in terms: a cautious, carefully-controlled leap into lustful abandon. We knew damned well what we were doing.

But. And yet. However. Of fucking course.

We didn't discuss the "other" activities... we were so comfortable with one another that they just naturally blossomed. We'd steal long, conversation-packed lunches together whenever possible... chicken fingers and Immanuel Kant. We'd e-mail each other our favorite new songs. We'd send late-late night text messages, wryly bemoaning the state of our [bar / party / apartment / life]. We were, indeed, lovers deluxe, super-plus, with a side of fries and burgeoning tenderness.

It wasn’t guilt which separated us, although there had been the occasional shame-fueled stab at moral conduct. It wasn’t discovery – as stated, his wife didn’t (and won’t) find out. It wasn’t that things grew dull – one of the lurid little pleasures of infrequent liaisons is that the excitement retains a Twinkie-like shelf life.

It was the exact same thing which had driven us together – complacency.

When you’re scratching an itch, you’re thinking about how fantastic it feels, how long you can keep it going. The one thing you’re generally not considering is, "Gee... why was I so itchy in the first place?"

That’s the paradox of infidelity. As long as you’re getting those needs fulfilled elsewhere, you’re not addressing their original absence. Why deal with the unpleasantness of confronting deep, potentially-catastrophic problems which could blow apart your marriage? Why bother opening yourself up, making yourself emotionally-vulnerable, getting back on the horse than threw you... dating someone with whom things could get – dun dun DUN! - Serious? It’s warm and cozy in this bed, and we could keep our heads under the blanket for a long, long time. There’s fiddling while Rome burns, and there’s fiddling around while your not-entirely-satisfactory lives remain stagnant.

Perhaps it’s due to my own moral relativism. However, that revelation produced more shame than the initial transgression. We were using this betrayal as a pool float, paddling in place. While nothing excuses infidelity, magma-hot passion comes a damned sight closer than "maintaining the status quo". When doing something that could be described as "morally reprehensible", you desperately want it to mean something. Eating the ortolan seems all the more heinous when you do it casually, washing blood sacrifice down with diet Dew.

We agreed to part ways for a year. The arbitrary-separation idea was derived from Richard Linklater’s sweetly romantic "Before Sunrise"; our reasons were sadder and more pragmatic. "All those doubts and problems," I said, "Everything that’s wrong, everything we’re hiding from... we need to confront it. Beat the living hell out of it."

"Same time, next year?" I said, angrily swiping at my tears, "If neither of our lives have changed at all, you have my permission to kick my goddamned ass."

I miss my friend. I miss the various illicit deliciousnesses we shared. But a little part of me hopes that neither of us show up next year... that we’ve confronted our problems, righted wrongs, inched closer to self-awareness. We’ve gone mano a mano with remorse and forgiveness. We’re finally sated... sans any telltale feathers.

TO BE CONTINUED...

The Infideli-Diaries - Pt. II

Pt. I / Pt. II / Pt. III / Pt. IVa / Pt. IVb

not for vision understood
burns because it has to burn
change'll happen whether we
are still or moving
breathe in waves of doubt
bitter in your mouth

- Toad the Wet Sprocket, "Little Heaven"

Infidelity Lesson #4 : let's say a troubled relationship is like a mouse. It's taken over your house, it's gorged itself on cake mix and Ramen noodles, it's left odious little pellets in its wake. It's making you miserable. It must be addressed.

You could use poisons, traps or barriers.

You could sulk, you could cry, you could talk.

Or you could use the Amorphous Atom Bomb.

The Amorphous Atom Bomb is invisible. It changes position more frequently than a porn star. It has a fuse of indeterminate length; it could go off in two minutes or in two years. It could wipe out your intended target, half a city block… or nothing at all.

Not a good tool for taking down a furry, walnut-sized nuisance, is it?

It's not a good tool for taking down a relationship, either.

---

We're parked in front of our apartment. It's late, really late. Outside, crickets cheep and streetlights glow. Periodically, tractor trailers rumble by and rock our tiny Volkswagen like a German-engineered cradle.

Inside, bombs are dropping.

"Why are you always so unhappy, Jul? Why do you seem like you hate yourself? And why won't you just talk to me? Please… talk to me?" My husband rests his hand on my thigh, looks me dead in the eye and waits. And waits. And waits.

Like all couples, we've got a hit parade of common arguments. Your Laundry-Avoidin' Heart, It's The End of Eating Anywhere But Applebee's As We Know It (And I Feel Gassy). This particular one (She's Suicidally Depressed In Mysterious Ways) has been cropping up with increasing frequency, however. And unlike lesser tunes, it's poised to hit #1 with a bullet.

"You want to know why? You really want to know?"

"Yes! Jesus, Jul… I love you, I don't want you do be miserable… of course I do!"

"A few months after we started dating… I slept with somebody else."

When he responds, my husband's voice is totally flat. Tears, rage, vicious words… anything, anything would be better than the deadness with which he breaks the silence. "Really."

Until this moment, tears had trickling down my face at a leisurely pace, the stream easily dabbed up with a sleeve. I'd also been steadfastly avoiding eye contact. "Yeah," I say, looking up, "Really." As I'm speaking, my voice cracks… then the floodgates do.

I'm sobbing, shaking, howling, curled up like a comma on my sticky leather seat. My husband holds me as best he can, strokes my hair and tries to calm me. He hasn't always been a great husband. I (obviously) haven't always been a good wife. Years later, as our marriage crumbles around us, years of mutual doubts and resentments will come to the surface. Delusions and illusions will fall, and the overall mediocrity of our match will become apparent. However, we'll each retain our moments of pride… briefly transcendental bursts of kindness and compassion.

This is one of them… perhaps the quintessential one. There are pet names, special dinners, surprise parties... and then there's hugging the person who just tossed a grenade in your living room, blowing everything you know to smithereens.

When I have been sufficiently calmed, we fire up the GTI and drive, aimlessly, cruising in a haze of sodium-arcs and tears. We drive and drive and talk and talk. Some details are divulged (it was a one-night stand with a coworker; copious quantities of alcohol were involved). Others are omitted (it was the most exciting thing which had happened to me in a long, long time; with each verboten kiss, pleasant shock and self-loathing battled for space in my head). Only once do we venture close to the true heart of the issue… and, bright young things that we are, we scurry away immediately.

"The thing that really hurts is that you felt like you had to keep a secret from me for half a fucking decade." His voice isn't accusatory… just exhausted, incredulous. "Why? Why couldn't you talk to me?"

I stare out the window. Gas prices are going up again. Home Depot is a giant orange monolith against the night sky. I have no answers… nothing but a swirl of Lovecraftian emotions, immense, unbelievably frightening and lurking just below the surface.

I couldn't talk to you because you don't understand me, and I don't understand you. Because we're radically different people. Because I knew it from the very beginning, but couldn't manage to summon up sufficient balls to end things before I fell in love with you. Because one of the main reasons we're together today – sitting in a Home Depot parking lot, awkwardly crying and cuddling and bumping our elbows on the stick shift – is because I've spent the past five years trying desperately to atone.

Because one of the major reasons I wanted to get married was for absolution… to shoehorn myself into the role of ever-faithful wife.

Because a few years back, a friend gave me some high-grade Ecstasy, a cavalcade of neurological bliss in a tiny foil packet. I wound up tossing it in the trash. I was terrified of "becoming more confessional".

Because it wasn't a moment of blind, overpowering lust. It was an escape attempt. And if the thought of leaving our dull little comfort zone was scary then… it's a thousand times worse now. We're bonded. We're married. And I'm –

I sigh, a shuddery exhalation of defeat. "I'm sorry. I can't. I just can't."

---

Infidelity Lesson # 5 : every infidelity is like a Jerry Bruckheimer movie... it features a well-delineated Before, During and After. You'll spend a good deal longer than 90 minutes reviewing them in your head. Odds are, they'll be a lot more painful than action-packed. As far as Aerosmith-heavy soundtracks go?... we're only addressing forgivable sins here, people.

Don't waste too much time on the After. It's boring. It's predictable. And it's immutable. Afterwards? You'll feel guilty. In some cases, it will be inordinate, debilitating guilt. In others, it will be nothing more than uncomfortable twinges at the periphery of your conscience. Regardless, it will be your burden to bear. Confession is good for one's soul like grand larceny is good for one's wallet - you're forcing someone else to foot your bill. Bearing a painful, shameful secret is difficult - and probably the single-best way to ensure you don't rack up any more of them. As the late, lamented Sherlock Holmes put it, "The example of patient suffering is in itself the most precious of all lessons to an impatient world."

As far as Before? You'd better examine Before like a long-lost Talmudic text. It's important to know why it happened - and not solely to "make sure it never happens again". Contrary to what the Moral Majority (and the moralizing enormity) may believe, cheating is not like washing a red crayon with the white laundry – a thoughtless, simple error, easily preventable in the future. Doing morally-objectionable things is painful. Not really understanding why is infinitely worse.

How did it happen? Why? What factors were present? What facets of life were lacking? It's a question of developing sufficient self-respect, self-awareness and courage to fully face your own motivations. Successfully resisting temptation is small comfort if the temptation occurs again and again and again. Grappling with mutant, super-sized self-loathing is worthless without an equally-intense tussle with introspection.

Fear might keep you from ever touching the flame again.

But it won't explain why you reached out your hand in the first place.

And then there's the illicit, explicit, oft-overlooked During...

TO BE CONTINUED...

The Infideli-Diaries - Pt. I

Pt. I / Pt. II / Pt. III / Pt. IVa / Pt. IVb

"Why would I sabotage / the best thing that I have?
Well it makes it easier / to know exactly what I want"
- Snow Patrol, "Hands Open"

Infidelity Lesson #1 : love, sex, affection and trust are like Legos. They can fit together in a million permutations, or not at all. And when heedlessly trod upon, they hurt like an injection-molded bitch.

If the scornful prognostications of those more moral than I are true, I'm in for a lifetime of romantic misery. My actions have bought the ticket; all that remains is to brace myself for the ride. It's gonna be rough. My jaw will clench, my vertebrae will clatter and my heart will never, ever reach a place of comfort and quiet. I will - god help me - eat alone. Tears and Lean Cuisines, my friends. Tears and Lean Cuisines.

I've been on all three sides of the apocryphal love triangle. I've cheated. I've been cheated upon. And I've been a cheater's cohort.

I'll pause to let you gather stones. Igneous have good gouging potential, while sedimentary are delightfully abrasive. Use this handy rhyme to remember: "Lava-borne? Razor-sharp scorn! From a stream? Bitch, get your Bactine."

I'm the last person you'd expect to be a veteran of the Circus Adulterous. My parents have been happily married for decades (despite the occasional urges to fling cast-iron cookware at each other). Fidelity was an oft-touted virtue in our household, along with "taking a deep breath and counting to ten before whipping a skillet at your partner's big stupid head". My previous menage a monogamy (with The Artist Formerly Known as Mr. Thumbscrews) lasted for a not-unimpressive seven years. "Love triangle"? I'm awful at geometry. I'm even worse at flirting. I have a fairly well-developed moral code, I strive for kindness... hell, I donate money to Planned Parenthood and local LGBT support groups (I like to call it the "Make George W. Bush's Head Explode Like an Overstuffed Pinata Combo Platter").

Infidelity Lesson #2: those who haven't experienced infidelity can't really understand it. Those who have experienced infidelity DEFINITELY can't understand it. Situations involving strong emotion and stronger physical urges are among the messiest imaginable. We may be animals, but we're animals with big, complication-causing prefrontal cortices. For us, even "simple" lust tends to sprawl, fractal-like, into a web of implications, ambiguities and consequences.

This slightly-sordid sexual history could've been the province of almost anyone. Could've - but improbably enough, it belongs to me... someone so socially-stunted that I really ought to scribble "MAKE EYE CONTACT, YOU JACKASS" on the tops of my shoes. I've dipped my toes in the Thames of cheating, and I've flung myself in, headfirst and fully clothed (er... perhaps that's a poor metaphor). Some of my experiences have been unintentional. Some have been horribly deliberate. Some worked out for the best. I'm no longer angry that my (now) ex-husband cheated; the ramifications of that particular act of adultery have been surprisingly positive. Hell, sometimes I feel like buying he and the Future Second Mrs. Jul's Ex a steak dinner out of sheer gratitude. Other experiences, however, have been profoundly negative - moments of spontaneity which resulted in unrelenting shame, bad decisions which led to years of even-worse ones.

There's a damned good reason it's called a "checkered past". Some spots have been black indeed - dangerous little sinkholes of remorse and self-loathing. Others have been transcendentally wonderful. Infidelity is a messy, crowded scene... and sometimes, total surprises pop out from between all the sharp corners and precariously-balanced objects. One expects physical bliss - or at least hopes for it in one's humid little imagination. But compassion, friendship, insight, personal growth? These things aren't probable, but they're possible - and all the more precious, given their imperfect origins.

Daisies from cracked pavement... and existential gratification through moral transgression. I may pay a karmic price for my actions. Some might argue that my recent series of atrocious first dates is merely the beginning, the first circle of interpersonal hell. And - unless the inner circles involve flensing knives and/or couple's therapy - I can accept this.

Guilt? Fuck yes, I've got guilt. I've knowingly betrayed trust. I've been cavalier with people, tossing hearts from hand to hand like snowglobes.

Regret? Now that's trickier.

Infidelity Lesson #3:

Once a cheater... not always a cheater.

But you're not as morally unimpeachable as you think.

Your partner? Definitely not as morally unimpeachable as you think.

There are lessons to be learned in the sleaziest of forums.

There is (sometimes) a squirmy, uncomfortable beauty in the most atrocious of actions.

Learn from your mistakes.

Don't leave the same scars twice.

Don't do things solely to collect stories.

Don't hesitate to tell the stories you already have.

After all... you weren't alone then. And you're definitely not alone now.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Full Release

So, uh.... my divorce is final. According to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, I am "at liberty to marry again". I am also at liberty to stuff my belly button full of ground sirloin and go taunt a Doberman, but the Commonwealth will forgive me if I take a pass on both super-fun activities.

(I'm being disgustingly facetious here. The other day, I caught myself tearing up to - wait for it - "I'll Be", by Edwin McCain. How humiliating. I don't care if you were [wooed/engaged/married/freaked nasty] to "I'll Be"... it's still crap. It's the auditory equivalent of a CIA special-ops team... it materializes out of nowhere (in this case, immediately after "Freebird"), invades your ducts, forcibly extracts any tears present therein, then applies electrodes to their testicles. Um... wait. Tears don't have testicles. Except perhaps Chuck Norris's.

Point being: once again, Liz Phair is right. I DO want a boyfriend. I DO want all that stupid old shit, like letters and sodas.

Damn, I hope my boobs are nice enough to make up for my gun-shy disposition and stress-induced forehead wrinkle.

[Gives boob exploratory jiggle... hrmn. Not good enough to negate ALL emotional baggage, but good nonetheless. That'll do, tit. That'll do.]

On the left : the kind, compassionate and wonderful Menita has been there for me throughout the past year. I'm glad she was there with me when I received the news that my decree had arrived. And I'm REALLY glad she was holding a camera.

On the right : this is more representative of my mental state as of late. Introverted. Contemplative. Wistful. And kinda... rouge-tinted. Someone needs to bat the ever-present bottle of dye from my hand before I either go bald or start to resemble a bigger-titted Ron Howard.

Fool For a Client

One of my favorite aspects of my genetic heritage is the ability to hustle. It beats the hell out of "likelihood of developing Furby-sized malignancies" and "periodic desire to smear entire eastern seaboard with Nutella and devour it, in order that I might survive the harsh Siberian winter".

My paternal grandfather was by many accounts a cantankerous little bastard. He was stubborn, argumentative and hot-tempered. Had he been French, his ass would've been banished to Elba in a heartbeat. He was, however, Ukrainian, and used his unique form of cantankerous bastardry to help his family survive one of the blackest periods in that nation's history.

The great Ukrainian famine occurred from 1932-1933. It was not the result of natural causes, but rather the Soviet Union's agricultural collectivization campaign ("Together, we shall produce a wealth of grain for the motherland!... just not for you, or your kids, or anyone in your miserable little village"). Under the guidance of everyone's second-favorite insane mustachioed tyrant (ladies and gentlemen, "Genocidin' Joey" STALIIIIIIN!), millions of Ukrainians were displaced, starved or murdered. My grandfather, his wife and two small boys survived, eventually washing up in America (I'm sure dyeda would be immensely proud that his granddaughter is using her family's hard-won freedom primarily to make dick jokes on the Internet).

"How the hell did they survive?" I asked my father. "All those people were wiped out, but this tiny little dude and his entire family managed to make it?" "Your grandfather was... a hustler," my father explained, "He knew how to get things... and he knew people who knew how to get things."

I don't claim that my wiles even approach those of my grandfather. I doubt that I'd be able to single-handedly save my family from the horrors of Stalinist Russia. Hell, I can barely make it out of Target without getting hopelessly lost (and tempted to lure my meatier fellow patrons into sporting goods in order to cannibalize them). But I do see seem to have inherited a glimmer of my wee forebear's craftiness. I connive. I scheme. I fix what's broken. I may not know people who know how to get things ("Erm, excuse me, uh [peers at name tag], Jonathan? Do you happen to know where I might be able to get a jar of pickle spears to accompany Mr. Q-Tips and 12-Pack of Charmin over here?"). However, given sufficient time and Googling, there's very little I myself cannot obtain.

Including a divorce.

The average American divorce costs somewhere in the neighborhood of $5,000. And that's for a simple, uncontested case. For a more contentious split, the figures skyrocket.

My divorce cost about $250. A goodly portion of that was due to the fact that there was a 7-11 right next to the courthouse (Taquitos: official grease-scepter of the hungry litigant!). And how did you manage this, Jul?, you may or may not be asking. How did you sever the bonds of holy matrimony in a fair and expeditious fashion sans counsel? And what flavor were the Taquitos?

Jalapeno cream cheese, my friend. Jalapeno cream cheese.

Your Defensive Terrapin Style Is No Match For My Complaintive Mongoose Style! : Jul's In No Way Advisable Guide to Being Your Own Divorce Lawyer

You've heard the saying "All men want a virgin in the parlor and a whore in the bedroom"? Perhaps this is true. Perhaps it's misogynistic crap. However, when orchestrating one's own divorce, it is necessary to be a spitfire at the negotiating table and a total fucking idiot at the courthouse. Confused? Let me explain:

1. You do not pay a divorce lawyer to ensure an equitable dissolution of your marriage. You do not pay them to look out for your best interests.

You pay them to look stupid on your behalf.

I've ambled down to Family Court approximately 70,000 times over the past few months. I've come totally unprepared, and I've come hauling briefcases full of legal bad-assery.

The only thing which has made a goddamned bit of difference is my willingness to act like a total dipshit.

At first, I tried to play it cool. I had all the right forms. I had them signed, sealed, notarized and copied in quadruplicate. It didn't matter.

Me : "Okay, so I have every form you requested last time, plus every other form available on the court's website, including the really freaking obscure ones, just in case."
Court Employee : "Huh, let's see... motion to blah blah blah... request for blah blah... application for a rhinoceros license... temporary permit for colorful street festival and/or impromptu West Side Story-style "rumble"... okay, we can't accept any of this. You don't have an Amendment to Redact Aforementioned Mentionings."
Me : "There is no such thing! You just made that up."
Court Employee : "Nuh-uh."
Me : "Yuh-huh!"
Court Employee : "Oh, would you look at that, it looks like there's a problem with your affidavit of consent, too."
Me : "No, there -"
Court Employee : [rubs meticulously-prepared affidavit on rear of poly-blend slacks, flings to the ground, walks away chortling]

Desperate times called for desperate measures. I hadn't whipped out The Dumbness for a number of years. Why, I cannot say... it's a marvelously effective technique. The last time I'd done so, it had netted me a replacement fish tank in under five minutes.

Fishamajig Industries Customer Service Rep : "Well, it SHOULD be filtering... are you SURE you've checked the impeller?"

Me : "YES I AM SURE I CHECKED THE IMPALER!"
F.I.C.S.R. : "No you didn't! You just called it the 'impaler'!"
Me : "I'm holding it in my hand right now! It is... uh... tiny! And full of fish poop!"
F.I.C.S.R. : "Oh, christ. You'll have a new tank in 4 - 6 weeks, okay?"

The next time I visited the courthouse, I did so with a twinkle in my eye and a "duh" on my lips.

Me : "Um... so... I can get this done today, right?" [holds out sheet of construction paper with "MOSHUN FOR YOU GUYS TO GIVE ME A DIVORSE THINGY" scrawled across it in "Mango Fandango" lip gloss]
Court Employee: "You poor woman! You poor, stupid woman. Let me see what I can do."

2. However, when dealing with the erstwhile Mr. Thumbscrews, I found it best to scoop up that spare cognitive capability and cram it right back in my cranium.

Me : [deposits immense stack of paperwork at Mr. Thumbscrews' feet via forklift] [beep... beep... beep... beep...]
Mr. Thumbscrews : "What the fuck?!"
Me : "Oh, it's just your standard Complaint in Lieu of Forcible Contusion of Defendant's Testicular Region, a Waiver of All Possible Recourse, Countersuit and Hope of Salvation, Addendum to Complaint Granting Plaintiff Sole Possession of Entire Marital Library (With Supplementary "Except For Tom Clancy; Fuck Him and the Submarine He Rode In On" Clause)... you know, the usual."
Mr. Thumbscrews : "Huhhhhhh... ?"
Me : "Oh, just sign up and shut up."
Mr. Thumbscrews : "These don't give you permission to change J.Q.'s name to Bitey Bodhavista and raise him on an ashram, do they?"
Me : "Not explicitly, no."
Mr. Thumbscrews : "Oh, okay." [whips out pen]

The Artist Formerly Known as Mr. Thumbscrews is not an unintelligent man. He is, in fact, rather bright. However, when confronted with 30,000 pages of legal jargon, most people tend to clam up faster than Mrs. Paul's. As I had exhibited no prior Betty Broderick-style psycho-bitchiness - and, more importantly, seemed to know what I was talking about without charging him $200 an hour for the privilege - Mr. T. deferred to my judgement. Hope you enjoyed your corneas, honey... they're MINE now.

No! Our settlement was entirely fair. Which is the point: I could've attempted to forcibly violate my ex with a long, hard, enormous... court battle. But that was deeply offensive to my pride. Where was the challenge in hiring a pair of lawyers to attack one another like inbred bettas? It was far more unusual - and more satisfying - to finagle a mutually-agreeable split from the materials at hand - a few T-bills, a couple of Taquitos and a healthy helping of shrewdness. When viewed from outside the swirling shitstorm of emotion, our marriage was, at heart, a broken thing. It was a situation which needed to be fixed, and fix it I did. And I didn't even need to check the impaler.

You And I Are Very Different People Now

Impending Ex: "So, does [Friend of Mine With Uncommon Name] own an herb farm?"

Me: "Ah... I guess you could say that Friend has a partial share in an outside concern, but only receives shipments every few harvests or so..."

Impending Ex: "Oh, because I was picking up some thyme at the supermarket, and it was from [Friend's Name] Herbs. I was just wondering."

Me: "Oh my god. You're not talking about pot, are you?"

Project : "Hurty Laundry"

Some people save things. Some people save things compulsively. Me? I'm a discarder. You name it, odds are I've dispatched it to Goodwill or the local landfill. Paper, clothing, rotten nectarines, masonry debris, cassette tapes, several dozen pairs of old-lady underpants (long story), magazines... I'm never so happy as when I'm flinging something into a Hefty bag and out of my life. Perhaps it's my genetic lineage... my ancestors were Jewish and Russian, two groups for whom "fleeing in the dead of night" might as well be an Olympic sport. While I have no reason to believe I'm in danger of being rousted from my futon by nefarious parties... damn it, if it DOES happen, I won't take long to pack.

True story: until recently, I didn't own a can opener. I avoided canned goods when I could. If unable to obtain a desired foodstuff in any other format (cream of coconut, I'm looking at YOUR saturated-fatty ass), I gamely attacked the can with the tiny, military-style opener on the side of my Swiss Army knife.

There are two notable exceptions to my "More Stark(e) than Philippe" policy: the sentimental and the scientific.

While my Crema Tropicale-splattered kitchen tells one story, my shelves tell quite another.

I've got the tiny stuffed giraffe my mother put in my crib before I was born. I've got the London Fog trenchcoat my father wore as a teenager. I've got the loose-leaf notes I kept during the weeks following J.Q.'s birth ("3:00 AM: 3 oz. milk. WHOOOOO! ROCK ON, BABY!"). I've got how-tos, textbooks, MLA citation guides and my own well-thumbed copy of the Merck Manual (which I should really replace with a little laminated card reading "STOP WORRYING. IT IS PROBABLY JUST GAS").

Emotion and information. In a minimalist existence, these two invariably get a free pass.

Nothing illustrates this as well as my crammed-to-bursting Sent Mail folder. It's like an archaeological dig through my heart.

The breakdown of my marriage led to some of my proudest moments, as well as some of my absolute worst. Faithful corespondent that I am, almost all of them were immediately adjectived up and fired off. Collectively, they're like "Jul In Review": a horrible, wonderful, hilarious, agonizing and enlightening synopsis of... well, ME, both with my soon-to-be ex and by myself.

There are dozens of messages that make me cringe. That's why I saved them, I think. If something makes me squirm with embarrassment or shame, it's a good sign that I need to confront it, rather than ditching it by the side of the information superhighway like a rusty muffler.

I'm sharing them because snooping through someone else's e-mail is a blast.

No! (Well, partially.)

I'm sharing them to confront them, and because they're freakishly fascinating. I like the idea of excavating the dark, intimate and seldom-shared and holding it up to the sunlight. Seeing if it will blanch or melt or spontaneously combust... or if I will.

In the words of the prophet, it's all the same, only the names (and identifying details) have been changed. As the soon-to-be ex, the OtherWoman and I still have to consort with one another for a few hours each week (and have managed to do so rather peacefully), please refrain from ripping them respective new ones. What's done is done.

That being said... go ahead... take a peek inside.

Project : "All This And Nothing"

I found it while poking around a college bookstore. I knew it was what I'd been searching for.

It was a tiny book of blank flashcards, each no bigger than a Post-It, bound together with a single metal ring.

I bought a luscious 36-shade set of colored pencils and spent the next few weeks filling the cards with cartoon depictions of special memories my husband and I shared.

It's the most romantic thing I've ever done.

It's one of a million things - memories, hopes, goals, secrets, appliances-sandwiches-TV-shows - which I'll now and forever view through the tinted lens of the marriage's messy collapse.

A marriage viewed from behind an impending divorce seems oddly homogenous. The happy times - and I know there were many - don't seem terribly joyous. The painful times seem more pathetically prophetic than sad. The book of your life is re-writ in an alien script with unfamiliar curliques and sentence structures.

Without further ado - but with fair warning that this bitch takes FOREVER to load, so be patient both at first and between clicks -
"All This And Nothing".

Offer Me Solutions, Offer Me Alternatives And I Decline

November 2nd, 2006: I file for divorce (why does it say October? I neither know nor care).

It's the end of the world as I knew it, and I feel fantastic.

Point the First: I took the same path down the same street, entered City Hall through the same door, walked down the same dim hallway that I had when applying for my marriage license three years earlier.

"Wrong building," said the clerk. "You want Family Court, over on Chestnut Street."

The lackluster public transit, institutionalized corruption, exorbitant wage tax... those I can handle. But thwarting my efforts to make life conform to a nicely-cyclical story arc? Damn, Philadelphia. Why you gotta do me like that?

Point the Second: "It's the End of the World As We Know It" was the last song played at my wedding reception. It was a totally unironic selection. I loved the idea of making a complex, bittersweet statement about the sea change which had just taken place... in the guise of a silly pop song. My husband was rather ambivalent.

I'm glad I won out.

Point the Third: But I definitely should've insisted on using Otis Redding's original cut of "That's How Strong My Love Is", rather than capitulating to the vanilla-fied Rolling Stones version.

Point the Fourth: this is entering the realm of lame observational comedy, but I'm genuinely curious. How is it that I can get a gun in five days, but have to wait ninety for a divorce? Would the Commonwealth prefer that I kill my spouse?

Point the Fifth: I like to imprint memorable (and less-than-memorable) events with specific songs. The strong sensory connection makes them all the much more vivid. Thus... 1999 - 2006: A Mix Tape.

In the Beginning:	"One of These Days", Pink Floyd
Moment of Doubt and Shame:	"On a Rope", Rocket From the Crypt
Contentment:	"Deep Dark Truthful Mirror", Elvis Costello
Derision:	"Carribean Blue", Enya
Routine:	"T.B.D.", Live
Wheel-Spinning:	"Laughing", Sprung Monkey
Mind Knows/Heart Panics:	"Change in the House of Flies", Deftones
I Want You To Want Me:	"Surrender", Cheap Trick
Microscopic Match Flame:	"The Seed", The Roots
Asbestos-Sided Coffin:	"Every Day Is Exactly the Same", Nine Inch Nails
Do the Collapse:	"Inside Job", Pearl Jam
Glimmer:	"The Denial Twist", The White Stripes
Wither/Blister/Burn/Peel:	"Bullets", Editors
This Situation Ends, When I Say and Only When:	"Over and Over", Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

Just Don't Know What to Do With Myself

I react to stress much like a horror movie villain reacts to being whacked upside the head by the terrified-yet-resourceful cheerleader. We both roar, retreat, rub our tender spots in solitude. Then, just as the residents of Predictable Plot Twist Terrace are heaving big, naive sighs of relief that no more teenagers will be forcibly de-spleened... YAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHH! We come busting through the nearest wall with a gore-encrusted scimitar and a smile, ready to dispatch our stressors (be they marital problems or bat-wielding blondes) with extreme prejudice. Vengeance is administered. Gallons upon gallons of red-tinted corn syrup are splattered around the joint. What you don't see - even in the deluxe, unrated director's cut - is what happens After. The curses have been hurled, the possessions divided, the ties that bind painstakingly unraveled. Susie Q. Debate team has been neatly relieved of both Louisville Slugger and spleen. We both stand in a stranger's living room, sweaty and panting, wondering what the hell just happened.

Laughter may be the best medicine, but it is surely an over-the-counter one, dispensed in a cheery yellow carton right next to "Time", "Hindsight" and "Don't Pick at It". For sheer illicit neuron-tickling, nothing beats panic. It's always been my drug of choice. Kitchen fires, transmission troubles and emotional meltdowns are like flame coursing through my veins (not to mention across my stovetop). Beneath the pounding pulse and dampened palms, I'm eerily calm. I can almost feel each polished wooden bead click softly against its neighbor as my mental abacus calculates how to remedy the situation at hand. I have pondered careers as an EMT, a crime scene cleanup specialist and an air traffic controller (the latter when "Pushing Tin" was in heavy rotation on HBO; if John Cusack played a compost farmer, I'd probably spend a few weeks waxing rhapsodic about moldering banana peels). I actually enjoy helping others move; relocating a person's entire life in several short hours (in a truck with screechy brakes, while being char-broiled under the summer sun) is nothing if not a dull, controlled panic. The majority of the time, I crave the solutions, not the cheap thrills which necessitate them.

Whirring computers, blatant infidelity, three feet of snow and more on the way… I’m on it. I’m a fixer. Unfortunately for me – and the rest of the few, the proud, the compulsively fidgety – there is no solution tidy enough so as to be completely invisible. Life’s like grape juice… there will always be traces; ghostly, indelible, utterly infuriating streaks announcing that Yes, This Actually Happened. When operating in a state of jaw-grind, barrel-of-a-.38 terror, everything else tends to melt away. It’s a strangely soothing, almost autistic state… you cannot look at anything but the problem, because there is only the problem. The rest of the universe has been smudged into a deep, fuzzy nothingness. There comes a point, however, when you’ve got to snap out of your reverie, step back and regard your handiwork. Naturally, it is never quite as you imagined.

The time, the unholy quantity of time… that’s what surprised me. I’d spend an hour splayed across the couch, just thinking, so peculiarly free of obligations that I almost expected to float away the second I sat up.

At our darkest, snot-drenched worst, my husband and I spent hours each night sitting in bed, talking, crying, dissecting and debating. Drawing circles and loops and Spirograph patterns around an impossible problem, wondering why bright young things such as ourselves couldn’t just solve the damned thing already. When one or both of us was utterly spent, we’d collapse in the dark, burying damp, puffy faces in rough pillowcases. Occasionally, one of us would snake a tentative hand across the blankets, out of kindness or a distant hope that maybe skin-on-skin might correct what mind-on-mind seemed powerless to address. We’d sleep for five fitful hours, stumble off to work, come home, repeat the entire process. It was exhausting, agonizing and fruitless, but it was something, and clearly, something had to be done. Something always has to be done. Relatives still bring gelatin desserts to terminal cancer patients. Jell-O never cured anything, but it’s a testament, a wobbly neon monolith to the irresistible urge to throw yourself head-first at a bad situation. You’ve got to ride that panic like a big, shimmering, jiggling wave… otherwise, you might get washed away.

I got washed away. I drifted, idiotically poked jellyfish, subsisted on kelp, family and antidepressants. I washed up in Philadelphia. Staggering ashore, I was stunned. I was still alive. I felt glad, self-confident, hopeful for the future. I had a cute little apartment, a precocious little boy, a pack of wonderful, supportive female friends. And yet there was that odd, tender spot inside, like a nagging sprain. And the time – oh, lord, all that damned time.

The couch and I bonded. It began to seem like the ideal partner – supportive, a fine listener and an excellent lay (insert rimshot here). It might have been dumpy and the world’s ugliest shade of industrial blue, but it was a nice, solid surface to cling to while being battered by the big truths. I had spend the past six months acting, reacting, booking therapy appointments, hustling my panicked little ass off. All of which had made it conveniently easy to blur out everything else. Like the fact that I was going to get divorced and be a single mother at twenty-four. Like the radical personality changes this trial by fire had instilled in me. Like the realization that I’d spent the past seven years – important, formative years – with a man who, while generally sweet and supportive, just wasn’t terribly into me. I somehow doubt that the authors of the bestselling “He’s Just Not That Into You” will ever release a sequel entitled “P.S. – And You Still Married Him, You Dipshit!” The topic is just a wee bit too weighty for the pop-psych section of Barnes & Noble.

When the good ol’ adrenal glands have spurted their last, when your heart rate has dipped back down to a steady thrum, when you have re-donned your rain slicker and skulked off into the distance, preparing for the inevitable sequel… there is not despair, exactly. Or at least there doesn’t have to be. Every event has the capacity to make an individual better or worse. I choose to be made better, to let each kick in the ass propel me that much closer to the person I’d like to be. There isn’t a bad feeling, or a good feeling, so much as a scooped-out, empty feeling. Everything extraneous has been removed and tossed down the Insinkerator, and you’ve got no choice but to regard your new life with a kind of shell-shocked bemusement. Guess what, tough gal? Yes, This Actually Happened.

It’s time for a road trip. In the words of the late, luscious Soul Coughing, I’m “running on fumes, I got to get right with this.” Tucked away in the bachelorette pad, it is a slow, strange process. I still pause at least once a day to grin, sniffle and mutter, “Huh, these are MY coffee mugs”, as though they were a dusty ruin of a long-dead culture rather than six bucks’ worth of IKEA-ish porcelain. I need to hang up the scimitar, come down off the ceiling, go crashing through some nature preserves, freshen up my bug bites. This actually happened, and it’s actually still happening. It’s time to fuel up the Civic, open the road atlas and get right with this.

Hot Fun In the Summertime

Mid-summer. Suburbiaville. There have been many home-related platitudes cross-stitched on decorative pillows throughout the years, but I am fairly certain that "Home Is Where the Central Air Is" has not been one of them.

But it should be. Oh yes, it should be.

Speaking of which, have any of you ever been an overnight guest in a residence where one of those dense little fuckers is the ONLY item of head-support proffered for the evening, and you're too shy to say, "Um, while I admire the craftsmanship and piety inherent in this 8'x8' piece of embroidered religious iconography, might I request something with a little more, um, substance? In the strictly physical sense, of course?", so you spend the entire night writhing around the fold-out couch in abject discomfort and "wake up", as it were, with searing neck pain and a picture of St. Francis feeding a chipmunk embossed on your cheek?

No? Um... okay, then.

We have no central air. We have several deeply shoddy window units which, when simultaneously cranked to 11, produce the overall cooling effect of an emphysemic blowing on an ice cube. Every time I walk past them, I am reminded of this unforgettable scene from the "MST3K" movie.

On-Screen Scientist: "Your camera will pick up nothing but black fog!"

Servo: "Oh, it's a GoldStar."

It's somehow not... quite... as funny now.

When we are alone in the home, J.Q. and I strip down to our underthingies, collapse in front of the nearest ineffective window unit and engage in Nurse-o-Rama '06. While having twenty-four pounds of sticky toddler clamber over one's chest like it's some kind of fleshy Gymboree feature isn't quite as refreshing as, say, diving nude into a bracing mountain stream, it beats actually parenting.

Unfortunately, we are no longer Alone in the Home. One of Mr. Thumbscrews' old friends and his girlfriend (the friends' girlfriend, not Mr. Thumbscrews', as evidenced by the fact that I am not writing this entry from a cramped cell with a lidless toilet) have colonized our home. I can no longer cavort topless. Strange toiletries have sprung up like mimosa-scented mushrooms on our bathroom sink. And the gaming... it has begun.

Both Mr. Thumbscrews and OldFriend are frighteningly intelligent. They each demolished the Navy's nuclear reactor technician training program, one of the service's most difficult tracks. Since then, they have each ripped through any and all learning required by life or institutions of higher education as though it were no more difficult than "Houghton-Mifflin Says YES I CAN! Read Boring-Ass Subject/Predicate Combinations All By Myself". Between their respective bulging craniums, they share an ENIAC's worth of computing ability.

However.

When placed in the same room, they do not use their powers for good, or even for constructive mischief, such as making the local mall's electronic billboard indicate that Pottery Barn is having a huge sale on Leather Crotches.

No. They play video games. Then they play some more video games. Then they play a few more video games. Then they stagger out into the daylight and drive to the local electronics retailer. There, they purchase some MORE video games. Then return home. And play them.

The entire process is accompanied by a chorus of incredulous laughter and highly-technical, oft-conflicting banter.

Mr. Thumbscrews: "No no no no no! Use the 30/30 incendiary-tipped rounds! Now now now!"

OldFriend: "No way, dipshit! That'll NEVER penetrate the sub-hull! Huh huh huh huh huh!"

Mr. Thumbscrews: "Huh huh huh huh huh! I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU JUST TRIED THAT! WITH A CONVENTIONAL ROUND!"

Both: "Huh huh huh huh huh!"

Now, not to get too vulgar here, but: I like dick. Do I ever! Dick is FANTASTIC. But by god, a few days of this is enough to make anyone want to join a commune devoted to hand-woven fabric production, hearty vegan one-dish meals and mutually-respectful Sapphic love.

J.Q. and I have gone into Emergency Gaming-Related Exile Mode. We are frequent visitors to the local mall, which features an extremely effective air-conditioning system as well as mango smoothies. J.Q. really, really enjoys mango smoothies. He sits in my lap, straw poking from his little rosebud mouth, clutching a cup which, to him, is about as big around as a telephone pole. "Dude, can I have a sip?", I ask. "NUH NUH! NUH NUH NUH NUH!", he succinctly replies, crouching protectively over his treasure. "Um... okay... can I go get a slice of pizza, then?" "NUH NUH NUH!"

We have attempted to entice OldFriend's Girlfriend away on one or two of our adventures, but she has thus far declined. She sits next to OldFriend on the couch, politely laughing at the patent absurdity of attempting to take down a G'ylaradryd warship with a non-heat-seeking missile. I feel like slipping her a note... "YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO THIS. MEET ME AT THE CAR IN FIVE MINUTES. NOT SURE WHERE WE'RE GOING, BUT THERE WILL BE NO FORCE-FEEDBACK CONTROLLERS THERE, I PROMISE."

"But maybe she enjoys gaming!", you say. "Maybe she likes watching her guy conquer large sectors of the galaxy and crash exotic cars into dividing rails at 280 MPH!"

Right. And maybe the Canarsie Indians thought that a crate of shoehorns and candle-snuffers was one helluva good bargain for Manhattan Island. And maybe you really DO need the Klear-Kote and extended warranty!

I can see a look on her face which has been on my own entirely too often. "Maybe... after this race... once you finally install your upgraded turbocharger... see, I've been paying attention?... you might... maybe... possibly... pay attention... to me?"

I have faced it, a life wasted.
I'm never going back again.

The baby and I are moving in four weeks. It's a little walk-up with lots of windows and abundant local take-out. I think, in fact, it may be too little for a TV.

Yeah. I'm going to be one of THOSE people. I promise I'll only spend a week or two trying to work the fact that I don't own a TV into Every. Single. Conversation. "Oh, I'm so sorry to hear about your aunt's diagnosis. Well, at least she'll get to watch a lot of TV in intensive care! Not like ME, of course..."

I escaped it, a life wasted.
I'm never going back again.

I may leave the car in Suburbiaville, too. The market's only a mile away. The baby becomes uncontrollably excited over dogs and busses and planes. It may be hopelessly, disgustingly idealistic, but I can't shake this image of us strolling up the parkway, dinner in tow, pointing out hundred year-old buildings, enjoying the sights, the noises, that particular "Philly in summer" bouquet, sweetly decomposing trash, bus exhaust, a thousand freshly-made egg rolls, illegal fires smoking away. That particular orangey evening light which smolders down but never quite goes out.

Having tasted, a life wasted.
I'm never going back... again.

This Time, It's Personal

The first thing I'm going to do following my separation is spend several hours staring at my bathroom sink, transported to a new level of awe and delight by the utter lack of beard hair and dessicated shaving cream found therein. I may even gently stroke the porcelain like a blissed-out rave-goer fondling her companion's pleather pants.

Ahem.

The next thing I'm going to do is place a personal ad.

I've never "dated", per se. I've been cohabitating with my husband since I was seventeen. Prior to that, my "dates" lasted as long as your standard Jerry Bruckheimer boom-fest (wanton popcorn-sharing optional) and ended not with "Your place or mine?", but with my father yelling at me to hop in the Crown Vic so that he could get back home and resume plunking out atonal versions of hard rock classics (think "Whole Lotta Love" meets the Koyaanasquatsi soundtrack, with backing vocals provided by my mother yelling, "HONEY! THE WASHING MACHINE IS SHAKING AND MAKING A NOISE LIKE A LABORING COW AGAIN!").

The last time I declared my interest to an available male was in elementary school. I did so by passing him a folded square of wide-ruled paper bearing the provocative question, "DO YOU LIKE ME? CIRCLE ONE, Y/N". His answer was a definitive N, which actually turned out for the best; a decade later, he served a three-year prison term for making bomb threats against our high school. While it is possible that my innocent display of affection twisted his impressionable little mind, I prefer to believe he was just a dipshit.

In the years between Mr. Terroristic Threats Against the New Jersey Public School System and Mr. Thumbscrews, a series of young men pried themselves away from their PlayStations long enough to vie for my affection (or at least the opportunity to slide a palm kernel oil-slicked hand under my t-shirt during "Escape From Plausibility Peninsula"). Each of these "relationships" was about as lengthy - and somewhat less satisfying than - a protracted game of Tetris. I was always the passive party, following Dude du Jour's lead, stumbling backwards in beaten-up Chuck Taylors throughout the approach, courtship, jujube-fueled makeout sessions and inevitable dumping.

When the opportunity arose to enter a serious, IKEA-furnished relationship with Mr. Thumbscrews, I was ecstatic. Dating was like visiting an hostile foreign land: the customs were inscrutable, the language indecipherable, the atmosphere supremely uncomfortable. Even the most adventurous traveler reaches a point where clean hotel sheets and Hershey bars seem infinitely more appealing than woven-bark blankets and delicacies with more legs than seems strictly necessary. When I dragged the two trash bags containing all my worldly goods up a flight of stairs and into my future husband's apartment, I was gladly convinced that I was retiring my passport for good. Ha. Fucking. Ha.

[Insert clip of sinister chortling from Pink Floyd's "Brain Damage". Is there a situation which WOULDN'T be enhanced by a little Floyd? Yes, actually. When shooting pool in a somewhat-shady neighborhood, you might not wish to play "Welcome to the Machine" on the jukebox, lest the gentleman at the next table (who is roughly the size and consistency of the monolith from "2001: A Space Odyessy") shake his cue menacingly in your direction and yell, "WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS 'MEH MEH MEH MEH MACHIIIIIINE' SHIT?!"]

Very well, then. Once more into the breach. My family, my friends, my therapist and - somewhat surprisingly - my husband all agree: it would be a good idea for me to date during our separation. Playing the field seems to be a pretty integral part of most young adults' growth and development, and god knows we could use some growin' and developin' up in this joint. Furthermore, dating will force me to engage in actual, factual recreation, an area in which I could certainly use some assistance. "Don't Know How to Party" may have been my soundtrack in junior high, but No, I Really DON'T Know How to Party has been the tune I've rocked ever since. I could really use a few hours free of working, scheduling, organizing, cleaning, nose-wiping, butt-swabbing, discipline-administering (riddle me this, Child Development Expert-Man: how is "SPIT IT OUT RIGHT NOW!" any easier to understand than, "Dude, don't put that rock/twig/quarter/small appliance in your mouth!") or doing anything more productive than eating Sno-Caps and watching large swatches of L.A. get pulverized by aliens hell-bent on world conquest and/or selling their screenplay ("E'glexch a'iilynor eeeeya AND A WISECRACKING VENUSIAN TEAM UP ON A CROSS-GALAXY ADVENTURE! YOUR SPAWN WILL LOVE IT!").

My questions for you, my infinitely wise and foul-mouthed reading audience:

1. What's the #1 thing you wish you'd known BEFORE you began dating ("Don't order anything which requires more than one piece of cutlery to eat and/or comes to the table engulfed in flames", "Those growths probably AREN'T the result of a welding accident", etc.)?

2. I'm not looking for a serious commitment. I'm sure as hell not looking for a replacement father for J.Q.; J.Q. already HAS a wonderful father (even if I feel like running him over with a combine harvester sometimes). I want someone with whom I can see movies, have fun, kick ass at Quizzo, and (the following passage inserted for the benefits of my mother and therapist, the sweetest little middle-aged Jewish lady ever to use the phrase, "Be sure to wrap it up!"), once we've known one another for 10,000 years, been tested for all major diseases and wrapped our bodies in several layers of microbicide-slathered latex, maybe, possibly, perhaps engage in Grown-Up Activities.

How do I write a personal ad indicating this without sounding as though I'm requesting that all available men proceed immediately to my domicile, disrobe and allow me to hop on their jock?

3. Given my socially-clueless nature: how the F do I know when a man is interested in me, or make my own interest known? I suppose I could try purring, "Open your mouth and close your eyes and you will get a BIG surprise!" and then inserting a random part of my anatomy when the gentleman in question complies, but I suspect that may be a bit too "forward".

3. Are any of these pictures suitable for a personal ad? Amazingly, these are the GOOD ones; in each of the other photos, I'd managed to cut off my chin; I didn't want potential suitors thinking I was trying to hide, say, a ZZ Top-style beard.

Plan B

I took emergency birth control pills for the first time on the day my husband and I decided to separate.

The day before, I'd come home after work, J.Q. babbling and squirming in my arms, only to find a familiar little yellow tablet sitting in front of the toaster. "Ohhhh... fuck," I muttered, the blood draining from my face. While Mr. Thumbscrews and I had spent the last several months dealing with some truly hellacious marital problems, we'd managed to avoid descending into our own personal off-Broadway version of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", and the mood in the household had remained civil. Extremely civil, in fact... sex, like binge-drinking or skydiving, was a fun way to escape the issues at hand (pun fully intended) for brief stretches of time. Unlike those other activities, sex had the added bonus of being mutually comforting and unlikely to result in either liver damage or slamming into the ground face-first at several hundred miles per hour (well, at least not the way WE do it... *snicker-chortle*).

Ahem. So... improbably enough, Mr. Thumbscrews and I had been engaging in a lot of the activity which that telltale tab of Jolivette was intended to render delightfully consequence-free. When not cavorting like avoidance-seeking bunnies, we'd been having long, serious talks, the latest of which had culminated in our mutual, bittersweet decision to separate - if not permanently, then at least for the foreseeable future.

We've been together since we were seventeen and nineteen, respectively. We spent our latter teens and early twenties working full-time, purchasing and remodeling our house, having, falling in love with and being run ragged by our baby. We viewed the typical twenty-something slacker lifestyle as a phase which individuals as clever as ourselves could conveniently side-step, shunning the extra sleep, music festivals and designer pharmaceuticals in lieu of a one-way ticket on Responsibility Railways.

A wise person (well, okay, it was ME, and if I'm so wise, how come I can't operate an electric can opener or an automatic transmission?) once said that it takes a truly smart individual to be a true asshole. Apparently, it also takes a truly smart individual to be a true idiot.

You can't bypass entire developmental phases sans consequence. You can't FORCE your life to conform to your dreams, no matter how hard you grip the wheel, no matter how adept you are at solving 3D shape-rotation puzzles.

It was only a matter of time before one of us cracked.

I'd experienced small but dramatic periods of existential terror throughout the years, subjecting my poor husband to week-long bouts of uncommunicative weepiness because I developed a crush on a coworker or became acutely aware, ambling through the housewares section of Target, that I'd had more silverware patterns than sexual partners. Mr. Thumbscrews, always as cool as a cucumber dipped in liquid nitrogen, never showed any signs of discontent. That is, until he fell in love with the receptionist at work.

"I know, it's so fucking cliched," he said as we sat next to one another in bed, holding hands and sobbing.

Month 1 was an all-you-can-weep buffet of emotional agony. I stopped eating, stopped smiling, spent the majority of my time staring hollow-eyed at my monitor at work or curled up on my living room floor, letting J.Q. gambol over my prone form as I wept and waited for my husband to return from the latest post-work discussion with OtherWoman. He refused to give her up, yet returned home to me every night. "He's trying to have his cake and eat it, too," sneered my friends, enraged at the betrayal. "I'm so damned confused," he said, stroking my face, "I feel like no matter what I do, I'm going to regret the other decision for the rest of my life."

Month 2 marked my fortuitous introduction to therapy and Paxil. I began to get better. Not just from the immediate emotional trauma of infidelity, but from... everything. With the help of a very subtle, very talented therapist (a practitioner of the "chatting and perpetually-full candy bowl" technique), I started to realize that a bevy of events had occurred over the course of my life which shaped who I became, and that not all of them - or even the majority of them - were positive. However, I didn't HAVE to be defined by my history; with work, I could choose who I wanted to be, regardless of the quantity or color of insults flung by elementary school classmates and sadistic ex-boyfriends (Craig C. : I hope failing second grade was the first in a dismal chain of events which led to your employment as a carcass-disposal technician at the local abbatoir. Josh K. : I no longer "hate the entire world"... mainly just YOU. Ha!).

Month 3 was a time of role-reversal. I thrived under stress and pressure, blossoming like a forced tulip. I worked and planned and drank and wrote and ran (and was immediately convinced that I had always been a runner, but was only now forcing my TastyKake-padded ass to embrace its true destiny). Mr. Thumbscrews, on the other hand, grew increasingly moody. While he had repeatedly pleaded for "just a little bit of time to think about things", more time seemed to result only in more irritability and confusion.

Month 4 has been sweet and sad... like living in mole sauce, to use a somewhat-clunky metaphor. Mr. Thumbscrews began taking an antidepressant of his own and, like me, immediately remarked, "If I EVER think about going off of this, please smack the shit out of me." I began sympathizing with the doubt and confusion he'd endured over the past several months, rather than just condemning his bad behavior (although I certainly haven't stopped thinking [and occasionally remarking] that he picked the single worst, most morally-reprehensible method of dealing with his feelings). I also - sans adulterous affair - began having many of the same doubts myself. Could I realistically spend the rest of my life plodding along in Suburbiaville, picking out interior trim colors and wondering what could've been?

I still don't know. My husband doesn't know, either. But it's become apparent that, as an unwise person once said, "It became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it." It seems unlikely that we'll drift back into the same shared orbit post-separation. However, returning to our former path of domesticity-by-brute-force would doom our relationship to death as surely as a dozen extramarital liaisons. While we were young and malleable, it was easy to convince ourselves that we fit together perfectly. Now that we've grown up and become (slightly) more wise, it's clear that we need to find out who we are individually before we can gauge whether we work as a couple.

We're still in love. I feel myself falling for my husband every single day... when he kisses my nose, brings me home ice cream, makes our son cackle like a tiny pink hyena. As the occasionally-wise Liz Phair once said, "You've never been no waste of my time, it's never been a drag." We're not miserable, nor are we irreparably broken. We're still talking hugging, doing things which necessitate emergency birth control (to tie up THAT particular plot thread: a Plan B prescription was obtained, its slick packaging admired, the two potent tablets taken at appropriate intervals. Let me add that Plan B apparently punishes you for forgetting your birth control by making you feel as though you're delivering a baby THROUGH YOUR FUCKING SKULL. However, it appears as though crisis/pregnancy has been averted). The thought of living without him breaks my heart. More and more often, though, it also excites me. We'll still be raising our little boy together (no matter where we are individually, we're both dedicated to J.Q. above all else). However, we'll be living and growing independently, finding our wings/stripes/other anthropomorphic-metaphoric personality traits. We'll be growing up in ways that our seven-year forced march through the bowels of suburbia never could have accomplished.

I'm going to live downtown, like I've always wanted (beyond the rudeness and persistent reek of urine, there IS a certain charm). I'm going to paint the walls whatever color I like and buy weird, modernist plush furniture for J.Q. to fling himself off of. We're going to go for walks in Rittenhouse, jog down West River Drive instead of past the cardboard box factory. I'm going to laugh and cry during the nights when J.Q. is ornery, I'm exhausted and I can't just hand him off to his father. I'm going to laugh and cry during the days when J.Q. is with his daddy, missing my son like mad but simultaneously atwitter with the possibilities inherent in being All. By. Myself.

It's going to be good.

10 Regrets

1. What little I can remember was deeply unsatisfying. I spent the next day vomiting neon-orange goo and the next three years in a maelstrom of self-loathing. It takes a truly horrendous mistake to make you marvel at the multifarious evils present in both your mind and digestive tract.

2. Mr. Blonde: he claimed in all seriousness to have committed multiple murders. I moved in with him anyway. Bet that beats YOUR horrible ex-boyfriend story!

3. It took me a long, long time to realize that he wasn't a killer, wasn't a paragon of pure evil, but rather a nasty, spoiled little beast, a cocktail of coddled gifted child, unmedicated bipolar-I and Objectivist idealization even more noxious than the quarts of Jack Daniels and Mountain Dew I downed while living with him, his beloved Playstation and mountains of Taco Bell wrappers in his parents' basement (those three months of my life make this song look like "Walkin' On Sunshine").

4. If you do the RIGHT thing, and are, in fact, the amazing man I thought you were, then every moment of doubt and fury I've ever felt towards you. If you DON'T, then not beating the ever-loving shit out of you while simultaneously stapling a restrictive custody order to your dense fucking head as soon as I found out.

5. My first and only experience with hallucinogens: alone, in my bedroom, the day after my sixteenth birthday party, at which I'd been stood up by my crush du jour. Trip the light fantastic, my ass. I'm still afraid of that damned tape deck.

6. Living without therapy and SSRIs for so long.

7. Picking at it (and not using Q-Tips dipped in alcohol, either).

8. On occasion, being too decent, moral and non-vindictive of a person to e-mail every single person in your life a picture of my little family with the caption, "Hi! This is me, my husband and our baby. One guess as to which one YOUR [daughter/sister/friend/employee/vague acquaintance] is fucking! Hint: baby's only got eyes for one set of tits, and mama don't swing that way."

9. But being petty enough to needle you about it in a public forum anyway. Oh, fuck it: make this "9.5 Regrets"; this one still feels delicious. Needle needle needle.

9.5. This post. I've always preferred to keep things relatively impersonal. Whoops!

10. Placing anyone in the world on a higher pedestal than my own messed-up, hilarious, pretty-even-with-undereye-circles, halfway-to-an-associates-degree, good-mama-even-though-I-want-to-bash-my-head-in-with-a-board-book-sometimes, ambitious, non-nutritious (but aspartame-sweetened!), expeditious self.

And yet every single one of these helped me move towards where I am right now, which, despite everything, is the best place I've ever been. Regrets, I salute you! (Insert Miller Lite "Real Men of Genius" clip... "And today we salute YOU, Ms. Cohabitated-With-Self-Proclaimed-Psychopath!... [falsetto] Oooooh, he's watching 'A Clockwork Orange' WAAAAY too MUUUUUUUCH!")

Feel free (nay, COMPELLED) to comment with regrets of your own (unless, like Ol' Blue Eyes, you've had too few to mention, you lucky bastard). Um, anonymous posts welcome, obviously.

Better or Verse: "Angry Women Racing Around Target"

All that poly-cotton that you bought
Ain't quite the sturdy stuff you thought
Clearance just the past writ large
Wanna put the new life on store charge?

What breaks today
Duct-tapes tomorrow
Seventy bucks
Squeegeed-up sorrow

Free, unchained and just for you
Lipliner and an Icee do
For a start
While baby throws things from the cart
It all falls together and apart

Dedicated to all the ladies who have ever managed to purchase Purex, prevent your child from gnawing on a shopping cart handle and wept at the same time. You know who you are.

A Keg, A Well, A Maple Tree, Me

Did you guess "things which are tapped"? Good, because if you had guessed "things which are cold and unyielding", I'd have to insert my size-10 riding boot in your nether aperture, smartass. "Things which are brimming with luscious nectar" will garner you a coquettish giggle and feigned slap... untrue though it may currently be.

I'm tapped... literally and figuratively. My previously Holstein-caliber milk production has suffered greatly under the stress of Marital Mayhem 2006 (I can still shoot a stream across an 8' room, however, a feat which gives me a perverse, John Holmesian satisfaction). J.Q. has had his first taste of supplementary formula (and liked it, the little traitor). While I'm aware there are a hundred things I could do to make my cups once again runneth over... I'm not going to. I'm frankly too tired to scour local health food stores for Sri Lankan Mu-Mu Tea or to spend eight hours a day listening to my pump drone away like a slightly more benign version of one of those "Terminator II" robots (see, I'm not just feeding my kid Satan's brew... I'm doing my part to help prevent SkyNet from annihilating the human race!).

The quality of my milk has gone drastically down as well. I'm now producing the boob equivalent of a decaf skim americano (if I worked at Starbucks, I'd be fired within an hour for being unable to resist calling that one the "Why Fucking Bother?"). I believe this can be explained by the GIGO principle: Garbage In, Garbage Out. It's one of the very first things taught to any new computer industry recruit (in addition to the apocryphal Tale of the Stupid User Who Thought Their CD Tray Was a Cupholder).

For the first (but alas, probably not the last) time, a term is equally useful in discussing software or my boobs. My current diet consists primarily of:

- Store-brand "granola" bars which are actually quivering wads of pure glucose syrup; you can almost hear the few pathetic oats entombed in their sticky depths screaming, "HEEEEEEELP MEEEEEE!"

- Diet energy drinks. Back in my day, you used to be able to buy capsules of pure ephedra at your local convenience store. These things were pure jitter in a neon-gelatin shell; they were marketed under names like "Heart Palpitatorzzz" and favored by college kids and long-haul truckers. Nowadays, thanks to newfangled notions like "massive FDA public safety recalls", the closest thing we've got is the energy drink. I've sucked down an alarming number of these cute lil' cans in the past month; alas, none of the "supplements" contained therein (taurine, ginseng, gotu kola, rhinocerous testicle extract) seem to do the trick. This is primarily due to the THIRD staple of my diet...

- Paxil. Aka "paroxetine", aka "Vitamin P". The word "paroxetine" makes me think of parrots for some reason... I like to imagine a busy, Merrie Melodies-type factory line transforming squawking, flapping birds into cheery pink tablets (attention bird-lovers: I am sorry if the previous imagery offended you. I'm sure you harbor real love in your hearts for your incessantly-chirping-and-pooping, scary razor-sharp-beak-having friends). Dubious origin story or not, this fine feathered pharmaceutical has absolutely KNOCKED ME ON MY ASS. Although my anxiety does seem to have abated somewhat, if only because I've been busy lying on the couch, muttering things like, "J.Q.! Are you eating a Cheerio or a rock? It's a rock, isn't it? Uggghh..." *crawls across room, removes rock from infant's mouth* "Pumice? Are you kidding me? You are ON YOUR OWN after this, mister! I am ONLY getting up again for FELDSPAR OR HARDER!"

So, yes. Exhausted. Kinda queasy (I'm not pregnant again. And if I am, the embryo is just going to have to nurture its OWN DAMNED SELF, because I'm too tired). Oh, and (to use a clunky computer metaphor so as not to offend the squeamish, although if you're squeamish, you're probably still busy cleaning vomit out of your keyboard from the earlier milk-squirting reference): when I attempt to "launch" a certain special "program" (C:\JUL\Down_There.exe), even after "twenty minutes" of trying to launch the damned thing, it just DOESN'T OPEN. If you know what I mean.

And yet. Either I am especially foolish or especially resilient... with a can of RhinoCRUSH in hand ("Now with 27% more testicle!") and my fuzzy-headed baby on my hip, I know I'll get through this somehow.

Verse Chorus Verse

I had to run through a heavy fog to catch my train this morning. Like everything else in my life, from pop songs to Cheerios, it made me think about us. I feel like I've been chasing you through the fog. I keep tripping over rocks and crashing into trees, but every so often you come achingly close. Even when I'm bruised, bleeding and covered in dirt, a glimpse of your shirt or a breath of your scent is enough to make me pick myself up and keep running after you. There are a million wrong reasons to keep going, but I believe that if I were driven by them, I would have fallen and stayed down a long time ago. I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you. I'm starting to see where people would go to war for this, perform acts grand and insane for this, pine away to a splinter in some picturesquely seedy European flophouse for this. I love you.

I come not to bury grief, but to praise it. Well, maybe just a little bit of burying. After all, I come from a proud line of Burying People. I still recall being awakened early one Sunday morning (cruelly roused from my girlish dreams of Trainspotting-era Ewan McGregor dipped in Magic Shell) to assist in digging a tiny grave for my younger sister's recently-expired pet cicada, Sting-Ass.

So let's try this praise shit for a little while. They let's whip out the Hefty bag, shovel and retrofitted cereal box tombstone and get crackin'.

Grief Benefit #1: I Wish I Could Eat Your Sugar-Coated Bacon When You Turn Black

I've always been to one degree or another overweight. While I've never carried enough excess ass-mass to qualify for my own Discovery Channel special, I've also never been particularly happy with my body. As it turns out, grief, like a tapeworm or a smack habit, is a fucked-up yet surprisingly effective panacea for pudginess. I haven't seen fat burn this quickly since that Underwriters Labs video "Why Your Turkey Fryer Will Kill You and Everything You Love". A harrowing anecdote: while at a bloggers' brunch recently, I invented a new dish: bacon topped with brown sugar-glazed walnuts. It looked greasily, intoxicatingly delicious. And yet I DID NOT FINISH IT. To quote Homer Simpson, "I've become everything that I hate!" I'll just have to console myself with my greatly de-maximized gluteus.

Grief Benefit #2: I Feel the Pain of Everyone... Then I Feel Nothing

You don't really realize how many day-to-day things annoy you... until they don't. When your life is consumed by one giant, fucked-up problem, ordinary troubles are instantly deflected, like Astroglide off the back of a particularly kinky duck. Diapers and onesies scattered all over my house, making it look like the set of a really awful sitcom called "Fraternity Baby"? So what? WaWa truck flipped over on the highway, disgorging 30,000 gallons of two-percent? Just more time to rest my head on the steering wheel and let Led Zeppelin soothe my troubles for seven and a half minutes at a stretch. Insane guy on the street ranting about how the Illuminati and community college adjunct professors are conspiring to destroy his liver? Fuck you... me and my liver have bigger problems than that. Which brings us to...

Grief Benefit #3: I Love You More Than I Did the Month Before

And I can see where it would be easy to love you a little bit too much. While actually filling my Ativan prescription would be cheaper ("I'm-so-sorry-you-have-to-go-through-this," mumbled my doctor, "This-might-help-take-the-edge-off"), red 16-ounce party cups have a certain cachet which my local dispensary has yet to match.

I've never been one to self-medicate, believing on some level that if I endured enough pain with enough stoicism, I would someday receive... oh, I don't know... a blue satin ribbon emblazoned with "#1 Bad-Ass"? The people's ovation and fame forever? I've shredded more Tylenol 3 prescriptions than I can count. I gave birth without employing anything stronger than hospital apple juice, my vocalizations of pain limited to a single, "This.. can't... continue." Yes, I always talk that way (and as it turned out, I was, like, a billion centimeters dilated and thus entirely correct).

But this? I need the edge taken off from time to time. And I'm amazed and delighted that something I can buy at the PLCB store actually works. I'd have thought for sure that I'd need to visit a terrifying back alley or a Kokopelli-infested shamanic healing center, but no... right there, next to the local chicken wing emporium, lies temporary solace. And tonic.

I can't keep going. Then you show up... and I can. The pessimist in me would say you weaken me, break my will, drain me of resolve. I don't buy that. If I'm going to continue, I need to believe it's because you replenish me, refill me, refuel me just as I'm sputtering to a halt. When I'm bone-weary, ground down to dust, I need to have faith in the the Cheese Principle: your face still makes me melt rather than crumble. And like anything involving cheese... hey, it can't be all bad.

Oh You're My Best Friend

This was supposed to be a Valentine's Day post about my husband and how he is better than sliced bread - nay, ANY horizontal plane of foodstuff. That, however, was not to be, and we shall get to the juicy (well, selectively de-juiced for the sake of privacy... pulpy, I guess) details in time, my pretties. First on the agenda: am I the only one, upon seeing the title of this post, who immediately thought of Jefferson Airplane, and of Jefferson Airplane's "Behind the Music" special, and wondered yet again why they didn't just cut to the chase and call it "Grace Slick is a Great Big Whore"? Of course, BTM has never been noted for its objectivity or (especially) its subtlety... grainy archival-style photos? You're gonna die. Your bandmates lauding you as the greatest lead glockenschpielist of your generation? Gonna die. Footage of your family discussing how you used to tap out "In-a-gada-da-vida" on the lid of your potty? Might as well start calling you "New Coke", because THAT'S how dead you are.

The "Airplane" special, however, was just ludicrous. Every! Other! Shot! was Grace saying, "...and THAT's when I got together with John/Steve/Eduardo/Nebuchanezzer" (Ed. Note: I recently had trouble printing out some Puff coupons, causing me to have to reregister for Gerber's site with fictitious information, causing me to see a cheery little sidebar proclaiming, "Welcome back, SUSIE CREAMCHEESE! Your baby, NEBUCHANEZZER, is now in the Crawler Stage!"). Whenever they show the band boarding a plane, you half-expect to see a clip of Grace saying, "... and THAT'S when I got together with the single-engine turboprop Cessna 208."

And now, with all the panache of Grace partner-hopping, we segue into... The Pulpy Part.

I imagine that even the happiest, most secure married people still have moments when they wish they'd married the Cessna instead. If it keeps drinking too much motor oil and leaving its stuff all over the house like you're the fucking Transponder Fairy, you can just crash it into a cliffside. That doesn't work with human partners, obviously... that nice, meaty "splat" just isn't enough to compensate for the lack of a cool fireball afterwards.

For the first time ever, Mr. Thumbscrews and I are having Marital Problems. Not "marital problems" as in, "Why do you keep jamming the trash can so ridiculously full, are you hoping the trash will become so dense that it will mutate into a black hole and suck all of our banana peels and Valu-Mailers into another point on the space-time continuum, please stop doing that before I have no recourse but to bisect your cranium with a cleaver". No... these are Marital Problems of the type which could result in both parties standing in front of a televised judge with a JD from the Santo Domingo School of Law and Interpretive Polynesian Dance. That kind.

I never thought this would happen. Yet again, who does? Are there any women who, when eyeing the man they love, say, "Hmmn, I have a sneaking suspicion that THIS one is going to (insert one: secretly wear my crotchless panties, rack up $10,000 in calls to 1-900-ORIFICE, own an incontient Great Dane who just WILL NOT DIE, impregnate more than one member of my immediate family who is not me, throw an operational waffle iron at my head, be convicted of all charges)?"

Not that either I or Mr. Thumbscrews has done anything so odious. That would be easy. I would at least have anger as a crutch, and I am capable of some monumental, towering, crazy anger, all but frothing at the mouth like I'm regurgitating an Orange Julius. No... I still know that my husband is a good, decent man. He's loving, respectful, kind, responsible, funny, wickedly smart, resourceful, determined. And he's got beautiful hazel eyes. And we're having PROBLEMS, and I can't even muster up anger. It seems like it would be very fulfilling to start whipping lamps and shoes and "Time Life Good Cook" books around the house ("OWWWWW!... hey, I've been looking for this recipe for Spicy Szechuan Noodles!"), but I just can't. And it huuuuurts. It hurts so badly that I'm actually trying to ride out the waves of pain like contractions, breathing slowly and waiting for my emotional tocometer to dip back down to a reasonable number so I don't start bawling at my desk.

We're both typical "first" children. Stubborn, proud, ambitious, determined to beat whatever statistics are thrown at us. I hope that and hard work will be enough to get us through this. We've ridden out money problems, mental health issues, growing pains, family crises, communication breakdowns (cue Robert Plant shriek, and also reflect on how fun and effective it is to replace the noun in the title of every Led Zep song with the word "dick". Whole Lotta Dick, Stairway to Dick, Misty Mountain Dick, etc.). We've been together our entire adult lives. Some people would say that's a major, if not insurmountable part of the problem, and they may be right. But it's also wonderful, in a way, to struggle towards adulthood alongside someone you love. You're still very malleable, and you each help the other person define who they are and become a grown-up. Stevie Nicks might have built her life around Mr. Landslide, but, for good or bad, I've built myself around my husband. The Jello has set up... he's a part of me, I'm a part of him, we have a beautiful little baby who's a part of us both. And now, for the first time, life is shaking the mold... reaaaaally hard. It's a sticky, goopy, scary-ass situation.

Thumbscrews Weekly Reader's Assignment: tell me about the worst marital problems you and your partner ever experienced, and if/how you made it though. I need some encouragement, internet!