Haircut 100DDD: Love Plus Two

So Friday I got a haircut, something that I have to do far more frequently these days because my hair is so damned thin that it looks awful when it hits about the three-week mark.

The gal who cut it is familiar to me: She first cut my hair years ago, when I lived in another town and she worked there. And the first thing that I noticed about her, besides that she is very short and very cute, is her unbelievable booty. I mean like, it’s difficult even to describe the size and shape of this thing. I have a good friend who is well-known for having a huge pile-driver ass, but this chick’s ass is like my friend’s ass on steroids.

Anyway, so she’s cutting my hair–standing on her tiptoes because she’s so short that she can’t really get to the top of my head–and I notice that the girl in the booth across from her has the biggest rack that I’ve seen in person recently. I’m sort of an aficionado of giant breasts and know what I’m looking at when I see them, and this girl is beyond DD, possibly even beyond F, and not overweight. One of my ex-girlfriends topped out at an F cup so I have some basis of comparison. Only my ex was overweight.

So anyway, I’m sitting there and the thought crosses my mind, if one could play Frankenstein and put these two bodies together, what that might look like.

Pretty balanced, I imagine.

eDiscord

So this morning I entered the realm of those sorry pieces of shit who can’t find people who like them in the real world and venture online to find more compatible matches.

Actually, this isn’t the first time for me. I tried out Chemistry a few weeks ago on one of its “free communication weekends,” and eHarmony offered the same deal this weekend which explains my timing.

Even before that I tried a dating site in about 2001, and Hell, even before that I had a Yahoo! personal ad way back when they first started and the ads still were free. And none of that counts the multiple connections that I made via ICQ, AIM and other such excuses to try to find someone to hook up with via unconventional methods.

(Side note: Back before we were a couple, Ms. Other Interests always used to criticize me for doing this…I guess because combing bars and clubs at 2 a.m. for strangers to have one-night stands with is so much more respectable. Particularly when you’re married and have three kids at home.)

Anyway…after filling out a survey that took between 30 and 45 minutes–and it actually was pretty interesting, and revealed very plainly once again that Ms. OI and I are about as opposite as we possibly could be–this is what I got:

Yep. There you go.

Out of who-knows-how-many thousand women in the eHarmony worldwide database, I am compatible with NONE of them.

Confirmed all of my fears and suspicions about myself. “[C]annot identify high-quality compatible matches…”

So essentially I’m fucked, and not in a good way.

Unique isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. Doesn’t really mean much if nobody appreciates your uniqueness.

Oh…here’s a summary of the personality profile…

There are five basic areas in which you are evaluated based on your survey answers. For me, here’s what it said that I am “best described as”:

1. Consistently taking care of others.

Possible negative reaction: Though your motives arise from genuine compassion, some people might think of you as “a little too good to be true.” People see in you a tenderheartedness they don’t find in themselves, and it makes them uncomfortable. If you’re always asking, “What can I do for you?” you may not focus enough on your own needs.

Possible positive reaction: For the most part, people will feel gifted to come across someone like you.

2. Very curious.

Possible negative reaction: Others are afraid of new ways of thinking and creative ways of solving problems.

Possible positive reaction: Many people will find your progressive thoughts and vivid imagination quite attractive.

3. Sometimes steady, sometimes responsive.

Possible negative reaction: You bring a balanced approach to your emotional life. As such, those who are at the extremes are most likely to have a negative reaction to you.

Possible positive reaction: Many people will be grateful to find a friend like you who can stay in control when emotions verge on chaos, but who also can go into the tangle of emotions when it is appropriate.

4. Focused and flexible.

Possible negative reaction: As far as those with extreme personalities are concerned, you’re lucky that you’ve got the best of both of the worlds in which they feel they fail.

Possible positive reaction: Many people will see and admire in you this lovely combination of a person who can focus, but who is flexible enough to know when to let go a little bit.

5. Reserved.

Possible negative reaction: You may occasionally run into problems with other people, particularly those who may want more from you.

Possible positive reaction: While some people can be frustrated by your thoughtful manner, others will appreciate you, and it won’t take them long for them to realize that you are one of those who values depth and substance over flash and casualness.

Dear Ms. OI

I am sorry.

I am sorry for the wrongs that I committed against you in our relationship. I am sorry for the times that I hurt you and took you for granted.

I’m sorry for not giving enough, for not giving freely enough and for not giving enough without a stated or insinuated sense of obligation.

I am sorry for being annoyed by your actions too easily, and too often.

I am sorry for being too critical of your faults too often, for focusing too much on these faults and for not taking heed of my own. I am sorry for not showing you the appreciation that I had for you often enough or in enough ways.

I am sorry for those times that I came across as condescending. I am even more sorry for those times when I actually WAS condescending.

I am sorry that I allowed frustrations to get the better of me when I should have relaxed and went with the flow the way that you often were able to do.

I’m sorry that these frustrations got in the way of my recognition of the things that really were bothering you, that were affecting you so profoundly on a level so deep that you never have revealed them ever, to anyone.

You are a beautiful woman, an intelligent woman, a special person in so many ways. And I love you very much. I never felt as though I would have anyone like you or a relationship like we had. I’m sorry if I ever made you feel less than loved, less than desired, less than understood.

Because after this time away, I feel that I do understand you now better than ever.

I know that we’ll never be together again, and that I never will have a chance to make amends for these wrongs. This of course brings me great sadness, not because I want you back, but because you deserved more from me.

Goodbye and may God bring peace to your life.

To the doctor

It pains me to have to do this over a woman, but I’m going to the doctor today. The hurt, anxiety and depression that I have felt over the last couple of months since Ms. Other Interests and I parted company have been, frankly, more than I have been able to bear.

I’m still not eating or sleeping normally, wake up with an extreme sense of anxiety each morning and have dropped upwards of 15 pounds, most of that in the first three weeks (those of you who know me know that 15 pounds is a noteworthy percentage of my body weight). And as noted here previously, Heaven help me if I receive any reminders of her continued existence. Instantaneously I am affected not only emotionally, but also physically.

I had hoped that by now this would not be interfering with my daily life. That has not turned out to be the case. I’m affected just as much now as I was in the beginning. My work productivity has suffered. My patience has worn thin. My nerves constantly are on the edge.

I simply am not in the frame of mind that I have to be in to live normally, and I can’t see around it.

I have no idea what the doctor might tell me today, but I felt like it was a must that a professional evaluate me. A dozen years ago I was diagnosed as clinically depressed and went on medication for a comparatively brief period of time. It changed my life.

Of course that situation was different: a cumulative, mounting effect throughout my life had put me in my mental and emotional state. This is one thing that we’re talking about…one specific incident led me here. Never did I think that anything like this would happen to me…never did I think it even possible.

I’ve had two different people remind me since the first of the week that Ms. OI is out of town on business. And all week I’ve been trying to dismiss the thoughts of what she’s doing…she is doing, I am quite convinced, what she has done throughout most of her adult life on out-of-town trips. I’m sure that she’s been anticipating this for awhile.

And so I have waged an hourly battle with my thoughts, pulling me back toward the last few months of the relationship and her suspicious behavior. Suspicious behavior plus a rich, deep history of doing horrible things…draw your own conclusions. Certainly seems as if she was writing the script a fair amount of time before the breakup.

But that’s my struggle. I can’t focus on me and what I’m supposed to be doing. This blog is a good example.

Will drug therapy help me with this? Will I even be prescribed drugs? I don’t know, but I’m going to be open-minded to what the doctor has to say.

I have to get better and at this point I’m willing to consider any avenue to get there. This state of mind simply cannot continue any longer.

Freckles ad infinitum

Freckles was a girl who lived down the street from me when I was in first grade. Despite being my age, she was much more worldly than I was. She was being raised by her mother after a divorce, and apparently her mother had a lot of different male callers so little Freckles had been exposed to a Hell of a lot more than I had been.

She used to walk up the street to play at my house after school. One afternoon when we were alone, she invited herself inside and declared that she “wanted” me. Not understanding the terminology, I nonetheless was excited and flattered when Freckles suggested that we both lie on my bed.

And the two of us kissed. You know, the way two 6 year olds would do it. Peck. Peck. Peck.

A few days later Freckles declared to me that I was her “boyfriend,” one of the first times that I’d ever even heard that term used. I knew that it meant that I was someone special.

But then she broke the news that I only was one of many different boyfriends and not actually her top choice.

“Brian is my first boyfriend, and Michael is my second boyfriend. But you’re my third boyfriend,” Freckles explained.

A few days after that, we were playing in my sandbox when Freckles spontaneously decided to throw a toy shovel full of dirt into my open mouth and open eyes.

Hurt physically and emotionally, I stumbled into my house to try to find my mother, while Freckles ran away. She didn’t come around anymore after that.

At least not in that same form.

What I need to keep in mind

The last few months of our relationship Ms. Other Interests had absolutely no respect for me. She broke dates, acted irresponsibly, took me off of her priority list, used me, abused me, lied repeatedly and in large part cast me aside entirely.

She made it clear to me that she no longer wanted me, despite all of the denials.

Obviously this isn’t the part of the relationship that I miss. I miss what we had before all of this began, and I wonder why and how we ever got there in the first place. But what I should keep in mind is that that is where she brought us. I didn’t ask for it or want it…she brought us there, willingly, because it’s where she wanted to go. As much as it hurts to realize, she had started sabotaging the relationship long before the breakup. Which is why I had come so close to breaking up with her before the night of March 31 ever happened.

So she got what she wanted in the end, which was to be rid of me. Actually I think what she wanted was to have her cake and eat it too: She didn’t want me gone out of her life, because I was a necessary lifeline; but she didn’t want to be a good person or a true partner in the relationship anymore either. Everything had become 150 percent about Ms. OI and whatever flipped her switches at any particular time.

That makes me sad more than angry, and confused more than resolute.

•••

An addendum: New dream last night. A friend of mine (through a business relationship)–a young and attractive woman–was going through an arranged marriage and didn’t want to do it. For whatever reason she wanted to have a final fling while she still was free…with me.

Yeah, far-fetched for sure. So in this dream she hints around at this and flirts with me, and I pulled her aside and whispered in her ear “I want to put my hands all over your naked body.” And she came over and sat on my desk, clearly pleased with the idea…which is about the time that I woke up.

This was a better dream than the night before (mentioned in “That Old Familiar Pain” yesterday).

That old familiar pain

The last two days have been regressive, culminating in last night when, as fate or intentions would have it, I ended up in the same small area with Ms. Other Interests at the same time.

I had been invited out with a small group of co-workers immediately after work, to a local restaurant and bar. Also invited a friend of mine, new in town, to go with us. This friend knows Ms. Other Interests (used to work with her as I did). I had been worried that seeing her was possible; the place where we were going has become one of her hangouts. Cheap liquor and lots of loud people around…two of her favorite things.

Shortly after I had arrived her boss showed up with a group. And that worried me that much more because Ms. OI goes out with her boss from time to time. But Ms. OI was not in the group. And an hour and a half later Ms. OI still was not there. So I relaxed a little and didn’t get up to leave immediately at 7:30 as had been my original intent.

And then she walked in. I didn’t see it. The door was to my back. My friend had a clear view and tapped me on the foot, gesturing toward the door. I knew what he meant. I told him that I was going to have to leave.

If only I had left at 7:30 as had been my original intent.

See, the fight that led to the breakup some five weeks ago was over Ms. OI’s leaving her children at home alone, on a Wednesday night–school night–just like last night, so that she could go out and get drunk with her friends, just like last night. I can’t imagine that she hadn’t known that I was there ahead of time–maybe she even came out intentionally because I was there, to show her spite of me. I’m sure that her boss had been texting this information to her. I just can’t help but believe that Ms. OI was fully aware that I would be at a table some 10 yards from her own.

So I got up and left. I never even looked toward the table where she was sitting. I never actually laid eyes on her.

I did not know what else to do. I did not know how to conduct myself.

And I still don’t. I haven’t since March 31 at 10:30 p.m.

I went home and had a complete emotional and physical collapse. Crashed into sleep after taking two pain relievers, totally spent.

Woke up this morning the middle of a dream about her–the first time that I have dreamed about her since the breakup–and she was crying and saying “You hurt me” over and over again, while I held her and told her that I was sorry.

Some people around me are sure that I will be fine one day–certain even that I already have been getting better. But this felt like a major setback to me.

I don’t want to deal with any of this anymore.

Tough love

Many of you probably have heard about the 17-year-old boy who was stunned by a taser a few days ago after he had jumped out of the stands at a Major League Baseball game and charged the field.

This has made big news because normally, people who charge fields during games are not shocked with a stun gun. Usually they are just wrangled to the ground and carted off to jail.

As it turns out, the kid wasn’t drunk or high (shocking really) and had telephoned his father shortly before doing it to ask if it was something that he should do.

Dad told him not to do it, that it would be stupid and ridiculous and wrong.

The kid did it anyway.

Yesterday his mother was interviewed. She renounced her kid’s actions, said that what her son did was stupid and ridiculous and wrong, and apologized to the team because it “didn’t deserve this.”

And for all of this, I say thank you to his parents.

In American society today, these kinds of parents are rare. In fact I had begun to doubt that they exist at all. Most American parents think that their children can do no wrong and certainly never would state publicly that their children have committed an evil.

You know what? This kid will be better off because of what his parents said.

When you love someone, sometimes it’s hard to know when to speak out and when to remain silent; when to criticize and when to praise. It’s even harder when this person is not your child, but your friend or significant other. But make no mistake about it, there is a time for both.

Sometimes the most loving thing to do is to renounce the actions of your partner. After all, if you don’t care, you don’t give a shit what that person does, good or bad. If you don’t care, you’re just trying squeeze everything that you can out of the other person and don’t really care if they’re stumbling or not.

It’s unrealistic and outlandish to expect for a romantic interest to be subservient to you, but still be a silent partner.

Time through Playboy’s lens

About two months ago, the Playboy Store was having a big sale and I bought a bunch of back issues of the magazine. I’m a fan of Playboy–although not so much as I once was, because of some customer-service problems that I had one time–and I especially love seeing how it has changed over time.

I’m not just talking about the models, either–although they have changed tremendously as our concept of beauty has changed. I’m also talking about the topics covered, and the magazine’s design.

One of the magazines is from February 1999, and for all of you “Dancing With the Stars” fans out there, it features Pamela Anderson on its cover. And of course she looks amazing, even though by the late ’90s she already was thought of as past her peak (she had posed for the magazine originally about a decade prior). It’s clear by the spread inside that she was on at least her second pair of implants. No telling how many different surgeries that she has had by now but I know that it has been at least four and possibly as many as six or seven.

But what actually grabbed my attention first was a feature called “Video Valentines” about using the Internet to send recorded video messages for Valentine’s Day. This was a new phenomenon in early 1999 (yep, believe it or not, there was a time that none of us were nearly so Internet savvy…although by 1999 I had had regular Internet access for three years).

Interesting quote: “Don’t expect the picture quality of v-mail to match that of television. The business-card-sized images look less like MTV and more like a surveillance recording of a liquor-store holdup.”

On the same page there also is a sidebar about attaching photographs to e-mail messages. Ahhhhh a more innocent time.

Apparently there was a lot of interest and fascination in the Internet’s most basic features during that time, because a cover tease leads the reader to a feature about being very careful about what you write in e-mails, noting that if you are not careful, lots of people can gain access to what you send and receive.

Tech articles were everywhere actually. I really was intrigued by the big feature that compared “two recently-launched home-video components with the potential to make the VCR obsolete.” Yep, one of them was TiVo. (The other was something called ReplayTV which, I guess, ended up being the Sony Betamax to TiVo’s VHS.) I was floored…had no idea that TiVo has been around for more than a decade now. At that time a TiVo unit retailed for $500 and the subscription fee was $9.95. No idea how much it costs now.

Inside there is an ad for Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa 22-karat gold baseball cards, commemorating the home-run race of the previous MLB season. I wonder how many people bought those things? I wonder if anyone bought them but later destroyed them?

Also in sports, a previous issue held in it a cover story on Mike Tyson. A reader reacted by calling Tyson “articulate and focused, though certainly troubled.”

Compare to the issue of February 1988–which I bought because it touted a spread of British Page Three Girls, my favorite–and guess what? There’s Tyson again, only this time in his heyday beside the headline “Tyson the Terrible.”

There’s a big two-page ad on the Sony Handycam, which by today’s standards 22 years later–yikes that’s scary to quantify–looks enormous and unwieldy. A half-page ad elsewhere in the magazine touts the Sony Walkman.

Another two-page ad, for the CBS Compact Disc Club, allows you to buy six CDs for $1 plus shipping and handling, along with a seventh bonus CD “at the super low price of just $6.95.” Of course the catch is that you must agree to buy at least four more CDs over the next two years at “regular Club prices.” No clue how much that was in 1988. Some of the selections listed? Whitney Houston’s “Whitney,” Bruce Springsteen’s “Tunnel of Love,” U2’s “The Joshua Tree” and the soundtracks to “LaBamba” and “Who’s That Girl?”

One columnist lampoons the after-effects of the stock-market crash. Of 1987. And keep in mind that when this issue hit the stands, Reagan still was in office. YIKES.

And those Page Three Girls? Disappointing. For those who don’t know, British tabloid newspapers have been featuring topless ladies on page three of their publications for a generation. They were at their most prominent in the late ’80s although they’ve had a recent resurgence. This issue features several of them, but the photos are static and not especially revealing. For instance Gail McKenna–one of the most famous Page Threes ever, age 19 at the time of this printing–is depicted in two photos, but neither give us a really good look at her. The design work on these pages also isn’t good…I would guess that this more is a reflection of mechanical (and technological) limitations than of a lack of creative inspiration.

Actually the single most interesting–although maybe not the most immediately obvious–difference between the magazine in 1988, 1999 and today is the number of pages devoted to naked women. That 1988 issue has 27 pages of nudes (out of 174) and doesn’t show skin until page 68. In the ’99 issue the nudity begins on page 36 and has 40 (of 176). The nudity in the February 2009 issue starts on page one. That issue also has 40 pages of it in all, but get this: only 122 total pages in the magazine.

And so I’m looking through these time capsules and thinking of how my life has changed during this span even more than the magazine has. In February of 1988 I was in seventh grade for God’s sake…even one page of feminine nudity would have sent me over the edge. I was just starting in a new school district, too, after my family had moved–that would have a lasting impact that at the time I did not fully realize. Just more than a decade later, in February of 1999, I was dating my first girlfriend and generally was pretty happy for the first time ever. Fast forward another decade to last February, and by then I was even happier: just had started a new job, in a new place, with the love of my life right beside me.

Who knows what Playboy will be like in another decade? And who knows what my life will be like by then? I admit some fear and trepidation about the answers to both of these questions.

“I’m glad that you like me…”

So this has been my morning…

After awakening before 7 a.m. (it’s Saturday), I decided to do away with two of the final obvious remnants of Ms. Other Interests in my apartment. Every single day since the breakup–multiple times per day–I have laid eyes upon them: a pair of fuzzy women’s slippers in the corner of my bedroom, and a plastic bin stuffed with sexy lingerie in my closet. They have been a consistent and persistent reminder of what I have lost.

I have no idea what to do with these items. I don’t want to just throw them away. Most of the lingerie hardly has been worn–some of it not at all. At the suggestion of a friend I decided to box this stuff up together and shove it away somewhere where I’m not staring at it every single day.

At some point in our second year together I decided to start buying this stuff for Ms. OI to wear because 1) I liked the way that she looked in it and 2) after some initial reluctance, she enjoyed–or at least seemed to enjoy–my response to her when she was wearing this stuff.

She’d disappear into the bedroom and put on the sometimes ridiculously-revealing attire, then come back to me. And when my jaw dropped, and the prurient compliments spilled forth, she always would say “I’m glad that you like me.”

Of course it went beyond that for me…I loved her.

Over time she wore this stuff less and less and less frequently. The last time that she wore anything like that was the last time that we ever had sex, which was the week after Valentine’s Day as I recall. In the final months, I would give her something new and she’d either come up with a way to dodge wearing it (for instance, going right off to sleep while we were on the couch watching TV), or on occasion, simply tell me that she was not in the mood. This is the most sexual being I’ve ever known in my entire life. She’d been on full go as long as I’d known her, up until the last year of our relationship. Suddenly she no longer was “in the mood.”

Something tells me that it wouldn’t take her long to get back there with another man…if she hasn’t already.

The last time that there even was a discussion about the lingerie was about a month after the last time that we had sex. She had gone out of town to shop with a friend, taking a day off of work to do it…and standing me up for a planned date in the process. When she broke the news to me that she wouldn’t be returning home in time to go to the event with me–I had tickets in my possession already at that point–she informed me that she was in Victoria’s Secret “looking for something sexy to wear for you.”

“Really?” I said. “Like what?”

“Well…” she said. “Some stuff that I think is sexy. It probably wouldn’t be something that you think is sexy. But it would be something that I would be comfortable wearing.”

There was a real implication here that she somehow hadn’t been “comfortable” wearing the lingerie that I had bought her. And there had been a lot of it in two years. At no time had she ever said that she wasn’t “comfortable” in this stuff. She said that she felt silly at times, yes. But never uncomfortable.

“What’s the point of wearing something sexy ‘for me’ if it isn’t something that I think is sexy?” I asked. “What are you going to do…stand in front of the mirror and admire yourself?”

She bristled a bit. “Well sometimes I just want to think that I’m sexy…it makes me feel good.”

This conversation concerned me. In fact it worried me. I didn’t like the tone or the implications. Something was amiss. I’m pretty sure that Ms. OI was being directed in this new sense of “feminine empowerment.” Either another woman was feeding her lines…or another man was feeding her energy.

As soon as that part of the conversation ended, we got into a massive argument that very nearly led to a breakup. It was one of four major arguments that played out over our final six weeks together. The fourth fight was when the breakup occurred.

All of this was playing out in my mind as boxed up these items to shove under my bed.

It was a sad morning, and one more step in final acceptance that the greatest and most rewarding experience of my life now is over.