Thursday, April 30, 2009

The Pedestal

Ten months into our relationship, Brown and I experienced a month-and-a-half of pure bliss. No abusive outbursts that left me sobbing uncontrollably. Just good times, sweet times. With just a hint of salt, because Brown without his salty side would be like me not wearing my heart on my sleeve.

First, there was my first, last and only truly romantic Valentine's Day. I spent my rent money on a new dress.

The Dress

Brown wined and dined me at a nice restaurant in West Hollywood. A few tables over, a TV starlet and her friends were dining. But all eyes were on me and Brown, a gorgeous black couple in love.

The night before, he had teased me with what he knew I wanted more than anything in the world.

"Where do you drive to see your chiropractor?" he asked.

"Tustin."

"Next month, you and I are going to have to take a trip out to Tustin, but I won't tell you why. You'll have to figure it out."

I wondered aloud if he was going to curse out my natural-remedy doctor, whom Brown thought of as a quack.

He laughed, while I kept wondering what in the world was in Tustin.

Then it hit me.

"THE WORLD'S LARGEST ENGAGEMENT RING STORE IS IN TUSTIN!"

"What's that? You want a ring?"

His birthday was a few days later. I gave him a letter: "40 Ways I Love My Brown on his 40th Birthday." It was a long list, ranging from the pornographic to the sweet to the practical. I sprayed it with perfume and put lipstick kisses all over the envelope.

He loved it.

I even shared with him my dream about writing and starring in a one-woman show, and this time, he was actually encouraging. "Write about your dad and write about your porch and write about your mom and write about Best Friend's mom, but don't write about all your loser boyfriends, or people will get judgmental and think you're a nut."

(Ooops. Tee hee. Guess I didn't heed that advice.)

We spent lazy, conflict-free time together. Like the night we watched George Carlin's standup comedy special, "You Are All Diseased." After one great joke too many, Brown got so beside himself that he literally jumped off the couch, ran through the whole apartment, returned to the living room and flopped on the floor. Half-naked and howling with laughter.

And the time I stopped by his place after work and hung out for a couple of hours. I put on my coat to go home, and he attacked me. We broke in his dining room table, and I was the three-course meal. I stayed the night and slept like a baby, only to get seconds and thirds in the morning.

"Do you think we'll still be doing this when we're 80?" I asked.

"Yeah," he replied. "Only slower."

I wondered if it was possible to be a virgin even after you'd run out of fingers and toes to count all the men you'd messed around with. Brown made me feel like a brand-new woman, like I'd never known sex before I'd known him.

He was the center of my whole world, but I was also beginning to understand that he couldn't fulfill all of my emotional needs. He could never be Best Friend, the person I shared all my confidences with. He'd never be a woman, and he'd never understand.

But as far as men went, he was tops.

(Brown Diaries Part 11 of 18: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 | Lessons Learned 1-3: 1 2 3)

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Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Sex 10, Words 3

Brown had a habit of criticizing almost everything about me. Most of it stung. But when he rubbed salt into the never-healing wound of my career disappointment, I always went over the edge.

I was nearly six years out of college, cum laude from Yale University. But while my classmates were presumably on their way to being doctors, lawyers, captains of industry and heads of state, I was answering phones and schlepping coffee as a $16/hour secretary.

After quitting the Lunacy Network without notice, I'd gone temp-to-perm in the home video division of the Looney Tunes movie studio.

My boss was cool. Like me, he was from Detroit – although the Detroit he grew up in was considerably different than the one I grew up in. His Detroit still had lots of white people in it, before all the white people like him fled. He'd started out as a copywriter in Detroit ad agencies, worked his way up to owning his own agency, and now he was a vice president at Looney Tunes.

Cool VP made it clear that he didn't want me settling for life as a secretary, not even his. "You're the best damned secretary I've ever had, and you're absolutely wasting your life." He offered to mentor me as a copywriter, and told me he would help me get started at an agency.

I shared my happy news with Brown, only to have him cut it to shreds.

"I'm not trying to piss on your parade, but I've seen what happens at advertising agencies. You have to be able to produce on demand, and if you can't, you're out the door. And I know you. You can't handle stress at all."

He dug this knife into my psyche while we were in the middle of watching a movie. I held in my tears until the credits rolled and Brown stepped in to the shower. When he stepped out, he found me standing in the dark hallway, with my coat on and my keys in hand, crying uncontrollably.

I told Brown that I was upset, and I was going home. Brown did what I knew he would do. He told me that I was not going anywhere at 1 a.m. He proceeded to undress me and tuck me into bed as he rubbed my back and told me to relax, and I continued to sob.

A thousand words were screaming in my head. How could I be in love with a man who had no belief in me? Why couldn't he take the knife out of his mouth long enough to encourage me ... or to even just say nothing?

In the night, I woke up and found myself holding on to him as if he were my life preserver.

In the morning, we made love, and the words I couldn't say were still there choking me, and I wanted to tell him, but I didn't know how to make the words come out, so I just had my orgasms and choked back the words until it was time for me to go to work. He never once asked me what was wrong the previous night, and I was more or less relieved, because I didn't know what to say or how to say it.

We didn't see each other again for 2-1/2 weeks. I was once again giving him the silent treatment and refusing to come to his house. Brown got so frustrated, he banged on my door at 7 a.m. on a Sunday. I was so happy to see him, all I could do was hug him and kiss his neck and lay quivering beside him after another round of passionate lovemaking.

I still had to talk to him, somehow. And I still didn't have the right words to say.

(Brown Diaries Part 10 of 18: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 | Lessons Learned 1-3: 1 2 3)

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Friday, April 24, 2009

Sandpaper and Frayed Nerves

As much as I loved Brown, I had immediate misgivings about moving in with him. I wasn't sure I wanted to give up the independence of my own place so soon after escaping from my Great Aunt. And, the truth was, Brown was frequently mean to me.

The same tongue that could pour honeyed sweetness in my ear after lovemaking could also be as rough and coarse and harsh as sandpaper, and it rubbed my nerves raw.

"How can you want to be an actress when you haven't even seen Taxi Driver?"

When I described my feelings of frustration and barely suppressed rage over being a secretary with a Yale degree, he told me I was spoiled. I should just go work in a clothing store on the weekends until I managed to catch my bills up.

Since his declaration that he wanted us to live together, I was spending more and more time at his place. And that meant more and more time twiddling my thumbs while he talked on the phone with his ex-wife ... more and more time waiting with my stomach gurgling as he did this or that before we went to brunch ... more and more time watching Brown watch TV ... and more and more time licking my wounds after getting sandpapered by his off-hand comments.

I began to use the same defense mechanisms I had employed as a child with my verbally abusive dad. I shut down. I stopped talking. I tiptoed around Brown's moods. And even though he was still the center of my universe, I started considering the possibility that maybe our relationship wouldn't last.

(Brown Diaries Part 9 of 18: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 | Lessons Learned 1-3: 1 2 3)

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Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Suddenly Serious, Almost Overnight

About four months into our relationship, Brown went from a guy I saw sporadically to a guy who wanted me around him all the time. I was too "giddy" (another of Brown's favorite words) to notice that his behavior had completely changed.

Truth be told, I was preoccupied.

I'd just quit my job at the Lunacy Network without having a new job lined up. So now, I was temping for 55-65 percent of my full-time salary, while I tried in vain to find someone, anyone to give me a real job that didn't have the word secretary in the title.

Brown proved to be the most beautiful distraction.

He picked me up for a romantic drive in the real Beverly Hills, which I didn't even know existed. I'd only been to "the flats" – the palm-trees-and-Rodeo-Drive areas I'd seen in the movies. Brown took me high up into the canyon roads that threaded through the Hollywood Hills, past gorgeous mansions that were 10 miles and a world away from my one-bedroom Mar Vista life. We pointed out the mansions where we wished we could live, ate dinner at a Mexican restaurant and made magnificent love in my less-than-magnificent apartment.

There was only one damper on our day.

Brown said, "You know there's only one thing that bothers me about you. You know what that is?"

"I'm messy, I'm disorganized, I'm a crybaby, and I don't cook?" I ventured helpfully.

"You want kids." He looked me dead in the eyes. "You realize I can't have any more kids, don't you?"

"I'm hoping for divine intervention," I replied. I wasn't going to let a little elephant like his vasectomy stand between me and my dream of ultimate blissful housewifeness.

Brown snorted. "Yeah, well, it'll have to be something like that. Baby, I had an operation by the foremost physician in his field."

I said nothing, but thought to myself, If he could just soften to the idea of having two – only two. My raised-Catholic mind wanted seven babies, but I'd settle for two. His operation could be reversed. He just had to be willing to do it.

A week later, after one of our marathon love-making sessions, when it felt like the planets were colliding, waterfalls were crashing, butterflies were flitting and birds were singing, I confessed that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him and he declared that he was never going to let me get away from him.

A week after that, he spent an entire day at my house. I was floating so high on Brown's cloud, I even cooked for him. Brown was floating on a cloud too, because he asked me to move in with him.

He was going to move from his current place, a large apartment in a once-nice neighborhood that was rapidly turning hood. And when that happened, he wanted me by his side. I was so surprised, I almost dropped a dish.

I asked him if he was burnt out by marriage, and his answer surprised me. He had loved being married, he wanted to be married, he liked having someone to come home to. And even though he'd just had a sleepover and all-day-over at my place, he invited me to spend the night at his.

(Brown Diaries Part 8 of 18: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 | Lessons Learned 1-3: 1 2 3)

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Monday, April 20, 2009

Spinning in Brown's Orbit

When Brown and I first started dating, I was working for a startup cable TV channel that was supposed to inspire alcoholics, drug addicts and others in "recovery" to get clean. The only problem was, all of the company's not-quite-recovering execs relapsed at the same time.

I'd been lured in by a $3,000 raise and a title that didn't include the word secretary or assistant. I thought "marketing coordinator" meant I finally had a job that would lead to bigger and better things.

Instead, I found myself doing boring and unenviable tasks like calling every cable system in the United States to confirm their contact information and enter it into a database. While insane people literally screamed at each other and at me.

At work, I'd surreptitiously type diary entries to myself that went like this:
My life stops, every day for nine hours. It comes to a complete, grinding halt. Like being at the top of a roller coaster, before you take the downward plunge. The only break from the monotony is getting sh*t on by passing birds and rudely bumped by the next set of roller cars.
Was it any wonder that Brown, the only bright spot in my miserable workaday life, became the center of my universe?

We only saw each other about once a week, but after glorious, heavenly, mountain-moving sex, he would kiss my eyelids and say the darnedest things.

Like I was the best lover he ever had, in all categories. Best film, best actress, best short story, best visuals ("'Cause you be staring at a brother with those big eyes"), best foreign film ("'Cause from time to time, you do start speaking in tongues and a brother don't know what you're saying") and a few more that made me laugh and go all gooey at the same time.

Or he'd say something really insightful about my job, which he nicknamed the Lunacy Network. "The Lunacy Network is just like Star Trek. A big ship floating in outer space picking up strange forms of life. It never went anywhere, it never landed and the captain was always in a dilemma."

Was it any wonder I absolutely, positively made him my sun, my moon, my stars, my universe?

In a rare moment of letting his guard down, Brown told me that I "sedated" him, that I gave him calm and peace. He was having a hard time at work and a hard time dealing with his dad's death, and I was, in his words, "low maintenance."

It was true. I never put pressure on him. I never nagged him. I never demanded that he spend time with me. I never asked for money. I never snooped through his things. I never did anything except love him with all my heart. I was his satellite, happily spinning around and basking in his glow.

(Brown Diaries Part 7 of 18: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 | Lessons Learned 1-3: 1 2 3)

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Saturday, April 18, 2009

The Onion That Didn't Want to be Peeled

Brown was solitary, secretive and moody, but he covered it up with jokes, chattiness and sarcasm. I always knew there was more to him than good loving, loud laughter and a UPS job. But getting to know the real him was something that happened crumb by crumb.

Over time, the bare-bones facts of his life began to emerge.
  • Brown was 39 years old, divorced and the father of three kids.

  • He'd grown up in L.A. He'd gone to high school with both the children of rock legends and with classmates who would later become rock legends.

  • He had served in an elite branch of the U.S. military – the kind that did secret missions. He'd been parachuted in the middle of the night to unnamed foreign countries. He was a skilled marksman. And yes, he had killed people.

  • At one point, he had briefly dabbled in selling drugs. He'd stopped when his ex-wife started to show a little too much liking for cocaine.

  • He had a functionally dysfunctional relationship with his ex-wife. Once, I found myself waiting outside while they had a knock-down, drag-out screaming match. But for the most part, they got along for the sake of the kids.

  • They had three kids. A mischievous 12-year-old boy who thought I was pretty, a seven-year-old girl who didn't want to share her daddy with me and a two-year-old boy I'd never met. I asked Brown how in the world he and his ex-wife had gotten back together long enough to produce the baby, and he replied, "A quickie."

  • He was smart and multi-talented, an artist at heart. As a kid, he had played the violin. He had a beautiful singing voice. He watched every movie known to man. In short, a frustrated actor or writer who had never really attempted to give it a shot.

  • Brown had a secret dream of going into interior design. His UPS route was one of the most exclusive furniture and design centers in Los Angeles, where architects and designers shopped for the rich and famous.

  • He made twice what I made as a secretary. UPS paid bonuses based on package weight, and Brown cashed in because he delivered furniture, rugs and other heavy items.

  • Brown hated his job. Several months before, he'd been falsely accused of stealing $50, an insult to his intelligence as well as his integrity. He'd been exonerated, but now he was permanently disgruntled and hanging on just for the paycheck.

  • His dad had been a major lover-man playboy. (It was genetic.) He'd died the year before, and Brown was taking it hard.
Learning what made Brown tick was an almost impossible task, but learning how he felt about me was easy. He loved me. He was crazy about me. He worshipped me. It was one fact he never even attempted to hide.

(Brown Diaries Part 6 of 18: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 | Lessons Learned 1-3: 1 2 3)

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Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Blissfully Together and Desperately Alone

The first few months with Brown were not great. My love for him was great, but our actual love affair was lonely.

When he was around, I felt like this:
I love Brown so completely. I can't even try to hide it, try to play cool. If I could clone him, I would. If I could keep him beside me every day, I would.
Or this:
Every woman should be so lucky to have a beautiful man like Brown. Every woman. I am so happy and so thankful that I found him. That's one prayer that definitely came true. I love Brown. Love him. Love him 30 times over. Love him.
And especially this:
I so enjoyed our lovemaking yesterday morning. Brown took me to a place I have never, ever been. Where I was full and I was sated, and I didn't want or need any more, but he kept giving me more, and all I could do was surrender in accepting it, and the most incredible, calming feelings of pleasure washed over me.
But most of the time, he wasn't around, and I was left feeling something like this:
I feel so sad, I want to die. I can't think of anything else but Brown. I haven't heard from him all weekend. That's all weekend. He paged me Friday afternoon and said he'd call me on Friday night. The call never came.

He frequently said he was going to call, then didn't. Promised he'd come right over but actually appeared three hours later. Said he'd see me tomorrow, then never showed up.

I felt like a stupid, weak, snivelling little woman. I even made a feeble attempt to break up with him about four months into our relationship: I didn't answer his calls for a week, and I practiced cussing him out in my head. Then I caved in and called him. Truthfully, I'm not sure he even noticed.

So what, you may ask, was going on?

Part of it was life.

Brown worked a lot of overtime. Brown had three kids. And most importantly, Brown had secrets that he wasn't ready to share with me.

(Brown Diaries Part 5 of 18: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 | Lessons Learned 1-3: 1 2 3)

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Monday, April 13, 2009

Pillow Talk, Lunacy and the Elephant in the Room

I guess now is the time to admit that even though I made it to the third date before giving it up to Brown, our third date was only a week after our first.

Absolutely no shame, no apologies and no regrets.

As much as I wanted that man, and as much as he wanted me, three dates was a HUGE accomplishment.

But that's not to say that both of us didn't continue to wave red flags right underneath each other's noses.

It took Brown only three dates to discover that I was both promiscuous and emotionally needy. In the aftermath of our first night of passion – heart open, legs open, everything open – I proceeded to open my mouth, too. I spilled the beans about my recent casting-couch ordeal.

Major red flag for him.

But I was madly in love and didn't want there to be any secrets between us.

A few days later, he reciprocated by telling me something I didn't want to hear: A few days after the Vegas trip where we first met, he'd had a vasectomy.

I cried hysterically. Into the phone. Into the ears of the man I'd been dating for less than two weeks.

I told him how much I loved kids, how much I wanted to be a mother, how hurt I'd be if I were barren by default.

Another major red flag for him. It was lunacy – lunacy was one of Brown's favorite words – for a girl he'd just met to be crying like she'd just had a miscarriage because he didn't want to have any more children.

Too bad he didn't understand where the real lunacy lay. The lunacy wasn't that I was devastated, the lunacy was that I believed I could change his mind. I called my abusive psychic, who told me that vasectomies were reversible. I instantly felt better, and decided not to break up with him.

I didn't understand until years later, and I do mean years, that no man would willingly let a doctor snip away at the family jewels unless he really, truly, absolutely, positively, irreversibly did not want to have kids.

So Brown now had a pocketful of red flags, as did I.

But the truth was, Brown was just as smitten with me as I was with him.

Less than two weeks after we met, he was referring to me as "his girl," leaving daily messages on my machine that always began, "Hello, gorgeous," and even peppering our conversations with references to us eloping. He didn't want to end it any more than I did.

But for the rest of our relationship, the vasectomy would be the elephant in the room that we both tried in vain to tiptoe around.

(Brown Diaries Part 4 of 18: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 | Lessons Learned 1-3: 1 2 3)

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Saturday, April 11, 2009

My First Blog Award - I'm officially an Honest Scrap!


Yesterday, I got an unexpected kiss from Luscious Sealed Lips, who bestowed upon me my very first blog award, The Honest Scrap. So now that I am an Honest Scrap, I must abide by two rules:

1. List 10 honest and interesting things about yourself.
2. Honor 7 other bloggers with the award.

10 Honest and Interesting Things About Myself
  1. I started blogging almost by accident. Before I started writing Don't Be a Slut in October, I didn't even follow blogs.
  2. In 2005, I did a weight-loss infomercial that ran on TV. Since then, I've gained 85 pounds. How embarrassing!
  3. I haven't had sex since 2006. I love sex. I'm starting to hump – oops, I mean – climb the walls.
  4. I originally intended for this blog to be completely anonymous, but thanks to Facebook, I'm completely out in the open, and it actually feels good.
  5. I love writing about me, and I hate writing about software (my day job for the last 10 years).
  6. Deep down, I still want to be an actress. But not enough to go bankrupt while I waste my life on crap audition after crap audition.
  7. A few days ago, I woke up to a find a live mouse swimming in my toilet. Didn't have the heart to flush him myself, so I called my landlord. Cowardly, but effective.
  8. I just spent the last six weeks or so moving through a really dark depression. Lots of tears, gallons of self pity, truckloads of chocolate. I'm better (and fatter) now.
  9. I'm a deeply spiritual person, but sometimes I wonder if spirituality and religion are not just a gigantic pacifier we use just to survive the vicissitudes of life.
  10. I'm a curious mix of studious nerd, earnest do-gooder, intolerant bitch and soft-hearted artist. Makes for an interesting life.

Blogs I'm Honoring
Seven was a bit much. Drumroll please, here are my two picks for blogs that are both deeply personal and honest.

  1. My Girlfriend is an Escort: The tale of a man who is in love with a woman whose job is a little ... well, interesting. I give him kudos for telling his story and for dealing with reader comments, which range from kind to cruel.
  2. Makes Me Wanna Holler: It's a roses and warts look at fatherhood and marriage, from dealing with your wife's granny panties to going Bill Cosby on your messy son to rescuing your daughter from a life-threatening allergic reaction.

Thursday, April 9, 2009

The Magical, Wonderful, Unbelievable Third Date

I don't remember the actual date. We must have gone to the movies at the Magic Johnson Theaters. No idea what we saw. But after the movie, we made out in Brown's car. That I remember.

And then I remember following him home.

And having my world absolutely, positively, completely rocked.

He was more wonderful than I can ever describe. Better than all my dreams and fantasies combined. He was hands-down, no debate, the best lover I'd ever had.

In his room, by the ambient light of a paper lantern, we devoured each other several different times, several different ways. Every single time, every single way was like a million answered prayers lighting up the sky to prove that a better day had, indeed, arrived.

I knew his baggage factor was high, but I also knew unequivocally that he was the man for me.

(Brown Diaries Part 3 of 18: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 | Lessons Learned 1-3: 1 2 3)

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Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Red Flags and Marshmallow Goo

There is a moment of clarity when you first start dating someone, but you haven't yet let yourself fall into the wonderful, marshmallow goo. In that moment, you clearly see the big, red flags the other person is waving. And then you decide to dive into the goo anyway.

The first things I noticed about the cute guy from the bus were:
  • He talked a lot, but revealed nothing.
  • He routinely made offensive remarks about women.
  • He had a tart sense of humor.
I had already had a prophetic dream about him.
I was in bed with my husband, but not quite in bed with him. I was kneeling on the floor and lying across his lap because I wasn't quite comfortable being in the bed with him. He knew exactly what I was up to. He kept thrusting against me very seductively, and I kept inching my way into his bed. Finally, I was on top of him. He said, "This is your house. This is your bed. So get used to it."
A few days later, we had our first phone conversation. It lasted 2-3 hours.

It was totally against The Rules, the how-to-catch-a-man book of the 90's. The rule for phone calls was to set a kitchen timer and hang up after 10 minutes.

We talked and we laughed, not a kitchen timer in sight.

He was 15 minutes late for our first date. That was also against The Rules.

I let that go, too. Watching the movie I picked turned out to be his punishment. It had gotten an A+ review from the LA Times. But it turned out to be a horrid, artsy-fartsy film about poor folks in Ireland. He talked sh*t through the whole movie, but he stayed to the end. He also paid for the movie tickets, bought coffee afterwards and put $5 worth of gas in my car. After Semi-Homeless, that made him a keeper.

I still knew very little about him. I had picked up that he was divorced, that he had three kids, that he was 39 years old. And he was a UPS driver. I wasn't sure how I felt about his blue-collar job, but I was sure how I felt about Brown.

I was now up to my hairline in goo, and I loved every minute of it. My lust for him was hotter, redder, wetter, more explosive than a volcano. At the same time, my heart was soft, liquid, gooey, sweet.

Brown didn't try to put the moves on me on the first date or on the second. Nor did he engage in one of my pet peeves, lacing our conversations with sexual innuendo. He was cool, respectful, and for me, slow-paced.

Giving it up too soon was definitely against The Rules.

I decided that if I could just make it to the third date, that would be Rules enough for me.

(Brown Diaries Part 2 of 18: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 | Lessons Learned 1-3: 1 2 3)

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