Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Paradoxical, Freaktastic Adventure

I couldn't quite wrap my head around having a cold-blooded, unapologetic affair with a married man. So the first thing I did the morning after my first six-hour, marathon f*cking session with Velvet was refer to myself in the third person as a "hot, tired & well-f*cked b*tch."

With good reason.

We must have done it at least six or seven times. I had never been f*cked that thoroughly. And boy, did I ever need it.

"One freak f*cking another," was how Velvet described it.

Two nights later, he came to my apartment and f*cked me for 2-3 hours straight. He went so deep inside me, I could feel it all the way in my navel. He was the closest I'd ever come to being turned out – f*cked so thoroughly and so well that I lost all sense of time, disconnected my brain and let myself be at the mercy of his d*ck.

He asked about my sexual fantasies, and I bored him with beaches, bubble baths, rooftops and elevators. He said, "Those are all pretty normal. What about the kinky ones?"

I ventured that I sometimes wondered what it would be like to f*ck two men at once.

He answered that he had "done that sh*t, could arrange that sh*t."

Wow.

There were no barriers.

My capacity for freaky sex and nastiness was greater than I had ever imagined. Or feared. Or admitted out loud.

I was terrified at what I was learning about myself. There were two me's: the good, sweet me – who was dying – and the bad, little freak who was getting larger and greedier every day.

My libido was now locked in a blazing, throbbing "on" position. The next night, with no Velvet to put my fire out, I went out into the night, hoping to find somebody, anybody, to turn my switch off.

Slinky gold dress. Fishnet stockings. Gold shoes. Gold earrings.

No bra.

Fortunately, the club I went to had no available parking. When I ran over a big hunk of something in the parking lot, I took it as a sign and left.

Then, I decided I wanted to drink. Liquor.

Only it was Sunday night in Charleston County, and thanks to the liquor laws, there were no wine coolers to be had.

So I took that as a sign, too. I went home. To bed. Alone.

I'd finally let the beast out of the closet.

She was hot, horny and insatiable.

But she was also very beautiful.

I could look in the mirror and see so much beauty in my face.

And I was genuinely kinder to other people.

It was paradoxical.

I was actively embracing sin, but I felt closer to God than I'd ever felt as my socially acceptable, goody two-shoes alter ego.

High-Score Diaries: Part 8 of TBD (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 TBD)

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Tuesday, May 17, 2011

The Flat-Out Truth

I met Velvet six weeks before our first sexual encounter. He was a successful small business owner in an unglamorous field: He manufactured boxes or packaging of some sort. But he had a dream of launching a lotion line, and that's how we met. He was auditioning models to appear on the product's packaging.

Somehow, he came across my modeling comp card and called me in, expecting to see a light-skinned chick with shoulder-length permed hair.

The woman who showed up at his office looked nothing like her photos. In an act of liberation, defiance, I-hate-men & devil-may-care, I had chopped my hair completely off.

I didn't get the modeling gig, but my short yellow dress and bright lipstick smile must have caught his attention. We talked – or rather, he talked and I mostly listened – for three or four hours. He dropped enough sexual innuendo into the conversation to make me cautious. When I went back for our second interview, I ensured Nothing Would Happen by:
  • Bringing my brother along.
  • Wearing the tightest pair of jeans I owned. Getting into or out of them was such a challenge, I couldn't possibly get naked on a whim.
  • Making it a point not to call and then deliberately losing his address.
I did everything right.

Until weeks later, when fate stepped in.

On a whim, as part of my Artist's Way artist's date, I went to a comedy club on a lonely Sunday night. And he just happened to be there. And he just happened to run up to me as I was heading out the door. And he just happened to walk me to my car. And he just happened to tell me that he wanted me in his life "whether it's personal, professional, or both."

As if both of us didn't know that the only place our relationship could go was personal and horizontal.

First of all, the man was fine. He was a perfect physical specimen. Tall, about 6'3". Delicious, smooth, chocolate black. Chiseled cheekbones. Thirty-eight, looking 30. Handsome, successful, prosperous. I nicknamed him Velvet because he reminded me of a 1970s black velvet painting.

Velvet was married. With two kids: a 19-year-old and a five-year-old. I'd met his wife of many years in passing during my interview, when she shook my hand and eyed me suspiciously before leaving the room.

I knew all of that. But after months of abstinence and sexual frustration, I didn't care:
"I want him. I want to have a little fun. I want some male attention. I want sex. I want fun. I want excitement.

"The truth is, I don't give a f*ck about his wife, deep down inside. She's his problem. It's his marriage that he's jeopardizing, his choice, his risk. The only thing I'm worried about is the disapproval & disgust the people around me would feel if they knew."
And in the end, public opinion really didn't matter to me:
"I want him, I'll have him, I'll accept the repercussions of my lust, the consequences of my behavior."
I was predatory.

I wanted him sexually, and I wanted to leverage his business contacts to escape my horrible secretarial job.

With no apology and no shame, I took a wanton leap into the unknown.

And for the most part, I enjoyed it tremendously.

High-Score Diaries: Part 7 of TBD (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 TBD)

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Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Freeing the Freak

As my on-again, off-again, very-little-sex relationship with Nondescript plodded forward and lurched backward, a war brewed inside me.

On some level, I understood that Nondescript represented my last shot at holding my barely contained sexual beast at bay. I clung to the idea that we could be a real couple with unvarnished desperation. But in the long stretches between our rare phone calls and even rarer face-to-face conversations, I began building my life.

I went to psychotherapy and started taking antidepressants. Over night, my diary went from a tear-stained collection of laments to a catalog of things I was doing to make my dreams come true. I negotiated a raise at my draining job. I pursued my acting career. I took yoga classes and swimming lessons.

Most importantly, I started reading and working with the exercises in The Artist's Way, a book that changed my life. One of the exercises was to write about people I secretly admired. I scribbled:
  • Bad girls: For f*cking when, where & who they want to f*ck; wearing revealing clothing; smoking & drinking; fighting & cussing. Being real & telling the world to go to hell.
  • Good girls: For having genuine faith in God, genuine happiness. For being virtuous by choice, selfless by nature. For being everything that is stable and right in the world.
I wasn't that damn-it-to-hell bad girl, nor was I that pure-as-the-driven-snow good girl.

But one thing was clear. Good or bad, I was not going to continue being achingly lonely and sex-deprived.

There was one last date, one last round of mixed signals, one last humiliation as I begged for sex. This time, I clearly heard the Voice Within say, "Goodbye." I immediately tried to pretend I didn't hear, but this time, there was no turning back.

Four days later, an actor I met at a film-shoot rehearsal casually called me a freak.

His comment kicked off a flurry of terrified, confused, defiant and excited diary entries:
  • "What does it mean to be a freak? I am tired of pretending to be a respectable woman. If a complete stranger can see that, if I know it inside, why am I still holding on?" 
  • "I feel Wild Woman coming out to play, and boy is she scary. She is very libidinous, very horny. She wants to pick fights & kick ass. She wants to tell the boss & the working world to go to hell, she wants to f*ck any man that moves. I'm afraid of her. I don't know how much room I'll give her."
  • "A freak. A freak. It's ringing in my ears because I know it's true. I enjoy & crave & want sex. I have very, very few limits. I sometimes think I might even be bisexual. I've never felt attracted to a woman, but is it because I've never allowed it?"
I took an AIDS test so I could f*ck with a clear conscience.

And within days, I opened my legs to the man who freed my freak from her self-imposed cage.

I'd actually met him six weeks before and had initially rebuffed his advances.

You see, I knew he was trouble.

I also knew he was married. 

High-Score Diaries: Part 6 of TBD (1 2 3 4 5 6 TBD)

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Friday, May 6, 2011

Nondescript

I met the next character in my cavalcade of lovers while performing in the musical Showboat. I played Queenie, the mammy character, and he was one of the chorus members. We were about the same age, we were both black, we were both Ivy League graduates, and we were both stranded in Charleston.

It started the way most of my relationships started. A night in the sack, followed by a flowery declaration of love in my diary: "You've heard this so many times before, each time with increasing certainty. This time, I know it's true. I've found the man I've been praying for & he's found me."

I waxed poetically about how we spent the whole weekend together, talking for hours and hours about everything. And then I got down to the details: "We had the most relaxed, wonderful, comfortable sex I have ever had in my life Friday night after the show. At my insistence."

Yep, I went there.

As we were walking down the street in the wee hours of the morning, with an unbearable warmth radiating from my groin, I took a deep breath and said very clearly, "If you don't think it would be too forward and if it won't turn you off, I'd really like to spend the night with you."

Initially, he turned me down.

But when I'm horny, I can be very convincing.

I ended up having my way with him.

And there, laid out in one weekend encounter, was the central problem of our relationship.

He was an uptight preacher's kid who was convinced that our fornication was a sin that would lead him away from God. So we had long discussions where he expressed his desire for a platonic relationship, and I expressed my utter disdain for the stupidity of that idea.

"I can't and won't abide by it," I scoffed to my diary. "If he didn't want me, I'd concede. But he does, so I won't."

I was ruthless and relentless. The next day, I showed up at his apartment wearing a knee-length red jacket and almost nothing else. The sex started out very, very good, and it ended with him being very, very angry because I kept urging him on to greater feats, not realizing he had already climaxed.

Talk about humiliation. He told me in no uncertain terms whatsoever that he would not have sex with me ever again "unless I marry you," and he even went so far as to tell me he would never let me in his apartment again!

This is probably a good time to mention that for all my ardor, I barely remember this guy. Everything about him was nondescript. He was 5'5" and not particularly good-looking. Except for the unforgettable Cat on a Hot Tin Roof sexual politics, I can't remember the contents of a single conversation or the details of a single shared activity.

Based on my memories, or lack thereof, I figured that I probably dated Nondescript for two or three weeks, tops.

But my diaries tell a much different story. I pined and whined and obsessed about this guy for four-and-a-half months, blaming myself the whole time for being greedy and manipulative.

High-Score Diaries: Part 5 of TBD (1 2 3 4 5 TBD)

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Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Heartbreaker

Three-and-a-half months of celibacy and loneliness followed my one-week stand. The one bright spot was that I finally succeeded in buying a brand-new car. It was a shiny 1994 Ford Aspire with no dents, no dings and no rust. I named her Junie, and in December, I drove her 880 miles from Charleston to Detroit.

It was my first trip home in more than three years, and while I was there, I ran into an old friend. We had never formally dated, but we had fooled around once as teenagers. We were grown-ups now. An afternoon of flirtation led to an evening at Belle Isle, which led to a night in a motel, which led to my first long-distance relationship.

I was convinced that he was the Man I Would Marry, and I would get warm and gooey thinking about him. We were friends. He knew me. I didn't feel shy around him, I didn't have to pretend to hold it together. I could basically be my true, neurotic, crybaby, chronically depressed self around him, and he didn't care, because he already knew all that about me and liked me anyway.

We would occasionally have two-hour, long-distance phone conversations that neither one of us could afford. And the rest of the time, I would fantasize about him and what our lives might be like together if there ever really was an us.

In the meantime, I was celibate, lonely and horny in my one-bedroom apartment in South Carolina. Which unconsciously placed a time limit on how long my lovey-dovey feelings could possibly last.

They lasted about two months.

When he failed to call me on Valentine's Day and to reimburse me for our long-distance phone calls, I broke up with him. And something happened that I never expected. As I told him in no uncertain terms that it was over, I heard genuine anguish pouring from his end of the phone line. He told me how much he cared about me, and that all of our mutual friends knew how much he cared about me. He was hurt, and he was humiliated.

I realized, with surprise, that I had broken his heart.

It didn't change my mind about breaking up with him. But it did make me feel tremendously guilty.

For the first time in my romantic life, I wasn't the wounded one who had been done wrong.

I was the powerful one who had heartlessly inflicted the wound, on a good guy that I genuinely liked.

A month-and-a-half later, I was in a new pseudo-relationship with a guy who lived a few miles down the road. I didn't have to worry about breaking his heart. He was, frankly, not all that interested in me. I knew it, and I didn't care. I chased him relentlessly, without even an ounce of pride or shame.

High-Score Diaries: Part 4 of TBD (1 2 3 4 5 TBD)

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Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Dealership

My first new-apartment lover was a 20-something, new-car salesman at a local dealership. He was fat, with dark skin and greasy hair.

I met him because I was desperate for a car that wouldn't leave me stranded by the side of the road – a luxury I'd never been able to afford. I'd purchased my latest hoopty from one of my stepfather's nephews – an ancient, dirt-brown Toyota Corolla that mysteriously refused to start at the most inconvenient times.

I wanted my first-ever brand-new car.

But thanks to not paying my American Express bill, I now had bad credit.

That didn't stop me from going to car dealerships and trying to make things happen. My brother had introduced me to Shakti Gawain's Creative Visualization book, and I was using the power of my imagination to will myself into a new car.

So on a Sunday afternoon, I visited Dealership's place of employment. I didn't get a car, but I did get Dealership's phone number. We made plans to see a movie that night, but I stood him up.

Monday, he took me out to dinner. I invited him back to my place, where we had completely unprotected sex. I had been off the pill for eight months, ever since my breakup from Conspiracy. But after eight months of abstinence, the sex was amazing. I immediately declared it the best sex I'd ever had in my life.

The next day, we played phone tag.

Wednesday, I sat by the phone from 8:30 p.m. until after midnight, when he swung by after supposedly working late. We had incredible, unprotected sex again. He didn't feel like wearing a condom, and I didn't feel like making him. He didn't stay the night. He claimed that he had to be at work by 7 a.m., and he wouldn't get any sleep if he stayed with me.

I couldn't even pretend to lie to myself that I was in love with him or that the relationship was going anywhere.

Two days later, at 2:30 a.m., I wrote in my diary, "My days of being a cheap slut are over. I have too much going for me, too much to live for to risk it on some bullsh*t. AIDS is a reality, and so is pregnancy. I'm not giving my life up for either."

Unfortunately, my days of being a cheap slut were far from over. But his day was definitely done. The entire relationship began and ended in less than a week.

High-Score Diaries: Part 3 of TBD (1 2 3 4 5 TBD)

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Sunday, April 24, 2011

Post College, Zero Coitus

I attended school from kindergarten straight through until I got my bachelor's degree. Every fall was a new start, with new teachers and classes. Every spring was a completion, as each school year drew to a close. There were report cards and special projects and holiday breaks and summer vacations. Constant forward momentum.

But out in the real world, with Yale in my rear-view mirror, my life seemed to come to a dead halt.

I moved in with my mom in Summerville, S.C., a suburb of Charleston. She lived with her husband of nearly 15 years, an 80-something semi-invalid who had more heart attacks, strokes, bouts of gout and other ailments than I could keep track of. He ran her ragged as she waited on him hand and foot, calling her name at least a thousand times a day while she screamed at him to stop screaming for her.

My older sister had also recently moved in. She was 25, unmarried, completely miserable and the new mother of a beautiful baby girl.

My mom and stepfather were in one bedroom, my sister and niece were in another, and I was in the third, surrounded by moving boxes that I never unpacked. Not to mention thousands of roaches, both of the exceedingly large, flying, outdoor variety and the small, scurrying, indoor variety.

It was supposed to be temporary. I would live there while I saved money to go someplace else and be an actress. One of my Yale friends had moved to Chicago to hit the theater scene, so I made Chicago my goal, too. And I started hitting the pavement in Charleston, immediately being cast in various community theater productions (as a slave and later as a mammy and later as a middle-aged black mama, despite being reasonably attractive and under 25).

Buoyed by collection calls from my unpaid creditors and a desperate need for a car, I also got a job.

I took a $16,000-per-year secretarial job at a three-person software company. I had a love/hate relationship with the CEO, a rich Indian from Bombay (as Mumbai was still called). He taught me a lot, and he criticized me a lot, and he got more than his money's worth. I wasn't just his secretary. I was also his marketing department, writing his proposals, jazzing up his sales letters, creating an animated demo for his software product.

The months dragged by, without a report card, a reprieve or a vacation in sight.

If real life was living with my mom in a slow Southern town, having no friends and no boyfriends, working a low-paying job in a dingy office park and playing bit parts in community theater, real life was the death of all my dreams.

I was extremely depressed.

My mom, who has bipolar disorder, ordered me to get psychiatric help. I sullenly shuffled off to an inpatient clinic for an intake assessment and reported back that I didn't have psychiatric issues that required hospitalization. My mom's response was, "If nothing's wrong with you, then get your own apartment."

So I did.

Eight months after moving in with her, I moved out. To a slightly more upscale dinky small town and into my my own place. My mom helped me find, clean up and reupholster a second-hand pullout couch that initially smelled of cat pee. The newly improved version served as my only bed.

It was my first apartment without a roommate or an oppressive boyfriend.

I took a lover 10 days after moving in.

High-Score Diaries: Part 2 of TBD (1 2 3 4 5 TBD)

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Friday, April 22, 2011

Hitting High Scores and New Lows

After I left Conspiracy, I went into a promiscuous phase.

It didn't happen immediately. I was celibate for the first eight months, largely because I was living with my mom, my stepfather, my sister and my baby niece ... in a tiny, government-subsidized house in the small town of Summerville, SC.

But when I got my own apartment, the lid flew off the pressure cooker and I crashed into the temporary embraces of seven different men over a 21-month period.

I wish I could say that with a feeling of braggadocio. Or with a contemptuous lip curl of sexual liberation, as if I had every right to sleep with who I damn well pleased.

But I'm not that liberated, and it wasn't much fun.

I never set out to be a slut. I never wanted to put notches in my lipstick case.

What I wanted, with a desperate, Catholic hunger was to get married and have kids.

Every time I slept with a man I barely knew, or ended yet another pointless relationship, all I felt was a deep sense of shame. Something was wrong with me and somehow, I needed to do better.

My greedy, insatiable vagina was an even bigger enemy than my cookie-and-candy-bar-craving sweet tooth. She had to be stopped. She was ruining my already ruined life.

But willpower didn't work on her any more than it worked on my sweet tooth.

So I racked up the numbers. In my head, it was like a football score. The number of men I fooled around with (nakedness, fondling, oral sex) vs. the number of men I had actual sexual intercourse with. In my head, I kept track. And in my head, I swore I'd do better next time at slamming the lid tight on my disobedient sex drive.

Welcome to the High Score diaries...

High-Score Diaries: Part 1 of TBD (1 2 3 4 5 TBD)

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Wednesday, April 20, 2011

How I Spent My Full-Year Vacation

For one year and 11 days, I have been a statistic. A statistic called out of work, unemployed, mad-as-hell-and-forced-to-take-it-evermore. And truthfully, it's been one of the best years of my life.

What have I done in my year off? I've rediscovered the real me: the me that's not bitchy and stressed out to the point of breaking.
I made Weight Watchers a top priority and lost about 60 pounds.


I joined a running/walking club and trained for my first marathon. I finished it, in a torrential downpour, in 7 hours, 15 minutes and 41 seconds.


I spent time in prayer, meditation, yoga and contemplation, thinking about who I am, who I want to be, what I want to embrace and how I want to change.

I took this blog off life support and started writing regularly again.

I joined an online dating site and began the arduous, humbling process of putting myself back out there.

I kept myself afloat financially and managed to pay all my bills on time.

So why am I telling you all this?

Because today, I am expecting a job offer. The CEO has already signified I'm his top choice, my references have been checked, the recruiter has already presented my salary demands. Today, I am having a second interview with the VP of Sales, and unless I cuss her out or sprout horns, I'm almost assured an offer letter.

And, unfortunately, rather than feeling elated, I'm feeling kinda sad.

It's not that I don't want to work. I do. (Something about watching Maury Povich say, "Terrell, in the matter of four-month-old Laqueesha, you ARE the father!" makes me want to go flip a burger, scrub a toilet, dig a ditch, write a white paper, anything to be employed again.)

So yes, I do want to go back to work. But I don't want to go back to the unhappy, out-of-hope, fat bitch I became over the course of my last few jobs.

I've made myself a promise.

I won't.

Even though my year-long vacation is (presumably) over, somehow I've got to hold fast to the real me and bring her back into the workplace without letting the workplace demolish the fragile, new, healthy life I've created.

I can't lie. I'm scared.

(I'll post in the comments when I find out for sure whether or not I've got the job. And then I'll start my next chapter, which I've tentatively entitled Slutapalooza.)

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Monday, April 18, 2011

In Case You Missed It

In the last couple of months since I started blogging regularly again, I've attracted new readers ... and a few of you have mentioned that when it comes to catching up on old content, you don't know where to start.

If you have the time and the curiosity to read start-to-finish, you can begin with my first post, "For Glorified Sluts, Reformed Sluts, Would-Be Sluts & Future Sluts. Then, just follow the "Newer Post" link at the bottom of each page to read my blog in the order that I wrote it.

If you're not that curious and you just want to hit the juicy parts, the heart and soul of my blog falls into two main categories. Diaries are my blow-by-blow accounts of what went down in my relationships, and Lessons Learned are where I reflect on what I now know. Here's a summary of the chapters I've covered so far, in chronological order:
  • Virginity Diaries gives the lowdown on how I gave it up for the first time ... to a drug dealer from the projects.
  • Number Two Diaries is all about my jailbird (and possibly gay) second boyfriend.
  • Conspiracy Diaries, my most recent chapter, recounts life with my radical-revolutionary third boyfriend.
  • ...Coming soon... details about my slutty phase, after I left Conspiracy, but before I moved to L.A.
  • Stripper/Casting Couch Diaries is a cautionary tale of what happened to this mostly nice, kind-of-slutty girl when I moved to the big city.
  • Semi-Homeless is about the broke-down man I dated after the casting couch broke me down.
  • Brown is about the man I loved ... and the man I lost.

So, there you have it. If you want to see what you've missed, there's your roadmap.

If you're not a looking-back kind of reader, no worries. You can follow my new material without knowing what came before. I always link back when I mention a person or episode I've already written about.

For my long-time readers, which of these stories would you say is a must-read for Don't Be a Slut newbies?

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Saturday, April 16, 2011

Don't Be a Slut's Best of the Blogosphere - April 2011

I think of Don't Be a Slut as an electronic clothesline. I imagine that in days of yore, women would gather and gossip in backyards or tenement courtyards as they hung up and took down their families' clothing. And that's how I think of this blog, as a safe place for women (and men) to get together and explore intimate issues.

In that spirit of sharing, I bring you my every-so-often recommendations of personal and relationship blogs that I find interesting.

One of my regular reads: Sex, Lies & Dating in the City recounts the online-dating adventures of Simone, a late thirties/early forties woman in NYC. She doesn't know it, but her blog inspired me to put a profile up on OKCupid. One of my favorite posts from last week was "Don't Talk to Her, She's a Slut."

A beautifully written male dating blog: F*cking in Brooklyn is an interesting and provocative read that I just discovered this month. Brother-man can write. (And if he looks anything like his picture, he's easy on the eyes, too.) A post that's near and dear to my heart is, "Are Women Who Have Sex on the First Date 'Sluts?'"

A relative newcomer: Blogging Bernice is a 40-something single mom who is grappling with the aftermath of her divorce as she takes the plunge back into the dating world.

A cute, international black chick: Magda of Retromus-ik is a pretty young woman of Nigerian descent who lives in Montreal, Canada. She writes slice-of-life posts, such as "Dissing over the net: when web debates turn sour."

A well-adjusted guy from Ireland: I've recently discovered Mind of Mine, a blog that makes me smile. Ian comes across as young and happy and having tons of fun. I love this post about coming out as gay to a mom and siblings who were completely cool with it.

Relationship blog lists: "7 Personal Relationship Blogs That Rock" highlights some interesting and varied choices from Arlene on RelationshipTalk.net. And "Top 50 Blogs to Help Your Personal Relationships" features blogs about romantic relationships, divorce, families and self-development. Thanks to both blogs for featuring Don't Be a Slut.

Those are my discoveries. Anyone else have any favorite personal or relationship blogs to recommend?

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Thursday, April 14, 2011

Two Forgiveness Techniques That Set Me Free

Writing about Conspiracy required heaping tablespoons of forgiveness – both for him and for the young woman I was when I dated him. In fact, I often began each writing session with a forgiveness visualization.

Most often, I would imagine myself facing Conspiracy, with a cord of light running from my solar plexus to his. I'd picture a sharp object cutting the cord that bound us together. Sometimes, it would be a giant pair of scissors. Sometimes, it would be a huge rotating blade, the kind that cuts down trees.

I would imagine my half of the light of rope coiling back into my body, as if it were being spun back in place like a vacuum cleaner's electric cord. The cord represented all of the power, all of the mental and emotional energy, all of the parts of myself that Conspiracy had taken from me, willingly given or not.

Then, I'd imagine his end of the cord flowing back into him. Giving him back all the energy I'd stolen from him through thinking about him, bad-talking him, dwelling on him, fearing him.

I'd imagine both of us with our own energy back, and nothing but space between us.

I'd see white light surrounding me. Healing what was once broken.

And then, I'd picture the light around him. I'd say a prayer for his ability to be happy, loved, successful and understood. And then I'd watch him disappear into the light, into a life that no longer included me in any way.

On other days, I would use a different technique aimed at forgiving the 20-year-old girl who had gotten herself into this mess. I would imagine that I could talk to my younger self. I would tell her that as bleak as her life appeared to be, she absolutely would have a happy ending. That I was living her happy ending right now.

I would explain that the happy ending didn't entail perfect outcomes. That she wouldn't end up with the husband, the kids, the fame or the fortune, but she would end up with peace of mind. I would let her know that she ended up happy with how she turned out.

Doing these processes as part of my pre-writing meditation helped me move the bone-deep gunk out of the places where it was hidden and write from a place of open-heartedness.

If you have a person or situation from the past that still haunts you, maybe one of these techniques can work for you, too.

Conspiracy Diaries Parts 1-25 (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25)
 Conspiracy Lessons Learned Part 4 of 4 (1 2 3 4)

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Tuesday, April 12, 2011

What It Means to be a Grown-Up

I used to think turning 21 made you a grown-up. Now I have a new definition. A grown-up is someone who takes 100-percent responsibility for the quality of his or her life.

Grown-ups deal with a lot of circumstances that are beyond their individual control. But they take responsibility for their reactions to those circumstances and the choices they make. Teenagers, on the other hand, sulk and pout and blame circumstances – or better yet, the grown-ups.

I daresay that most of us remain teenagers trapped in growing-older bodies, at least in certain areas of our lives.

We're taught by psychology to blame mom, dad, our childhood tormentors and all our ex-lovers for us "being the way we are." And that blame keeps us stuck in an immature version of ourselves.

Conspiracy now stands out to me as someone who is fully grown, but not fully grown up.

And writing about him showed me the ways that I was remaining stuck in a partially grown-up place. Because I was still blaming Conspiracy for the fact that he was the first and last man I ever lived with. ("He ruined my trust in men. He made me think commitment is a drag.") Which is really no different than him blaming me for "the hurt you caused and continue to cause."

Being a grown-up means admitting that maybe I've never lived with another man because I enjoy having the freedom to do as I wish, when I wish it. Without compromising or sharing or negotiating.

Being a grown-up means I take responsibility for being single, instead of blaming my parents, childhood tormentors and ex-lovers.

Being a grown-up means that no relationship – no matter how dysfunctional or damaging – has the power to control my life for years into the future.

I've grown up a lot this year.

Conspiracy Diaries Parts 1-25 (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25)
 Conspiracy Lessons Learned Part 3 of 4 (1 2 3 4)


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Sunday, April 10, 2011

Bone-Deep Gunk

Each of us has false beliefs that seep through our pores, flood our bloodstreams and eventually settle like concrete into our bones. For instance, I believed I was weak, I believed I was powerless, I believed I was promiscuous, I believed I was gullible, I believed that men were providers and women were sex toys.

As I've forced myself to write about my two-year tryst with Conspiracy, I've been struck by how much that relationship reflected my old beliefs and made them seem irrefutably true.

I've spent the last 15-20 years confronting and dismantling my false beliefs. Self-help books, transformational seminars, psychological counseling, acting, writing, yoga, New Age adventures of all kinds. Some of my experiments were successful, some were expensive, some were embarrassingly dumb. Some were right for a time, then needed to be discarded.

But all that self-development work allows me to see, after all this time, that those old beliefs were never true. Even if I already believed them, even if Conspiracy pounded them into my head, even if my behavior reflected them.

Yanking that bone-deep gunk out of my marrow hasn't been easy, but the resulting gains in sanity and self-esteem are well worth it.

Conspiracy Diaries Parts 1-25 (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25)
 Conspiracy Lessons Learned Part 2 of 4 (1 2 3 4)


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Friday, April 8, 2011

If You Think It's Abusive, It Is

The problem with me and Conspiracy – or me under Conspiracy – was that I became half of a person instead of a whole, and he became larger than life at my expense.

One of the things that helped me to understand this dynamic was watching Oprah shows about domestic violence. That's when I realized that what happened between me and Conspiracy was not much different from what happens between the stereotypical mean drunk and his battered-and-bruised wife.

These are the signs I couldn't see, the signs that I was losing myself in a relationship:

  1. You take on his beliefs and opinions as your own. He tells you what to think, and you think it. You even spew his words out of your mouth.
  2. You stop hanging out with your friends. He engages in disruptive behavior, like talking to you in the background when you're on the phone with your girlfriend. Or bad-mouthing your friends.
  3. You'll have what he's having. If he's a pothead, you'll try it, too. You'll drink if he drinks, or smoke if he smokes, or follow wherever he leads.
  4. You become overly dependent on him – emotionally and financially. He picks you because you're needy. He encourages you to be needy. And then, he holds your neediness over your head every time you try to grow a backbone.
  5. You believe everything is your fault. He blames you for everything. He nitpicks your every fault. And you think he's right. No, you know he's right. If only you did or didn't do X, he'd be ok.
  6. You start to shrink, and he criticizes you for shrinking. He tells you you're weak (or you're fat or you're old or you're ugly), until you accept that as your own self-definition. 
  7. You think you might be abused, but you're just not sure. Because, after all, everything is your fault. Maybe you're just imagining that you're being treated badly.
Twenty-something Me couldn't see the warning signs. She couldn't see the signs even as she lived them. She could only glimpse them in brief flashes as the relationship soured.

It is only now – nearly two decades later – that I can see just how abusive the relationship really was. And, even now, I still question myself.

Whether I have the right to use words like abuse, when he never kicked me or hit me or punched me or threatened to.

Whether I have the right to be afraid of him, which clearly I am. It took more than a year for me to write 25 posts about our relationship. A year when I had a nightmare about him ranting, raving and threatening to sue me. A year of fleeting thoughts about what he might do and say if he ever found out about this blog. A year when I even began hating my own blog, because not facing my fear was easier than admitting that even now, I'm still afraid.

But if I learned anything from Conspiracy, it's this: If you think it's abusive, it is.

Conspiracy Diaries Parts 1-25 (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25)
 Conspiracy Lessons Learned Part 1 of 4 (1 2 3 4)


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Wednesday, April 6, 2011

The Letter

Leery of government spying, Conspiracy didn't trust the Internet. He didn't have an email address and didn't spend a lot of time online. But every so often, when he wanted to get in touch with me, he'd ask someone to email me on his behalf. One day, I got an email from a complete stranger saying that "Brother Conspiracy" wanted to get in touch and needed my mailing address.

Conspiracy's letter arrived on a particularly stressful day. I was deeply depressed. About the state of my completely stalled acting career. About my love life. About my finances. And I was operating on no sleep. I had just put in a seven-day workweek on a freelance writing project, even pulling an all-nighter to meet an impossible deadline.

I carried the letter into my home office and opened it standing up. I expected the usual gossip about various New Haveners who were on Conspiracy's bad side that day. I expected a sentence or two on the whereabouts and well-being of Conspiracy's children. I expected an update on his health and happiness, or lack thereof.

What I didn't expect was an opening sentence about "the hurt you have caused me and continue to cause me." He accused me of being a spying whore sent by the federal government. He asked – in all seriousness, not jest – if that was me he had recently seen in a porno movie. And he demanded that I keep my promise to visit him if I ever wanted to get my nude pictures back.

As I stood, holding a letter that dripped with corrosive abuse, I felt a surge of electricity shoot up through my spine, as if someone were holding a cattle prod to my tailbone.

Wait ... what ... what?!?

The hurt I caused him and continued to cause him? It was 12 years since our breakup. What magic voodoo hurt was I inflicting upon him from more than 2,000 miles away? Especially after the work I had done to communicate with him openly and honestly about our relationship? I had even apologized for attempting to use him financially and for leaving the way I did, telling him all about my secret relationship with Dollar the psychic.

Spying whore? He had pursued me.

Porn star? I had put the casting couch behind me eight years ago. And if he was watching porn, who was he to judge?

And last but not least, blackmail? Was he really that manipulative? Did he really think he could threaten me with the pictures he had promised to safeguard?

The electricity surging through my spine was the jarring shock of realization. It was the realization that Conspiracy – this man who had always claimed to be my friend – hated me.

I was shaken to my core.

But I took the high road.

I immediately shredded his letter and threw the scraps away.

The next day, I sat down and wrote Conspiracy a short, polite letter. I didn't address any of his accusations. I apologized for not keeping my promise to visit him – and I told him that I would not be doing so. I told him that we wouldn't be in touch anymore. And if he wanted to return my photos, he could do so in the self-addressed, stamped, delivery-tracked envelope that I had thoughtfully enclosed along with my note.

That was five years ago. He never returned my pictures, and we haven't talked since.

But when he sees former Yale classmates of mine, he still asks them about me.

Conspiracy Diaries Part 25 of 25 (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25)
Conspiracy Lessons Learned 1-4 (1 2 3 4)


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Monday, April 4, 2011

The Long-Lasting, Long-Distance Friendship

After our messy breakup, Conspiracy and I stayed in touch for many years. Sometimes, I would call or write him. Sometimes, he would call or write me. Sometimes we would fall out of touch, and he'd call my mom to get my number. Sometimes we talked every week because he had free long distance on Friday nights.

But mostly, I was free of him. Free to heal from the ordeal of our two years together.

About a year-and-a-half after I moved out, I discovered a life-changing book called The Artist's Way. It introduced a new word into my vocabulary:
crazymaker: a person who drives you crazy with conflicting demands, mood swings, blame and drama, all of which cause you to stop pursuing dreams.
It was the perfect description of Conspiracy. There was a word for him. He was a crazymaker, but he was also a steadfast and loyal friend. So we continued to talk.

Conspiracy was one of the few people I confided in when I first moved to Los Angeles and embarked on my casting-couch misadventures. I told him the whole dirty, nasty, horrifying story of how I went out with my agent. When I got to the part about being squirted in the face, Conspiracy interjected that my agent had perpetuated "some nasty porn sh*t" on me.

That conversation would come back to bite me in the ass, big time, several years later.

Flash forward to me in my early thirties. I was taking transformational seminars that required me to have difficult conversations with people with whom I had unfinished business.

My first such conversation with Conspiracy blew up spectacularly in my face. I wanted to talk about the ways he had controlled me and curtailed my growth. He went on the attack, making accusations so outlandish that all I could do was sputter incoherently.

He accused me of "flashing my vagina" at a friend of his – as in literally flopping down in a living-room chair and gapping my legs open. Worse, he claimed that I "deliberately hurt him" by "rubbing his face in" the fact that I whored myself out to my agent. Wait ... what? He was claiming that the pain I shared with him was now pain I caused him? (Crazymaking, crazymaking, crazymaking.)

My desire for a spiritual breakthrough was so great that I called him again.

This time, I acknowledged the role Conspiracy had played in getting me through college and that I probably would not have graduated without him. This time, he was touched. This time, our conversation was sweet and warm.

He wanted to see me again and catch up. He still had my naked pictures, and he wanted to return them to me in person. Enveloped in the sweet, warm glow, I promised that I would come visit him. I didn't say when, just that I would.

In the deepest part of my gut, however, I knew that I really didn't want to. I didn't want to deal with a former lover who still had feelings for me. I didn't want to risk ending up alone with him in the apartment we once shared. I didn't want to listen to any of his "they done me wrong" tirades.

So I never got around to visiting him.

Two years later, Conspiracy forced my hand in a way that neither or us expected.

Conspiracy Diaries Part 24 of 25 (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25)
Conspiracy Lessons Learned 1-4 (1 2 3 4)


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Thursday, March 31, 2011

Escape

After the perfume summer, I went and got a real job. I worked for a company that sold high-priced research reports. In those pre-Internet, pre-Google days, my job essentially amounted to being a human search engine. I'd conduct searches on LexisNexis for keywords like smoking or diabetes, and copy and paste whatever I found into a Word doc. I was so bored, I thought I would die.

Into that boredom entered yoga. I found a local woman who taught a yoga class in her attic, and she introduced me to her acupuncturist.

He was weird. A young guy, probably in his late twenties or early thirties. He said that "80 percent of my problems were spiritual," that I was "deficient in prayer and meditation," and that I had "toxic emotions." As I lay on the table wearing his needles, I felt waves and waves of anger pouring out of me.

He diagnosed me as having candida, an overgrowth of yeast bacteria caused primarily by my 10-candy-bar-a-day sugarholic habits. He prescribed a very strict diet – no sweets, corn, dairy products or vinegar – as well as about five or six different supplements.

When I came home with the supplements, Conspiracy asked how much they cost, gave me a withering look and scoffed that once again, I had been duped. It was my money. I could spend it however I wanted. I began my new regimen, and in less than four weeks, three things happened:
  1. I dropped 15 pounds.
  2. I went a whole day without blowing my nose – after a lifetime of chronic so-called sinus allergies. 
  3. And last, but not least, I left Conspiracy.
When I told Weird Acupuncturist that I was leaving town, he looked disappointed. "How are we going to get all of that fungus out of your system?" But then he perked up, saying that his work had obviously had an effect or I wouldn't be making such a big change.

He was probably right, but not entirely. The impetus to leave hadn't come solely from new-found, supplement-induced clarity. Dollar, my abusive psychic, had chosen that week to give me one of her life-and-death ultimatums: "If you don't leave New Haven before the New Year begins, you will be trapped here FOREVER."

It was the end of December.

I fretted that I was leaving Conspiracy in the lurch, that he wouldn't be able to make his rent in January without my piece of it.

Dollar scoffed, "He has money." She had always been convinced that he had plenty of money hidden away that I knew nothing about.

I agonized over the decision. I loved Conspiracy. He had been good to me. I didn't want to hurt him.

But forever in New Haven seemed like a long time in hell.

Six days later, I split.

I threw my crap into boxes, charged a plane ticket on my American Express card and moved to South Carolina to live with my mother. And my sister and her new baby. And my octogenarian stepfather. All in a tiny government-subsidized house on the outskirts of Charleston.

No sooner had I arrived than Conspiracy called me on the phone, incensed. He couldn't believe that after two years and all we had meant to each other, this was how I ended it. I had left my room a mess, and he was not going to clean it for me.

I charged another plane ticket back to New Haven, where I cleaned my messy room and endured additional monologues from Conspiracy about his anger and hurt.

I never saw him again, but it wasn't the end of our relationship.


Conspiracy Diaries Part 23 of 25 (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25)
Conspiracy Lessons Learned 1-4 (1 2 3 4)


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Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Mean-Spirited Gossip

My relationship with Conspiracy was starting to unravel, like a crocheted blanket when a five-year-old yanks on a loose thread. Little incidents I would have overlooked before now stood out as blazing neon warning signs.

Like the time a girlfriend asked me to hang out with her, and Conspiracy commented in a half-joking way that he wished he could go. You can't let me hang out with one friend for one night? I thought incredulously, realizing that somewhere along the way, I had stopped hanging out with my friends to stay home with him.

Or the day my middle-aged Jamaican hairdresser started a hypothetical conversation about young girls who got with old men who controlled their every move, but were too blind and stupid to see it. I was, in fact, too blind and stupid to realize that she was talking to me, about me, in a roundabout, third-person way. Then the lightbulb clicked on. Conspiracy doesn't do that to me, I thought ... but then I realized that he did.

Or the time Conspiracy and I went to the New Haven Green to watch a summer concert and got into a screaming match on the sidewalk. I shouted at the top of my lungs that I was tired of taking his abuse  – and realized for the first time that abuse was exactly the right word.

Conspiracy was embarrassed by my outburst. He asked me not to argue with him in public like that. It provided gist for the rumor mill, and he didn't want "them" to know that we were having problems.

We were already an item that inspired both town and gown gossip.

In the town of New Haven, where Conspiracy was something of a local celebrity, his age group couldn't get enough of us. I would attend his young daughter's dance recitals, and catch glances and glares from his ex-wife and her friends. Once, when I gained about 15 pounds, the old biddies started a rumor that Conspiracy had gotten that young girl from Yale pregnant.

On campus, the rumors flew, too. A few months into our relationship, I walked past a group of black students. I heard an upperclassman exclaim, "She's living with Conspiracy!" Everyone snickered.

But the gossip from others was nothing like the gossip from Conspiracy's own mouth.

I learned – from Tragic of all people – that Conspiracy was talking major sh*t about me. She had crashed spectacularly after her brief recovery from crack addiction, and now she was back panhandling. One night, when Conspiracy refused to give her money, they exchanged nasty comments. She turned to me and said, "You should hear the stuff he says about you."

Conspiracy quickly whisked me away.

"What was she referring to?" I asked.

"She's just making stuff up."

But I knew she wasn't.

Conspiracy was an incessant gossip, and a mean-spirited one at that. He talked sh*t about celebrities and political figures. He talked sh*t about his ex-wife and even more sh*t about his (white) ex-girlfriend, who he now believed was a spy masquerading as a leftie political activist.

I could only imagine the contents of his nasty, character-tarnishing rant about me. What a lying, cheating whore I was; how I was a book-smart, street-foolish girl, the kind who got pimped; how he had done this and that for me, and gotten so little return for his investment.

I never found out exactly what he said, but I didn't need to. The fact that I knew he said it was enough.


Conspiracy Diaries Part 22 of 25 (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25)
Conspiracy Lessons Learned 1-4 (1 2 3 4)


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Thursday, March 24, 2011

The Sweet Stench of Failure

The week after graduation, I got my first job out of college – as a perfume peddler. It was a multi-level marketing scheme that I fell for hook, line and sinker. And not surprisingly, the job became a major source of tension between Conspiracy and me.

On the surface, the job looked like exactly what I needed. It would let me be my own boss, own my own business and make a ton of money really fast. Enough to move to L.A. and start my acting career.

I threw myself heart and soul into the new enterprise, which entailed getting out every day and knocking on doors, bottles of perfume in hand. For every popular designer scent, I had a $5-$15 fake. At the end of the day, if I "dropped 10 bottles," I'd get to ring a bell back at headquarters.

I set a personal goal to sell 5-10 bottles every day, en route to becoming a "manager" with my own crew of perfume peddlers, from whom I'd take a cut of every bottle sold.

It didn't work out that way, and not for a lack of effort.

There were a lot of days spent going door-to-door in the hot summer sun. I would partner up with another person in my group, and we'd go hit what we hoped was an untapped, lucrative area. I hit small towns all over Connecticut, even going as far as Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

Once, I stumbled into a sweatshop, where the foreman let me pitch a group of women huddled over sewing machines. As a joke. They didn't speak English.

Once, I pitched an office where a woman I'd never met scolded me about having a job that was clearly beneath me.

Once, I stumbled into a small town with another black woman. Not one person answered the door for us, and someone even called the cops.

Conspiracy berated me every single day until I quit.

He started the very first week, when I decided I was going to go out and sell on Memorial Day. He lectured me on what a stupid idea that was. (He was right.) He said everyone would be at the beach. (He was right.) He said I wouldn't make any money. (He was right.)

"You don't take advice very well," Conspiracy snapped. "I'm not wasting anything else on you!"

His advice didn't consist of gentle suggestions that I was free to consider or not. He expected me to heed his advice. If I didn't, it was a direct attack on him and spiteful ingratitude for all he had done for me.

He frequently attacked my character, using words like "sucker" and "easy mark" to describe me. I hadn't fallen for this get-rich-quick scheme because I was young, inexperienced and blindingly ambitious, but because I "wore my heart on my sleeve."

He explained to me that I fit the profile of a girl who was easily pimped. In the street-hooker, not the metaphorical, sense. (I believed him. And a few years later, I proved him right by getting entangled with Stripper Pimp.)

When I chose to work on the 4th of July, I came home to a five-page letter from Conspiracy ... written in red ink.

I finally quit the job, after a week when I grossed $41 in sales.

Stung by my first career failure and trapped in New Haven, I plunged into a suicidal depression that lasted two weeks.

Conspiracy Diaries Part 21 of 25 (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25)
Conspiracy Lessons Learned 1-4 (1 2 3 4)


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Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Two Daddies, One Graduation

In the weeks leading up to my Yale graduation, I realized that I was reliving my teenage years all over again. The feeling of being trapped. The dread of coming home from school. The tiptoeing around a powerful, volatile male figure. Only this time, I had exchanged Daddy for Conspiracy.

Commencement was supposed to be a joyous time, and it sort of was. Somehow, despite my overall hatred of Yale, I had managed to make it through all four years. Academically, I was in the top third of my class, officially cum laude. The African-American student body had voted me "most artistic" woman, in recognition of all of the roles I had played in various theater productions.

I had accomplished everything I set out to do and more.

I had no job, no money and no clue, but I had reached this remarkable milestone. After 17 straight years of schooling, from age five to almost age 22, I was done. No more teachers, no more books.

My family came into town to help me celebrate. First to arrive were my brother and my mom, a few days ahead of Foster Mama. My dad arrived on graduation day itself, and boy, was he sour.

In retrospect, I can see that my dad was worried and angry about the antics of his two daughters. My older sister was five months' pregnant with no husband. A few days before, she had informed my dad that instead of moving to Detroit to be with him, she was moving to South Carolina to be with my mom.

Stung by that turn of events, Daddy arrived in New Haven to find me living with Conspiracy, his shorter, skinnier, angrier and only slightly younger twin.

Daddy reacted by lashing out.

My mother had crocheted a beautiful white dress for me. My dad took one look at it and declared that he thought graduation was a formal occasion, not an excuse to wear a "rape-me dress." He continued the sexually inappropriate theme at my post-Commencement dinner. We were in a fancy restaurant, with tablecloths, and he ordered me to "lower your voice because you're coming across as a ho."

Yep, I was a Yale graduate. But my dad talked down to me like I was a cheap hooker.

I could see Foster Mama's eyes flicking back and forth between Conspiracy and my dad, my dad and Conspiracy. She didn't say a word, but she didn't need to. She was thinking that I had found an exact replica of my dad and moved in with him.

I was thinking the same thing.

Slightly different package, same f*d up dynamic.

After the ceremony, my family packed up and went home.

My now-former classmates went off to their presumably fabulous new lives.

I remained in New Haven with Conspiracy.

I wanted to move to New York or Los Angeles to be an acclaimed, award-winning actress. I didn't have the money, and I didn't have a plan. But with Conspiracy, I had subsidized rent and emotional dependency and what I thought was a great friendship.

So I stayed put.

I was so mad at my dad, I didn't speak to him for nine months, not even on his birthday.

Much later, when we patched things up, he told me exactly what he thought of Conspiracy: "You already have a Daddy, you didn't need two."

Conspiracy Diaries Part 20 of 25 (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25)
Conspiracy Lessons Learned 1-4 (1 2 3 4)


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