Awkwardly Social

I want to say hi to all the readers coming from Kristin, my dear friend, someone who has always inspired me to be more honest and say what I’m really feeling.  I am fortunate to have met someone like her, no matter how hard I tried to sabotage our meeting each other.  I used to be really scared to meet new people.  Now, I’m just older, and don’t really worry as much about what people think of me, also, I take xanax.  It’s amazing what modern pharmaceuticals and a couple of years of black out drinking can do for a person.  So, welcome!   

This weekend I spent Saturday in bed, when I told my friend that he said, “Oh!” as only an openly gay man can, and I shook my head and said, “No, not that way.”  And he said, “Oh….”  And we laughed.  I’m trying to get pregnant, but not like all day long.  Mostly this weekend I was trying to fight the plague that a certain group of story producers leaked into our shared bullpen. (Their show rhymes with rodrect prungay, they are the sickest! I think because they work harder than we do, their show is 3 times longer than ours, and they have 3 times the staff…)  Still no baby, but a full fledged cold has been incubated.  Yay, me?

I just read an excellent post by Cecily about personal blogging and how we oversharers, people who talk about their addictions, their fuck ups, their lady parts, are rare in the current “blog market.”  New bloggers fiercely protect their identity and their brand because they want large corporations to pay them cash money to write about a small segment of their lives.  Cool.  Just, not for me.

I’ve never been a brand.  I’ve never advertised on this page.  The only money I’ve made on this blog is on this post about how much I love my insurance company.  I wrote the post, it showed up in my poor insurance company’s new media guy’s google alert 5 years later, and they offered to pay me to include a link to their page.  That’s about how much effort I’m willing to put into making money on my blog.  I admire writers who are able to turn their blogs into money making ventures, but that’s just not ever what this place was for.  I was inspired by Pamie, and then I found a small group of people who were in the same place in their lives writing about their experiences and I connected with them and laughed and tried to make them laugh.

The best part about writing here is that I’ve been writing about my life for six years.  Not the weird rambling repetitive shit I write in my paper journal about my idiotic obsession with success, how I wish certain people were dead because I hate their guts, and why I am so ever loving sad and nervous all of the time. The stuff I write here, while it might not appear so to the casual reader, is edited, refined and written for a reason other than to complain.  I can sift through my own archives and figure out where I was 5 years ago.  (Oh god, I just did that, wow, it’s been a long 5 years… different boyfriend, different house, different Tamara.)

Now, six years later, I write for a living.  I work in reality tv partly because I know there are smart people out there who will see the ridiculous moments we’re putting in there for their pleasure.  I think I also work in reality because of this page, writing here has helped me see how the reality of a situation can be made funnier.  How the reality of a situation can be improved with a wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

This Robitussin isn’t going to take itself, so I best get on that.  I hope it doesn’t kill the yet to be conceived baby…

1. To the seaweed sample lady at Wholefoods: when I said I love seaweed, but didn’t want to try any right then? And then you pressed and I had to tell you that, no really, I’m not eating seaweed right now and then, you stood there and sort of stared at me, while I looked at prepared salads that was you making things awkward, not me. I just wanted you to know that because it gave me what a friend of mine likes to call “retarded tingles.” Getting those kind of tingles and not giving them, makes me very happy. So, I guess, thanks?

2. There’s something so very special about having a life partner who knows you so well that he gets a key made for you with your favorite baseball team logo plastered on it and he calls it your “yankey.”

3. I cannot help but look at wedding dress options even though I know that this means I’m part of the hetero- capitalist machine. I refuse to wear a white dress to the courthouse, so I’ve promised myself I will wear something in my closet.

4. Inspired by Bitter Sweetly, I wrote down some goals for myself this week. So far I’ve actually been trying to achieve them. Who knew I could so easily manipulate myself?

5. I am really glad Prop 8 was overturned, because I really want to be invited to my friend’s gay wedding. It’s going to be so fantastic.

When you check in at the House Ear Clinic, there is a sign that basically says, “Look, we know you’re here because you’re having some ear problems, let us know if you need us to come tap you on the shoulder when we call your name, because you very well might be too deaf to hear the lady call you.”  I felt good that I was at least not so deaf that I couldn’t hear the lady call my name.

First, I had to get a hearing test.  It was hard, y’all.  I am terrible at the Opthamologists office, when they’re like 1 or 2, this or that, and in this one, it’s not a multiple choice.  It’s just, can you hear this?  We don’t tell you when to expect it, do you hear it?  Anything? How about now?  What about this?  Can you repeat this word?  (What word?)  And on and on.

She lead me back to the waiting room and I told Seth I was completely fucked that I had to repeat words and I couldn’t fucking HEAR them.  And there were no 2nd chances!

We got called to the front of the waiting room in a group of 5 people, and I thought, what the hell is this?  Group hearing therapy?  But she separated us off and we waited in a freezing cold room.  Doctors like things to be cold.  I guess it’s better than sitting in a room and sweating.

When Dr. Goddard (the cutest doctor I’ve had in a long time.  Maybe ever.  Like farm boy, central casting, cute doctor cute) came in he told us he works with Dr. Friedman (the doctor I’d been referred to) and that he was going to look in my ear and he did.  And he said, “Oh, there it is, it’s not that bad.”  Which is way better than what my other ENT did, which was go, “WOAH.  THAT’S A BIG ONE!”  He talked to me about my ear and Seth made him blush when he did some tests by touching my face, Seth bellowed out, “Don’t you touch her!”  He giggled.

He told me that because of the location of the hole in my ear drum that surgery is recommended.  The reason is, skin can grow into my ear canal and fuck things up, like cause my face to go paralyzed.  And ever since this girl in high school had Bells Palsy, I’ve been afraid of facial droopy paralysis situations.  Then Seth asked him, “What would you do?”  And he said, “If you were my sister, I’d tell you to have the surgery.”  And I was like, I can be your sister…. I can be whoever you want me to be. (But I only said that in my head.)

Then, he pulled out my hearing test.  And he said, all dramatically, “So, let’s talk about your hearing.”  And I was thinking, oh here it comes, I’m gonna get fitted for hearing aids today.  He looked very serious, and he said, “In your right ear [the good one] you have above average hearing.”  And he showed me the chart, and I was like, “Are you saying, I’m like a superhuman in my right ear?  Like I have an A++ in that ear?”  And he smiled and said, “Yes.  Your hearing is excellent in that ear, and that is why you are perceiving the difference in your left ear, which is also still in the average range, just slightly lower than the right.”  Basically, I’m not only not deaf, I have one bionic ear and one average human ear.  Woo!  (I’ve been bragging about this all day.)

So we consulted with the surgeon, Dr. Friedman, and he used a fancy magnifying and projecting ear looking thingy and I got to see it on a TV screen.  The ear is kind of cruddy looking inside there.  It’s gross, and now I can’t even use q-tips.  I was contemplating how one cleans one’s cruddy dirty looking holey ear when Dr. F took a phone call wherein he had reason to name drop his brother.  When he got off the phone, Seth said, “You’re Robby’s brother?  I knew him when he was at Warner’s.”  And Dr. Friedman said, “Yeah, I want his life.”  And I was like, fuck that!  You’re a damned surgeon, he’s just the head of a billion dollar studio.  His parents must be so proud.

So, I’m waiting to hear (pun intended) when I’m going to have this surgery.  And when I’m going to get married.  Because there’s a whole health insurance situation that’s going to need to be squared away.  Who’s got their marrying license?

A while ago a few of my friends ganged up on a single friend of ours, signed her up for all of the dating services, and began to troll the internet for eligible bachelors.  I took my turn skimming through photos of single Jewish men in the Los Angeles area and clicked on a picture of a writer I thought my friend would like.  Once the photo became more than a thumbnail, I shrieked, “He’s MARRIED!”  Everyone turned and looked at me, all rushing around the computer to see the asshole who was trolling for single women while his wife blissfully believed he was in love, and if not, at the very least faithful.

“Or, he was, the last time I saw him!”

“How long ago was that?”

“Um… 5 years ago?”

The questioner laughed and said, “I was happily married five years ago and now I’m waiting for my divorce papers to arrive.”

I trolled through his profile, trying to figure out if he had really divorced the woman or if he was a fraud, a faker, a J-date troller.  Or, if he was doing it for research.  He was, in fact, a writer.  None of the other tidbits made sense though, he used to have pitbulls not Shelties.  He used to live in the farthest reaches of the farthest reaches of the outskirts of Los Angeles, not Sherman Oaks, for godsakes.   Maybe he was divorced.  I told my friend who was manning the J-Date profile to ask him out for our friend.  I wanted to know more.  I wanted to spy on him through my friend.

I was refused.

My friends said if I knew him so well, I should just e-mail him.  “Well,” I responded, “the last time I did that he never returned my e-mail, the asshole, and maybe now I know why!  Maybe because he was going through a horrible divorce and didn’t want me to know.”

I slunk off to my desk and began stalking him on facebook to no avail.  Then, I began stalking his wife.  Her profile wasn’t private.  She listed herself as being MARRIED.

What.  The. Fuck?

I looked at my waiting for divorce papers friend and asked him how long it took him to change his status.  He shrugged.  I got the feeling he’d still have it listed as married if he had a choice.

When Louie broke up with me he almost immediately changed his status on facebook to single, which, since we were facebook linked, sent ice through my veins.  My blood rushed to my face, and I was horrified.  He told the world and I was notified by facebook that my status needed to be fixed.  They couldn’t have me running around saying I was dating someone, when in fact, I WASN’T.

Seth doesn’t use facebook.  I will never have to change my relationship status based on his simple button click.  I hope he never leaves me, but if he does, at least facebook won’t know about it.

I wonder what’s really going on with the formerly loving couple with four pitbulls.  Is he merely trolling the dating sites without his wife’s knowledge for a thrill, is he doing it for a script, is he divorced, does she not want to change her status just yet to avoid questions from distant acquaintances?  It’s all so intriguing to me, and yet, I can’t bring myself to write the e-mail saying, “I saw you on J-Date, does your wife know?”

We have a gigantic apartment/duplex/house thingy. We are required (it says so on our lease) to cover 60% of the floors with rugs.  The economic state of affairs in our checkbooks was such that we could not afford to do this immediately, so when our landlords offered to leave their big (and kind of ugly) rug in the dining room, we were like, “SURE AWESOME GREAT!  ONLY $20,000 more to go in order to cover 55% more of the floor!”  So, anyway, there is a borrowed rug in the dining room.  Before we put the dog door in, Lula took great offense to this rug and showed us her disdain for its pastel flowers by adding her own special something to it.  She marked that rug to distraction.  It was so owned by her.  So owned that we rented a steam cleaner, cleaned it and rolled it up because we didn’t want our landlords to hate us for having a pissing dog who pees on their rug and their rug only.

We got the dog door installed and Lula went back to peeing outside where she belonged and last week we unrolled the rug and gave it another dose of Natural Miracle Pee Smell Remover That Costs a Billion Dollars and all was right in the world.  Until she peed on the rug yesterday.  I have a feeling it was a combination of me going back to work and Seth talking loudly about something that freaked her out and she felt the need to let us know things were not right in the world and also she hates that stupid rug.

It was with all of this rug peeing and dog sensitivity in mind that late last night I got up to investigate Lula’s mysterious wanderings about the house.  I didn’t have my contacts in and my glasses were safely on the nightstand and I had no slippers on my feet.  I heard Lula outside beside the house and didn’t want to interupt her if she was peeing because who knew if she would then come in and pee on the rug again.  So I hovered by the back door trying to see what she was doing, when I heard her crunching on something.  I stage whispered her over and she slunk towards me trying to hork down whatever thing she had found in the tiny dirt alley beside the house that I automatically assumed was some kind of neighbor placed chicken bone meant to sabotage my dog.  (I am super paranoid that everyone is out to get me.)   I grabbed her mouth and pulled out a soggy piece of balled up paper that looked kind of like it was covered in dog vomit.  I shooed her into the house, grabbed the flashlight and touched the paper again and realized it was a piece of toilet paper covered in shit.  That I had now touched twice.  I flased the light across the alley and saw that it was strewn with wet toilet paper and smelled like sewage.  Awesome!  My dog was eating raw sewage in the middle of the night and I was grabbing it out of her mouth!  I’ll never eat with these hands again!

I don’t know much about houses with sewer systems because I grew up in a house that had a septic tank, but I had NO IDEA that sewage could just come out of an overflow pipe and into your yard.  I did not know that could happen.  Why is that allowed to happen? Why do they have some kind of sewer scenario that allows raw sewage to flow into the yard, but also why are they letting us use a rug that my dog likes to pee on and that made me paranoid enough to get up in the middle of the night and pull raw sewage out of my dog’s mouth?

Not only do I want to avoid all social contact with my upstairs neighbor for normal social anxiety reasons, but also because I probably touched their poop.  I pulled their poop out of Lula’s mouth.  Lula ate my landlord’s poop.  I might have to move.  And get rid of my dog.

And there were margaritas.

(And I wrote this weeks ago and never published it, I guess my lunchtime margaritas made me hit save instead of publish?  So very unlike Drunk Tamara…)

I guess it shouldn’t bother me that the person who was so Catholic that he refused to have sex with me (unless it was anal) rejected my friend request on Facebook, but right now I’m kind of irritated.  I mean, come on!  We were actually really close friends in high school.  In college (when he was still a virgin), I tried to get him to do it with me and he refused, and then tried to do it up the butt.  Catholics are fucked up.

Then 5 years later, his wife thought I was hitting on him at our ten year reunion…  Which is kind of funny because I barely spoke to him!  No really.  I know those of you who know me in real life are laughing at me right now, and “the lady doth protest too much”ing me, but I’m serious!  She gave me the evil eye when I gave him a hug (because I hadn’t seen him in several years) and I sort of got drunk and forgot he was there for the rest of the night.  It wasn’t until much later that he told me he couldn’t talk to me anymore because his wife, I think the exact words were, “didn’t approve of our friendship,” which, by the way, at that point, was pretty much non-existent.   I lived in Los Angeles.  I would call him on his birthday.  That was the extent of our contact.

After the phone call where he told me he couldn’t talk to me anymore, he called me from a hotel room in Denver, because he didn’t want his wife to know.

Oh shit, I just told my office that he denied my friend request, so now everyone here is friending him.

hee!

When we were looking for a place to live, we looked at a lot of places, we went through a couple realtors, and we were probably a huge pain in the ass.  (snort, probably…)  The final weeks of our search brought us to the Hancock park area in the duplex region.  The prettiest place had the awkward appeal of having the owners living right above us.  I was not keen on having the social anxiety of a landlord above me at all times, judging me.  So, even though we loved the actual place, and the price, we kept looking.  The next duplex we saw was smaller and not as awesome and not conveniently located to Campanile (my favorite restaurant in Los Angeles next to the Polo Lounge, but I’m not about to move to Beverly Hills), and I started to realize the owner operated duplex was going to be the best place we would see.  So we called our realtor and she told us that the owners were in the final stages of negotiations with another family.

Let me pause just a second to tell you how not to raise your children.  Don’t tell them that the only acceptable grade is an A.  Don’t tell them that a B might as well be a failing grade.  You will have children that grow up crazy.  Like me.  Who believe they must always win, no matter what the game is.  Even if the game is beating a perfectly nice family out of a fine duplex wherein the owners live upstairs.

So, I flipped out while Seth was calmly talking to our (completely batshit crazy, but totally driven) realtor.  I’m not exactly proud of this, but working in an industry that doesn’t exactly frown on flip outs (in fact it tends to reward them…) I might have yelled some things.  Loudly.  Like, “What the fuck is she doing?  This is fucking ridiculous! She royally FUCKED us!”  It was very “Tamara of 2002.”  Anywhoo…  Like I said, not proud, but I was now in some kind of insane competition mode with someone I had never met and saw my future laid out in weekends of aimless apartment hunting all over Los Angeles and I just couldn’t take it.  Our realtor hung up and I started to cry.  Seth told me that our realtor said we should just go over there and talk to the owners.  I was in no mood to sweet talk, but Seth, being smart and realty savvy, said we were going.

So we went.  And we had a delightful conversation with our soon to be landlords.  They basically told us they wanted us and that the place was ours if our realtor didn’t fuck up the next three steps.  Which at this point, in my mind, was questionable.  But she did it!  And we moved in!  And I still cannot believe how much closet space we have, how our garage isn’t falling down, and that Seth is still dragging around motorcycle parts for his vintage Ducati that he never rides.

The day we moved in, our lovely landlady came down and told us that their 20-ish year old son had just moved home and that we shouldn’t be surprised if we saw him lurking around the back yard being weird.  She didn’t say that last part, but when she introduced him to me, and I formed my initial impression of him, it was that he was a weird lurker.  I guess because he has bad posture?  Or because he was wearing gym shorts?

Anyway, cut to last week, I was walking out our back door when I heard a shril girlish squeal and a series of thumps and giggles that could only be described as “Girl Descending a Staircase on Her Ass.”  And a pack of Marlboro reds came tumbling into our part of the yard.  I picked up the cigarettes and as I called out, “Dude, are you ok?”  I heard him asking the same thing, “Are you ok?”  And I looked up and saw a 19-ish year old girl on her ass half way down the stairs, looking freshly fucked and very embarassed.  She giggled and pulled her skirt down as she stood up.  I handed the cigarettes to our landlord’s son and said, “Everyone survive that?”  The son said “yeah”, and lumbered down the stairs as I scurried to my car to avoid any other discussion of what I had just seen.

The upstairs is identical to to the downstairs, so I know those bedrooms are really close together, and I cannot imagine being a 20 year old dude bringing a girlfriend home to fuck while my parents watched TV next door.  But I do love how awkward this all is.  It makes me so uncomfortable, which makes me so happy, because, I am nothing if not inspired by awkwardly social situations.

You know, where people stop being polite and start being real?  Oh, welcome.  Welcome to my bathroom where I was pulled Christmas Eve for tears and melt downs.  Welcome to my boyfriend’s parent’s living room where someone who wasn’t 3 years old threw a temper tantrum.  Welcome to my favorite restaurant where everyone started to go a little Lord of the Flies for no particular reason other than apparently everyone is full of hate in this hate filled season and wants it to go back to the way it was.  Let us not forget, however, the way it was had tears, screaming, and a long cold season full of spite.

It’s been a rough couple of weeks emotionally, but I’m happily grinning and bearing it.  My WASP upbringing and my current foray into pyschotherapy have both taught me many things.  Coping with booze (WASP), pretending to enjoy yourself if you’ve agreed to be at the event in question (therapy), keep it to yourself if you don’t like someone and talk about them behind their back with people you do like (WASP, therapy), smile (WASP, therapy), pass the potatoes with a tinge of passive aggressive sweetness (WASP) and cry in your bedroom alone with your pillow over your face so no one asks you what’s wrong or knows how much you hate them and you can keep keeping on like everything is fine until the next time you have to share the joyous holiday season with them (WASP).

My family has their issues, but at least we don’t talk about them.  At least we just keep it to ourselves so we only feel badly when someone sees a crack in the fake smile veneer.  I hate all this out in the open discussion of everyone’s feelings.

I get it!  You don’t hate me!  You just hate that I’m here instead of someone else!  Awesome!  Let’s eat some cake.  I’ve freshened your pillow cases and sound proofed the guest room.

I met the ex-wife this weekend.  It was fine.  I was overly smiley and gracious and felt like an idiot every time I talked to her like I was talking to a small child or a distant aging relative.Then I got sick during the graduation ceremony (nerves, morning sickness?) and threw up in my mouth almost not making it to the bathroom.  I had to buy a ginger ale and a bag of pretzels to settle my stomach.  It was kind of gauche to be walking around a test kitchen of amazingly beautiful pastries made by the graduating class, munching on Snyder’s of Hanover mini-twists.

We are staying in an insanely huge room overlooking Lake Michigan, Hermes and Michigan Avenue.  It’s lovely. But the view I’m most interested in is here.  Yeah.  That’s the webcam overlooking my stupid dog.  She’s the big dog in the small dog area.  Poor ol’ Lu, couldn’t handle the large dog area.  She seems fine.  I miss that stupid rat.

We’re off to the art institute, and then some shopping.  I like Chicago.  It’s snowing.

I was at the gym today, doing my 3.5 mile run when I looked up to the second level and saw a super familiar face.  There was a guy on the treadmill, red hair, thick neck, widely placed eyes.  I started wracking my brain for his name.  I went to high school with him, so I’m trying to figure his name and the only way I can do it in my oxygen deprived state is by association.  The results were stuttery.

My high school was small, so I knew pretty much everyone at least by face.  But this kid, I knew by name.  I start to beat myself up because of all the years of drinking, and doing drugs and that one year that I got an ill advised tattoo.  I don’t know why all of this is crashing down on me as I’m running on a treadmill staring at a dude on a stair machine, but it is.  The tattoo somehow means I’m retarded.  Or at least I’ve killed enough brain cells to not only forget someone I went to high school with’s first name but also enough brain cells to get a tattoo of a frog.  On my ankle.  To be fair, my senior year, I did a lot of drugs.  Like,  A LOT.

Anyway, I’m running down names, Jim, Ryan, David when finally one sticks.  Jared.  I know for sure his name is Jared.  But I can only come up with Jared Cooley, who is not this Jared.  Jared Cooley was in my sister’s grade and this kid was someone who I could only picture on the football team with Steve.  And Steve only played varsity from his junior year on, so he was never on the team with Jared Cooley.  So that was the wrong Jared.  Besides, even though I have only a small portion of my brain left after all the booze, this wasn’t that Jared.   The only other image I could get of this Jared, the not Jared Cooley Jared, was of him dating one of the fluffy haired girls.  My senior year, there were all of these girls with blond hair that seemed to be impossibly fluffy.  I think half of them were named Jamie.  But I was running through all the fluffy haired girls that he could have dated and it wasn’t any of the Jamies.  And then it hit me.  Holy shit, he dated one of my best friends.  Robin.  He dated Robin!  Why couldn’t I come up with his name?  At about this point I realized I was staring at someone.  Someone who was clearly trying to avoid looking at me.  Someone who may or may not have gone to a tiny high school in Arizona.  Someone who was just trying to get a workout in without some panting sweating girl who had an insane hairdo going on because of her issues with bouncing ponytails and bangs touching her forehead.

I finished running before he finished climbing stairs and I was too chicken to go over to him, because even though I KNEW his name was Jared, I wasn’t sure if he was actually the Jared I knew.

By the time I got home and showered I had completly forgotten about the mystery Jared at the gym.  So we went to dinner. I had Seth drive my car home from the restaurant, because I had two margaritas with my shitty chicken soft tacos and I’m nothing now if not a responsible drinker.  (That is a damned lie!  But whatever, I don’t drink and DRIVE anymore, so I’m SORT OF a responsible drinker.)  Seth doesn’t drink now, so when we got pulled over for swerving (I told him a million times that his relationship with lanes is weak) at least I wasn’t at the wheel. (THANK FUCKING GOD!)  This actually has nothing to do with the story other than I was relieved that I didn’t get a DUI tonight.  Phew.

So we got home and Seth had some business to take care of (show biz!  It knows no hours!) so I plopped open my year book and there he was, plain as day.  JARED.  Howard!  So, Jared Howard, formerly of Camp Verde, Arizona.  Do you work out at 24 Hour Fitness in Los Angeles?  If so, hi.  You’ve aged so well you look exactly like you did in high school.  Which makes me think, hmmm, maybe it wasn’t you after all.

This story really has no point other than it’s weird to see people from your small home town doing the stair machine across the gym from you when you’re trying to get your mile to under 9 and a half minutes.  I would say it’s awkward, but that’s really besides the point.  Awkward would have been if I went up to him and asked him if he went to Camp Verde High School.  Which I’m totally going to do.  If I ever see him again.  Stay tuned!