Phoenix

Rubbernecking

Posted on by akiwifreund

Whenever I listen to the album “Happenstance” by Rachael Yamagata, I am reminded of a guy I dated who belonged to the big social group that I mentioned previously. We bonded over our love of all things music (with the exception of Christian, contemporary country and rap) and at the end of one date we sat in my car and listened to the album from front to back – he was impressed with the range of styles of songs included on that one disc. He was a recruiter for a small music and sound tech school. The only way I can describe his appearance is that he looked like the love child of Chris Farley and Guy Fieri; henceforth I will call him Chris Fieri. He was mostly bald and the remaining hair he had he dyed fluorescent blonde. He was outgoing and enthusiastic – sometimes without being aware of social cues. I thought it would be nice to date someone who was inherently social rather than introverted because I love to get together with various personalities and it would be great to not have to worry about him wandering off to a corner by himself.

Chris Fieri and I went on a series of dates over the course of a few months. I even made him a part of my birthday celebration, and the best gift he could have given me turned out to be absolutely fantastic camping chair that I have now used for years to go to outdoor concerts. We went to movies and dinner dates, and then joined back up with other people from the group for shows and bar outings.

One time he invited me to the Wrigley Mansion to watch his friend play a show. This friend was a guitarist and it was a great night for music; also included in the audience were a few others including the former drummer for the Gin Blossoms. At one point it was eight guys and myself in our little group. However, I could tell that this crowd ran at a different pace than I did – most of guys had well-groomed eyebrows and the same style of button-down shirts with embroidered designs over one shoulder as if they had an elaborate underlying tattoo that could not be contained by fabric alone. I am more the type that I am not constantly concerned with my appearance and can only truly relax if others around me are confident in themselves rather than overcompensating.

The Wrigley Mansion’s stage was tiny, only enough room for the guitarist and a percussionist. The Mansion’s version of packed is not your normal night club’s capacity; packed for them would be 75 bodies. As the set progressed, more of Chris Fieri’s friends showed up, including a shorter guy with a gorgeous girlfriend. The guy looked like he got into fistfights all of the time fending off his girlfriend’s admirers. The original eight guys of my group found excuses to be near her and compete to be the loudest/wittiest to get her attention. It was strange to watch because she did not give any one person attention, but instead found another guy in the bar and repeatedly turned and smiled at him while her boyfriend wasn’t looking. I kept thinking to myself, “How could Shorty be missing this??” Finally, more women made it into the bar area to check out the music. Well, Chris Fieri gave up on trying to get the one girl’s attention and went tripping after the other girls. And when I say “tripping,” I mean tripping. He launched himself at them without having a solid concept of inanimate objects like tables and bar stools that were nearby, and hooked his foot on the leg of a stool and almost did a full frontal body splat.

All of his buddies saw this too. A few of them turned to me, looking uncomfortable, and said, “I thought you two were together.” They could tell I wasn’t thrilled. After the end of the second set I was at the foot of the stairs leading up to the second floor of the bar area, and Chris Fieri came over to me and put his arms forcefully on my shoulders as if he was trying to drive my feet into the floor and sloppily kissed me. I couldn’t easily fend him off because he outweighed me by at least 150 lbs, but I did wipe my mouth with the back of my hand as soon as he was done and told him I was outta there. Immediately he went on the defensive and said, “Are you mad because I talked to other people??” I knew that trying to reason with a man who had had about five drinks too many would be a challenge, but I told him I wasn’t bothered by that, I was upset that he was trying to pick up other ladies right in front of me. Then his Chris Farley voice came out and he started bellering that everyone was talking to other girls and that he only did what everyone else was doing. So I said, “Fine, pretty sure you don’t need me here for that,” and I retrieved my car from the valet.

The next day he called me and told me the same thing – that everyone else was trying to pick up women, so he was just doing what they were doing. I told him even his friends were embarrassed by his behavior and it wasn’t my imagination. I didn’t go out with him again, even after being pushed by another group member who had taken pictures of us together and posted them on MySpace – and strangely enough, four years later again on Facebook – with the caption, “Where are these two?” I had to ask him numerous times to take down the pictures. It was obvious that Chris Fieri was trying to be “cool” like the rest of his buddies.

It’s human nature to notice attractive people around you. We are drawn to those who have perfectly symmetrical features, just as we subconsciously recognize symmetrical patterns in spider webs and leaves that grow on plants. However, the way that you handle that attraction is what sets you apart from the rest of the animals. Chris Fieri learned the hard way that it doesn’t matter if everyone else is rubbernecking; he’s not going to win points from me for tripping over furniture to chase down other women while I’m standing next to him. I can’t imagine the woman with the shorty boyfriend lasted long in their relationship either; she was obviously a trophy, and he was clearly someone to pass the time while she looked for a better option.

A fellow blogger posted thoughts this week on disconnecting from social media; she found that she was much more likely to multi-task or have online ADD, jumping from one project to another without completing one first. She also lamented the fact that she didn’t have the attention span required to read a whole book like she used to, but instead sought out short  and efficient text. How does this relate to dating rubbernecking? It’s everything. We like short paragraphs in personal ads, we cut off a date after 30 minutes if we feel zero attraction, we look at other people and mentally undress them while distractedly answering “Yes” or “No” to the dates sitting across from us.

It’s a lot harder now to not rubberneck. Our constant state of distraction is the bane of our love lives.

100 Dates

Posted on by akiwifreund

When I moved to Phoenix in 2003, I didn’t know anyone. Not a single person. I also didn’t have a place to live or a job, but thankfully I did have some money in savings, so those two things kinda took care of themselves. Creating a new circle of friends was a huge challenge, though. The first job I landed was as a traveling trainer; I flew to cities all over the U.S. to train loan officers and processors on the new software that was being implemented for a large mortgage company. This meant that sometimes I would only be in Phoenix for 20-48 hours total before I had to fly out again – long enough to do laundry and repack. I also didn’t know my way around Phoenix at all – this was long before cell phones were able to navigate and navigational systems were hugely expensive. I thought the perfect way to juggle all of this was to go on dates.

My reasoning was this: 1) I could meet a lot of people; 2) It would force me to learn the city; 3) I wouldn’t have to buy groceries that might spoil while I’m on the road. I used LavaLife to shop for men and make plans for when I’d be back in Phoenix. I booked breakfast, lunch and dinner dates. Occasionally – rarely – some of them got second dates.

One that did was Don Juan. He was a slick Mexican guy with a BMW, and turned out to be my introduction into the world of “Netflix and chill” before it was a thing. He was soft-spoken and had the appearance of a teddy bear. Make no mistake, though – he was dirty, dirty, dirty. But it got a little old being FWB, because I wanted to get out and actually do stuff in my new city. One of the few nights we were out I was driving and flashed my lights at a driver who forgot to turn his lights on, and Don Juan yelled at me, saying “Guera (pronounced “wetta”), don’t flash your lights! Are you trying to get us killed?? That’s a gang signal!” Most of the areas in Phoenix cleaned up a lot by the time I moved there, so I didn’t immediately see why he was so freaked out. However, from that point forward, I could always hear his voice in the back of my head when I reached for my lights to flash them at another unaware driver.

Another was Earl. I had a soft spot for Earl because he was a ginger, he had a deep voice and a sarcastic sense of humor. We only went out a few times because he was another one who told me I must be a big whore because I went on lots of dates. I get a little bucky when I am accused of something like that – what’s wrong with going on dates? I didn’t even hug most of them, much less share my bed. However, I did file away his occupation in my memory bank, because a year later I got him to make a job offer to a friend.

There was one week that I had three dates with three different guys from Minnesota. The first one was a hockey player from Minnesota. You’d think that we would have a lot to talk about because of some common interests…but NO. He was not a big talker. We found out on the date that we actually had a mutual acquaintance in Phoenix, but that conversation didn’t go far either. He asked how I knew her, I asked how he knew her, and that was that. He had pretty hair and pretty eyes, and I’m thinking he was used to skating by on his looks. Ha ha – SKATING! I didn’t even mean to make that funny.

The second guy from Minnesota invited me over to his place for dinner. However, dinner was really just “Netflix and chill” while his black lab threw himself enthusiastically into the pool in the back yard over and over. (His neighbor thought that HE was doing belly flops into the pool.) There was no dinner in the deal.

The third guy from Minnesota met up with me for a date that Saturday night. This one was a good one. We met in August of 2004. He was tall, handsome, had a deep voice and was very, very calm. We entered into an arrangement where we would meet up for a dinner on a Saturday night whenever we were both home (he traveled a lot for work too), so he became Mr. Saturday Night. Though it was not a traditional love match, we kept in touch for years and would meet up every once in a while because we were so comfortable with each other. Oh, and we dearly loved to laugh! We would laugh for hours. He told me that I would always have a special place in his heart, and I told him the same. I took him to an event without knowing it would be the last time I would see him, because if I had, I would have wished him well. Mr. Saturday Night decided to let go of his past relationship with an emotionally abusive alcoholic and open himself up again to finding love. There was no space for me because I was the transitional person. I will always be grateful to him for being accepting of me, twisted wigs and twisted humor and all, especially since I have encountered so many men who have not been able to live with what was hiding under the prosthetic. I know that he was successful in finding his match because he sent me a note on Facebook telling me he was taking her to Minnesota to meet his family; I took it to mean that he was closing the door forever.

I learned many things on these 100 dates:

  1. There are a lot of McRoads in Phoenix:  McKellips, McClintock, McDowell, etc. Makes it difficult to navigate with only a paper, accordioned map.
  2. Being nervous adds no value. After going through so many first dates, it’s really tough to make me get stage fright.
  3. People from California tend to not be reliable because they make plans and break them if something better comes along or they are very late. Be prepared to hear about how great California is repeatedly.
  4. Internet dating is still blind dating. No one has screened the other person for you, though – you are on your own in that department. I’m not even certain that all of them were unmarried at that time even if they claimed it to be true.
  5. Guys who say over and over again that they are nice guys and complain about not getting any dates is a red flag; usually the guys that claim this don’t actually like women, but rather just see us as these things that can service them.
  6. “Netflix and chill” is appropriate after, say, four months together, but not four minutes or four hours. I still wanna go on real dates.

Three Is A Crowd

Posted on by akiwifreund

For the past, oh, two decades or so, men have been trying to talk me into three-or-more-somes. I’ve been accused of turning down the requests without knowing what I like, which is completely not true. I like men. Specifically, I like one man at a time. It’s tough to believe, I know – with the easy access to free porn on the internet (Pornhub, Youporn, XHamster, etc.), it’s pretty much shoved in your face as a consumer of sex that if you are a woman, you should want to fuck both men and women, and it should be enough for the women in porn that the men and/or viewers get off on what they are doing, not the woman who is actually going through the experience. I also blame the phenomenon that seemed to start right around age 23-ish for me, which was that women began making out with each other on the dance floor and in bars if they knew that they could gain attention from men. I’ve heard the theory that women are a lot more fluid in their sexual preferences than men are, so maybe they enjoy making out with their female friends, but I know that getting attention is a huge payoff. The problem with that is that men are now conditioned to look for that in every woman they meet, so if a woman balks at that demand, then the man moves on to the next tasty morsel.

My first live-in boyfriend was nerd before nerd was cool. He was also hooked on porn and had had some bisexual girlfriends before dating me, and he hoped to convert me into inviting others into our sex life. We even went to a swingers’ club one night when we were still living in Albuquerque. It was a bust though – not many people were there, and the three men who hit on me were in their 50’s and slightly inebriated. The bigger problem, though, is that I wasn’t ready to bring someone else in, but I was trying to please him.

A man I fooled around with was, well, very good at what he did, so he probably could have talked me into anything. He told me that he had a buddy from the gym who would be willing to do a threesome. I was tempted because it wasn’t the usual request of going at it with another woman, but I had some hard limits that I wasn’t sure would be honored because I didn’t know jack about the other guy. I don’t ever like to feel outnumbered, whether it’s with trying to wrangle toddlers or penises or anything else that has the ability to turn an experience immediately to shit.

A Greek guy I dated in Ohio talked me and another couple into a post-hot tub rendezvous, but that quickly soured for me because all my boyfriend would talk about was how hot the other woman was, and if he was taking care of her, she would have orgasmed immediately. He got his chance and he was proven wrong. (Pro tip: If you’re going to tell your girlfriend over and over how other women are prettier than her, don’t expect hero worship.)

Through a social group that I belonged to in Phoenix, among the many people I met, I became friends with a husband and wife with a young child. The husband was a nurse at the hospital where I volunteered, and we met while I was in my first year back at school to earn my RN degree. The wife provided writing and grammar services on the side, so I had some things in common with both of them. About six months into the friendship the couple explained that they had an open marriage and they were both interested in me. After I told them that I was the straightest girl they knew, they seemed to accept it and we continued our friendship. One night after the husband and I were hanging out with a group of 10 or so at a bar, he propositioned me and told me that his wife understood, and that he had her permission to have sex with me. I thought to myself, “Okay, I haven’t tried this before where everything is out in the open, so I’ll give it a whirl.” The husband asked if he could have some privacy in my living room to call his wife so they could talk about it again before anything happened, so I was not privy to the conversation. When he joined me in my bedroom, he told me that he told her what was happening and made sure she was okay with it. Can you guess what happened? She wasn’t okay with it. She called me, and then she called him, and after questioning me and him thoroughly, she determined he lied to both of us. Oh, yeah, and he was also screwing another married woman on the side. And the married woman he was screwing had another guy on the side. Are you keeping up with the math? There were at least six of us that had to go in for STD testing. And even though she figured out that the husband was lying through his teeth and I hadn’t maliciously tried to insert myself into their (oh, surprise – not-so-open) marriage, she told everyone in our social group that I was a homewrecker. I ended up dropping out of the group only a week after all of this was discovered. I had made a lot of friends and was attending weekly events and suddenly I was out.

A little older and wiser, I’ve seen many polyamorous relationships thanks to FetLife. I haven’t seen one group of three or more people who have successfully navigated love and sex without someone having to leave, usually in tears. Whether or not a relationship works strongly depends on everyone’s level of comfort with various dynamics. For example, are you okay with your man being a “pony” for a mistress as long as he doesn’t have sex with her? Are you open to being one of three wives to one man? What if your man kisses every woman he meets on the lips while you stand there and it’s obvious to even the casual bystander that it takes a little piece out of your heart every time? And probably the worst scenario is being singled out while everyone else bands together in a group that is supposed to be all-inclusive – it can be very lonely and traumatizing to be ganged up on.

What works for me is to make a relationship work between me and one other person, because damn, even that isn’t easy. I want less strife and heartbreak in my life.

WWJD

Posted on by akiwifreund

Drummer #2 coulda been Jesus. He grew out his hair to his lower back, dark brown with tight natural curls, and had light grey-blue eyes. He even had a full beard and mustache. The overall effect was Jesus, at least the Anglican version of that religious figure. Funny thing is that he was raised Jewish and was basically an atheist. Drummer #2 grew up in Manhattan in a lower middle class family that was ruled by his father’s violence and his mother’s indifference.

We met when I accepted an invitation from a guy I didn’t know well to join a group of people I didn’t know at all to hang out at a dive bar and sing karaoke and talk politics. Jeff worked at GoDaddy and he had rounded up some co-workers for a night out, and Drummer #2 was there. The joint’s decor was sad vinyl chairs from the ’70s and even sadder regular drunks sitting in a circle around the bar and staring vacantly into their drinks. I have never really shied away from meeting new people and hearing their stories – I mean, how else are you supposed to make friends as an adult? So we had some great conversations going around the table, but then Jeff had too many drinks and became a little belligerent. I was explaining to him some of the volunteer work I had been doing (being a “hugger” at a children’s hospital), and I was a little baffled to find that I had to defend myself to him when he wondered why I thought my work was benefiting anyone. Drummer #2 jumped in and that as difficult as it was to see very sick children, I was doing a great thing in comforting them. That immediately endeared him to me. In the parking lot, he gave me his business card and told me that he would like to stay in touch and his website was the easiest way to contact him.

I don’t remember how or where our next outing was, but we ended up spending a lot of time together, at least a couple of times a week. I had vowed to remain celibate for a year when I met him, so I did not see it as a dating opportunity. We would look for new and unusual (and inexpensive) things to do. I took him to the Paper Heart in downtown Phoenix, which is no longer in operation, but it was a multi-purpose art space for performances and poetry jams and live painting. It turned out that he was a photographer as well as a musician and I knew that that place would be right up his alley. For a one-month stretch I had a wild hair to go play some bingo – but not at a casino – so I tried to find places where we could hang out in a church basement with a bunch of blue hairs. All of the events calendars were outdated so we would end up driving up and down these streets where bingo should have been, and eventually we’d give up and go to a restaurant instead.

We carried on as friends for an entire year. Eventually I trusted him enough to talk to him about an idea I had for photographs, which was to paint my face, bald head and neck in white, and then make swirls on one side of my face with gold paint, quite like a Klimt piece of art. I went to a costume shop and found some really great face paints and we invested in an airbrush for the base coat. The photographs turned out better than I could have ever hoped. Some were black and whites, where my torso and shoulders were wrapped in white gauze, and that combined with the white paint and black backdrop made me appear as if I were a marble statue. Another was a full body shot of me wrapped in a quilt sewn with intricately printed fabrics where the gold swirls on my face contrasted with the white base paint, and the overall effect was stunning. We laughed over the fact that at times when I tried to look serious and intense, it really came off as a resting bitch face.

My lease with the current roommate was ending, and Drummer #2 and I decided to become roommates. We wanted to look for a house we could comfortably share that would have enough room for him to do his photography, and we settled on a 3BR/2BA on a little man-made lake, complete with ducks. We even acquired a paddle boat from his best friend. I had the bedroom at the front of the house next to the garage, and he had the master suite with enough room to shove his bed into a corner and set the rest up with black backdrops for his sessions. The middle bedroom was our office where we set up dueling computers. He was often working on editing his most recent photos or moderating a heavy metal website.

Not long after we moved in, we were laying on his bed talking about our days, and he raised up over me on one elbow and leaned down and kissed me. This is one of those times where ignoring my instincts resulted in dire consequences. I loved him as a person who was a large part of my daily living, and he seemed to accept me as I was, even with my quirks and less-than-conventional appearance. But I had all kinds of warnings going off in my brain and I wasn’t sure why. I fought them. I told myself I was being stupid. So at Drummer #2’s insistence that he wanted to be close to me, intimately, I broke my self-imposed celibacy.

Drummer #2 insisted that he wanted to show his affection for me by being intimate, but he absolutely did not want to get into a romantic relationship. I couldn’t reconcile that in my head; we were friends, and we were lovers, and we were living in a house together. Why couldn’t it be a romantic relationship?

I found out the hard way that I should have trusted the warning bells. As soon as he stuck his dick in me, everything changed. I became a possession to control. He didn’t want to be in a relationship with me, but he certainly didn’t want me to find anyone else. He also became incredibly critical of me and tried to control every emotion that I felt. Drummer #2 claimed that he was really “in tune” with me and could sense my thoughts and feelings. There were so many times I would come home from work and it hadn’t been a particularly good or bad day, but he would insist that there was something bothering me and that I should tell him everything. He wanted me to have bad days. Sometimes I would just make up stupid shit to get him off my case, like, “Oh, yeah, you’re right, this thing happened at work today.” Then he would make a big show of comforting me, as if he was the only person on the earth who could help me.

I was starting to feel really smothered. Every look on my face was scrutinized, and he was constantly telling me what I should be feeling instead. The only way I can describe that feeling is like he had is arm constantly over my shoulders, and I couldn’t shrug him off.

The co-habitation started in September of 2008. In February of 2009, I went to an event that involved group meditation. I had had many bouts of bronchitis for the prior 12 months and was fighting another round at that time, but I really wanted to get out of the house and find some peace. I got home and found him waiting on the couch with the TV and computers turned off. He was furious that I was gone for two hours, even though he knew I was going and where I would be, and he started raging. I don’t normally just sit back and accept someone screaming at me; I yell right back. It was a long, drawn out fight that lasted for four days.

We had opposite schedules and would sometimes leave notes for each other by using dry erase markers on our tile counter tops. On the fourth day I awoke to find all of the counters in the kitchen covered in black dry erase marker, telling me how horrible I was and that he had wasted his time with me by doing all of the fun things we did like try to find bingo and take photos. That was about 46 sq. ft. of counter space covered with tiny black letters. He told me that if I would just allow him to guide me that I would become a better person. He told me no one would accept me or love me like he did. At that point I was emotionally exhausted and hurt, and I apologized to him for yelling. But after that first big fight, there was always tension.

In March of 2009 I went on a date with a guy from work. That triggered another drawn-out fight, and more hate messages on the counter tiles. Drummer #2 claimed that he wanted to be in a relationship with me and that I was cheating on him by going out with someone else. It was news to me, but I agreed to stay exclusive with him. Again, I apologized.

There were so many fights and so many hate messages written on the tiles. He would also send me emails whose word counts were in the thousands. To this day I have a folder dedicated to him and all of the correspondence is in that folder, but I can’t bring myself to read it, so I can’t give you any specifics, but the fights always ended with him insisting that I should feel what he told me to feel and if I would just let him guide me, everything would be okay.

In June of 2009 we had another fight. That time, though, something sent him over the edge. I can’t remember what exactly – I probably raised my voice back at him – and he threw a drinking glass across the room at me. I do remember him calling me a fucking piece of shit, a bitch, a whore, yelling that I had made him try to kill me. I had been cooking something on the stove and there were thousands of pieces of glass all around me and in the food. The glass had ended up breaking the wooden blinds at the window next to me. I didn’t say anything but went straight to my room and locked my door. I called my friend and made arrangements to move into the empty third floor of her house, and I hired shitty movers off of Craigslist who broke every piece of furniture they moved.

That wasn’t the end of it, though. It rarely is in an abusive relationship.

It took three months, but he worked on me and wore me down until I agreed to go back to him and try again. At first he cried and tried to make his eyes as big as possible (a trick he admitted later as one of his go-to moves for manipulation), and then he started back in on telling me that if I would just feel what he told me to, everything would be okay. The fighting was constant. I remember curling up into a ball and sobbing because he told me I was worthless and that he should just leave me, and it was my fault that he was falling apart again after never intending to get into another romantic relationship in the first place.

Still, I tried. I constantly walked on egg shells around him, afraid that if I showed the “wrong” emotion, he’d freak out. We even tried to celebrate the holidays. I bought Christmas gifts for him based on what he had mentioned in casual conversation as wanting, and I jokingly told him to try not to buy anything for himself for a few weeks because it might be in my stash for him. He responded by saying, “What kind of piece of shit person do you have to be to tell me what I can buy?”

We didn’t make it to Christmas, though. I can’t remember what prompted me to leave besides the obvious, so maybe I was at the end of my rope. I emailed him and told him I would be at the house on Saturday, December 12th to get the remainder of my dishes from the kitchen and other odds and ends, but I didn’t want him there and I made that very clear. He was supposed to be working the early shift that day and should not have been there when I arrived.

When I let myself into the house carrying a brand new monitor still in its box that he had given to me, the house was silent, and I didn’t see his car. I took off my shoes and walked toward the back to the office to return the monitor. The rooms were dark and I didn’t see him in the corner of the office until I set the box down and I saw movement from the corner of my eye. He had called in sick to work and had been waiting for me. I ran through the kitchen towards the front of the house and had to pause to try to slip my toes into my shoes while opening the front door. He caught up with me there. He hugged his arms around me so that I couldn’t move without dragging him and I couldn’t raise my arms – and he also knew enough to not put too much pressure on one area to leave bruises, like grabbing me with fingers. We struggled at the door and he repeated over and over, “Don’t leave!” I finally managed to get mostly free of him and then I tried to get to my car, but he was pulling on anything he could get his hands on, mostly clothing. I got my flip phone out and managed to dial 911 but then hung up immediately when we continued to struggle in the driveway. The operator called me back and I was completely panicked and shaking, and I told her that he wouldn’t let go of me. When he realized I was on the phone with 911 he let go of me and allowed me to close the door. I started the car and tore out of the driveway, the operator asking if I could get to a safe place and wait for officers.

When the officers arrived (one male, one female), they questioned me. I couldn’t show them any bruises because I knew he hadn’t left any. When they went to the house to question Drummer #2, he gave them the big eyes and worked himself up to force his eyes to water. They came back to me and said since there weren’t any witnesses (this was too early in the morning for people to be out in the neighborhood) and he didn’t leave any marks, they weren’t going to haul him in AND if I called in another report, they were going to arrest me. I was absolutely dumbfounded. This is the stuff you read about but can’t imagine happening until it actually does. I started shaking and sobbing, and they told me to call a friend if I wanted to whine to someone.

After crying in my car for a while, I drove back to my friend’s house. A few hours later I received a call from Drummer #2 wanting to know what I wanted to do. I told him to get the fuck out of the house and stay gone for two hours. He told me he could stay and help. I told him I never wanted him to be there while I got the rest of my stuff and I never wanted to have any contact with him again. That was the last conversation we had.

Drummer #2 always bragged that he was smarter than everyone else, that his IQ tested off the charts and that he could get away with anything he wanted to because all cops and lawyers were stupid – and he proved it when I called 911. In 2010 I lived in two different apartment complexes. Every night of that year, I woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat because I was afraid he had somehow tracked me down and broke in and was standing over me, waiting for me to wake up.

Two Dolla, Make You Holla

Posted on by akiwifreund

in 2006, I was working on a campus with about 4,000 employees full time, and I worked across the street part time at a women’s clothing store to earn extra money for a trip to Europe. The full time job put me in contact with a lot of people – and when I say people, I mean men, especially because it wasn’t as common as it is now for women to be in the IT field.

I met a woman through work who ended up being my traveling companion to Europe that year, and she had a little brother who was up to all kinds of shenanigans. We played designated driver for him when he partied too much to drive, and every time he would see me, he would stick my head in his sweaty armpit and tell me that he loved me. At one point, Little Brother told me that one of his co-workers had the hots for me and wanted to be set up. He wouldn’t tell me who it was and wouldn’t point him out, which made me pretty nervous and self-conscious, but I was flattered that the guy was interested, and Little Brother assured me that he was a good guy. So I agreed to meet the mystery man at a bar/restaurant in front of my second job on a Sunday night after my shift was done.

I arrived, and since I wasn’t sure who I should look for, I waited outside the front door. I was pretty hungry so I thought it would be nice to chow down and get to know this person. After about ten minutes, a guy came out of the front door and introduced himself; I’ll call him Sailor. He was handsome with blue eyes and dark hair, muscles and tattoos. I was pleasantly surprised. He invited me inside, but instead of heading to the restaurant side, he led me to the noisier bar and told me he had already started drinking. I ordered a drink and some fries.

Sailor was immediately ready to share. First he told me that he had singled me out because I “looked like a party girl.” (I wondered what gave him this impression, since I dressed in always-appropriate attire and never did the walk of shame into work.) Turns out Sailor really liked my long-ish red hair (wig! It’s a wig, buddy!). He told me that he had been in the Navy, and that every time they docked, he would pay for a prostitute because they were so cheap, usually $2, and they would do anything he asked. Sailor then told me that he was currently married but wasn’t sure if he should get a divorce or not, because his wife had gotten hundreds of thousands of dollars from a boyfriend who died, and he liked that they were able to buy cars and houses with cash. He asked me about my dating/marriage history, and I explained that when I first moved to Phoenix, I went on many, many dates because I didn’t know anyone and it was a great way to socialize as well as get to know the city. Sailor told me I must be a big whore for going on all of those dates.

This all happened in the first half hour. At this point, my mind switched from “He’s hot” to “Okay, now I have to stick around to see what happens.”

I don’t know how many beers he had. I stopped at half a drink. He started getting sloppy and singing the praises of being black Irish and said over and over how much he liked Irish pubs. I told him there was one about four miles away, so Sailor got a wild hair about going to that one. I insisted on driving. En route, he rolled down the passenger window, flapped my sun visor at passing cars and quacked at them. Sailor also said over and over, “I’m in Kiwi’s car! I can’t believe it!”

We pulled up to the pub, and he became very quiet, then mumbled, “I think I got thrown out of here and banned.” We went in anyway and sat at the bar, making the total patron count 5. The bartender took our drink orders and said, “First date, huh?” Sailor got up to go to the bathroom and the bartender told me he was sorry for me, and that he would pay for my soda. Sailor stumbled back from the bathroom; his mood had changed, and he was pouting and belligerent. I dropped any pretense of being nice – I was anxious to get home and have some real food and relax before working 14 hours the next day. After he finished his drink, Sailor decided he was ready to leave. On the way out, he high kicked the white erase board with the day’s specials – maybe to show the world how mad he was about being kicked out the last time he was there? I stopped to pick it up and reposition it, and Sailor stumbled toward my car, yelling “Just leave it! Leave it!” Of course I didn’t. Rude.

We got back to the first location and I parked my car but left the engine running. At this point, Sailor tried to sweet talk me into allowing him to come home with me to bang. He also tried to attach himself to me like a sucker fish. I told him no, and he said, “For sure, that’s a ‘No’?” I said, “Yes,” and he said, “Awww, you said yes!” Then he was on me. He tried to mash his lips to mine while simultaneously going under my shirt with his hand and ripping the right cup of my bra. The kicker is that he was doing this in front of an outdoor porch filled with about 30 people. I said “No!” even louder and shoved my forearm against his windpipe. Sailor got pissed, said “Fine!” and got out of my car and slammed the door. I didn’t hesitate, just took off. There was no way I wanted him to try to follow me or be on the road at the same time as him.

Two days later he sent me a message through the work messaging system telling me he thought the date went well. I told him that it was pretty bad – he called me a whore, he got drunk, he kicked over a sign and succeeded in ripping my bra. Sailor told me that he got a DUI on the way home that night. (YES!!!) Then he said it wasn’t so bad for someone who hadn’t been on a date for four years. I said, “Yeah, you haven’t dated for that long because you’re married.” Sailor then said that he would be happy to buy me a new bra as long as he could come into the dressing room with me. I told him it was time to figure out his life.

The next time i saw Little Brother, I punched him in the arm repeatedly and told him that he was permanently off of matchmaking duty.

Yes, I Have a Type

Posted on by akiwifreund

I like men. Tall ones, short ones, fit ones, cute ones, nerd ones, “dad body” ones, I can find something to appreciate in many. However, there are certain things that make me stupid – panty-droppers, if you will. They are:

  1. Firemen. I mean, c’mon, this should be a no-brainer. Granted, some are cuter than others, but family and friends alike encourage this particular addiction by sending me photos and buying me calendars. Even my realtor sent me a picture from a property she was renting to five firemen in Tempe, AZ – one of the guys was posed naked on top of a bicycle out back at the pool, helmet on his head, cigarette in his mouth, and holding a rifle. He was quite fit. His leg very coyly covered up his frank and beans. It was my dream photo minus the rifle and the cigarette. He had it blown up to poster size, which made it easy for the realtor to capture and forward to me. Nearly every day someone posts a half-naked fireman (or if it’s my lucky day, fireMEN) on my Facebook wall. My best day was just a few days after I got Dumb and Angry to move out of the house, I had to call 911 to get help because I thought I had popped my shunt out of the little hole in my cranium, and I was in heaven because I had a house full of firemen. They were all running through my house telling me how much they loved it while a couple stayed with me to work me up, so as I was being wheeled out of the house, I told all of them that I was looking for a roommate. Pass that up? Not me! Of course, I was in crazy pain and had just taken a big dose of painkillers so I was high as a kite, so who knows what else I said to them. I’m pretty sure I didn’t try to stuff dollars down their pants.
  2. Tall men. My first two live-in boyfriends were 6’2″ and 6’3″, and a former boyfriend was 6’4″. I tried twice to make a date happen with a guy who was 6’6″ (he wussed out, had just gotten divorced and was too damaged to follow through), and I think the guy who told me I looked like his dead wife was at least 6’3″. What is it about the tall guys? I’m not sure. I mean, yeah, they can see the top of the fridge, but big deal. I think because I’ve never been considered small, I don’t feel like Godzilla around the tall guys, as in, “Me smash little puny men and snap their thighs like twigs!”
  3. Musicians. I’m talking real musicians, like the ones that can play seven instruments or don’t rely on electronic alterations like auto-tune. I’ve lived with two drummers who could also play other instruments. I think I would give my left pinkie finger to go out with Glen Hansard (at least until I figured out the hard way that he’s a nutter or something). I think this stems from playing a few instruments while in high school and teaching myself a little piano, because I understand what is needed in order to be really good. Kid Rock can kiss my fat ass, he’s as talent-less as they get.

What I miss the most is being able to flirt, especially when I encounter a guy who would normally be somewhere on this list. If I attempted to flirt, any reciprocation would be along the lines of, “Oh, look, the sick lady with the cane and the droopy face is trying to get some action!” I can’t walk down the street with confidence while simultaneously looking for strong biceps or shapely buns because I can’t see further than a few feet in front of myself. You could parade a tall, naked fireman playing a guitar in front of me and all I would be able to see are his toes. All of my good years are being wasted in this bed while a whole new dating pool churns in the world outside my door. It seems criminal.

Magical Medical Mystery Tour

Posted on by akiwifreund

Today was the beginning of a string of appointments to become established with a new team of doctors in the city where I have relocated. Immediately upon arriving via cab, I knew that I was wasting my time.

The building was old, maybe built in the ’60s or ’70’s, and did not have automatic doors (first clue). I took the elevator up to the third floor, and arrived in a dingy hallway with sad puke green carpet. A sign in the elevator banks told me that this floor included plastic surgery, physical therapy, neurology, gynecology, hand surgery, general surgery and pain management. Picture this: All of those specialties crammed behind two closed doors, with only two receptionists to check patients in (second clue). I’m used to going to offices where neurology takes up an entire floor and I’ve never seen a list of thirteen-plus specialties squeezed into one space. By contrast, all of the good doctors a) have cleaner floors, and b) charge more, and c) are more up-to-date on research.

I arrived with all of the copies from various doctors and notes from St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix, because I (correctly) guessed that the huge stack of paperwork still hadn’t been scanned into the system so all of the other doctors can see it. I spent about ten minutes total with the doctor. Out of all of the information I provided to her, she asked me repeatedly why I had a shunt, since I didn’t have a diagnosis. I told her that it was obvious after the repeated lumbar punctures that I needed to have something continuously take the fluid off of my brain. I mean, at some point, you have to go with what you see, even if you can’t put a name to it. A name is just a name. A diagnosis is just a diagnosis. I’m a complete person, which also means that I am complex. It’s been five years, so I’m not surprised that a diagnosis is still evading all of the medical staff.

In the end, she threw up her hands and said she had absolutely no idea what was happening with me, but she would be happy to send a referral to any other physicians of my choice. To me, those were the magic words, because I had discussed one doctor in particular with one of my sister’s employees, and it turned out that he would only take patients on if other doctors made the referral (no matter which insurance company foots the bill).

As I suspected, it was not yet time to exit the Magical Medical Mystery Tour – certainly not under that roof, anyway.

Let me explain one more concept to you, and that is of the Carousel of Crap. We first started referring to the Carousel in my former work group as we faced some very specific challenges regarding office politics. The Carousel of Crap is the ride we can all relate to. You go around in circles, the music is a little too loud and whiny, you are nauseated because you ate a little too much cotton candy, you can’t get off because the ride is still moving, and there is shit flying everywhere.

I feel as if I have made a stop at the Carousel while on this tour. I can’t get off, I’m a little sick to my stomach and there is shit flying everywhere. I have to explain everything from scratch. I have to deal with doctors who aren’t interested in reading about my case. I must do my own research and try to find better specialists who are further away from my home base (read: more expensive cab fare). I’d like to tag out and have someone else be me for a while so they could find out what it’s like to be a rock star in the rare and difficult world.

There’s No One Waiting

Posted on by akiwifreund

I belong to an online support community where patients, family members and care providers can ask questions of each other or find others who are facing the same challenges. One man was trying to be proactive as the spouse of a woman newly diagnosed with a debilitating autoimmune condition, and asked basic questions, such as would it be worth it to see a specialist vs. a regular internist, and what should he expect from the insurance companies? Here is my reply:

I love hearing about supportive spouses! My mom has a very supportive husband, and my sisters do as well – we ladies have terrible genes, unfortunately.

Just keep in mind that “supportive” might mean different things at different times. Fatigue and pain are the most common symptoms of any autoimmune diseases, and what she may have been able to do one day might change the next day, and then change back that day after that. Confusing, right? It will be. In fact, there are going to be other odd things about her condition that will confound her, and you. One thing that I like to tell people in my circle is that they should not start any conversations with, “Why don’t you just _______?” If there was an easy answer, we’d have it already.

My personal experience has been that it is tougher to deal with the doctors and staff than it is my insurance company. Don’t be afraid to fire doctors and look for new ones if they refuse to treat your wife (and you) as people who are involved in your wife’s care. It doesn’t do anyone any good to just blindly follow without understanding or questioning why certain things are being ordered, like meds or tests. I don’t get along with doctors who don’t allow for an open dialogue. Sometimes I will even write down a list, and when the doc enters the room, I first ask, “How much time do we have?” and then I tell that person I have a list. The good ones appreciate efficiency. And boy, read as much as you can. Get info from reputable websites, but also look for posts on your wife’s condition from people like us. There may be times when she thinks she is completely alone – but someone inevitably will confirm that she’s not crazy, and whatever is happening is affecting someone else as well.

Just as a side note: I live in a very large city, but have a hard time finding a decent rheumatologist – no one wants to go into that field because there aren’t any cures and the patients all complain. Anyway, the last time I went to see the nurse practitioner, who I was handed off to unwillingly, he told me that if I would just lose weight, the lumps in the tendon sheaths in my hands would go away. I told him I didn’t walk on my hands, so I didn’t see how losing weight would affect the lumps. I fired him.

And my final piece of advice is that I beg you, both, to keep your sense of humor. Try to find something to laugh about every day, even if it’s at the absurdity of what is happening at that moment.

What I would like to add, though, is that I hope his spouse realizes how lucky she is. Dating at my age is no picnic, and heaping complex diseases on top of that guarantees singlehood. I’ve been left by men I have been seriously dating when they realized that the surgeries would be a constant in my life as surely as I have green eyes. That’s why it kills me that every time we get to question of who is in the waiting room for when I get out of surgery, the nurses ask me multiple times, “Don’t you have someone in the waiting room?” It’s always the women who are disbelieving – surely not all men are put off by my bald head and scars all over my head from surgeries? Believe it, sisters. There is no one waiting for me to come out the other side okay.

Do You Believe in Ghosts?

Posted on by akiwifreund

There didn’t used to be a catchy phrase assigned to it when I first entered the dating pool roughly 25 years ago. You think everything is going well and you’ve made a real connection with someone who seems just as enamored with you, and then suddenly they disappear. That’s all we could say – “disappeared” – and shrug our shoulders, and wonder what in the hell happened. Back when all we had were street addresses and land line phones to go off of with information, it was much easier to disappear, especially if the person disappearing didn’t travel in the same circles as you. There was no chance of someone coming back to you and saying, “Oh, I heard about Ben – turns out he ran off with a stripper, and I know where they’re living – wanna TP their single-wide trailer?”

Here is the Urban Dictionary definition of ghosting: “The act of suddenly ceasing all communication with someone the subject is dating, but no longer wishes to date. This is done in hopes that the ghostee will just “get the hint” and leave the subject alone, as opposed to the subject simply telling them he/she is no longer interested. Ghosting is not specific to a certain gender and is closely related to the subject’s maturity and communication skills. Many attempt to justify ghosting as a way to cease dating the ghostee without hurting their feelings, but it in fact proves the subject is thinking more of themselves, as ghosting often creates more confusion for the ghostee than if the subject kindly stated how he/she feels.”

Our current technology has made it nearly impossible to disappear like we used to. We can pay for electronic searches, we can search online public records, we can search for friends of friends on Facebook, we can…wait, I don’t want to give everything away. But it can be done. (Disclaimer: If I am looking for an ex, it is usually to find out if he is staying put while I move around so I feel a little more safe.)

I have become a lot more forward and plain-spoken than I was in my 20s, and so I’m much less likely to ghost someone. In other words, I’ve learned from being both the person on the receiving end of the ghosting as well as being the ghost, and I’ve evolved enough to know that it’s better to communicate than to leave the other person wondering what in the hell is going on. Do not mistake this for other situations where you have given the other person reasons ad nauseum as to why you’re not interested or you don’t want to be contacted again, because that is not the same as a ghosting.

The worst ghosting that was ever done to me was from a guy whom I dated for 6 months from 2004-2005. We met through an internet site – maybe Lavalife? – and bonded over our love of the arts and singing. He was going through his second divorce and at the time had a 3-year-old son. He worked for a credit union, but that only paid the bills; his real passion was doing voice-over work (he was hired for the animated show “The Critic” to perform 30+ voices shortly before it was cancelled), and he liked to write children’s sci-fi. He LOVED the movie “The Incredibles,” and in fact, one of the books he wrote (and copyrighted before the movie was created) was almost exactly like “The Incredibles,” so from this point forward I christen him Mr. Incredible.

Mr. Incredible and I talked on the phone every night – or rather, HE talked about himself for 2-4 hours every night. He moved out to Queen Creek because it was the only place in the Phoenix area where he could afford a house like many others being priced out of the market during the housing bubble, so that meant I had to drive an hour on back roads from my apartment in southeast Phoenix to get to his house even further southeast of town. It meant a lot of driving for me – and I can’t remember why I agreed to do most of the work on that. Also, shortly after we started dating, he acquired two cats for his son because he thought it was really important for him to have pets, never mind the fact that his son tried to kill a cat the year before by throwing it off of a second-floor balcony. (The kid was two. He didn’t know better and they didn’t bother teaching him.) I’m deathly allergic to all animals furred and feathered and it was hell to sleep over. I had also taken a huge pay cut when I relocated from Cincinnati to Phoenix so I didn’t always have cash to buy dinners or even groceries. More often than not, I found myself stopping at the grocery store buying food for Mr. Incredible that we would sometimes eat together, but sometimes it would just be for him and his son. Also, I let Mr. Incredible borrow furniture and blankets for his new house. I met his mom and brother, and he met my parents.

I remember that Mr. Incredible was sad the weekend he found out his divorce from his second marriage had been finalized. I understand that feeling even though I haven’t ever been married or divorced myself, because it makes the split so final. Or so I thought.

Some things changed our dynamic. One was that he accidentally saw me full-Mr. Clean in the bathroom because he walked in on me getting dressed after a shower. This was about four months into the relationship and I could tell it bothered him. Up to that point I had slept in full wigs to try to spare him – and got very little sleep because I would worry about moving around too much and ruining the hair fibers of the wigs, and these wigs in general are miserable to sleep in. The materials they are made of scratch up my tender skin and rub it raw. Around this same time, Mr. Incredible was letting his always-cheerful facade slip. I think he got it in his head that he was a dad and therefore had to be all little league instead of a little dirty, so every time he would suggest something slightly sexually deviant or tell me about his marathon coke-snorting sessions of the past, it was disturbing. That is not to say that I was demanding that he always be cheerful, but I felt as if he wasn’t being his true self.

Mr. Incredible lost his job at the credit union; he said it was a layoff and I have no idea if that was the truth. Our marathon phone sessions began to revolve around revamping his resume and searching for jobs. When we weren’t doing that, he pulled out his Incredibles-esque book for me to edit for both grammar and content. I remember we had another 2-hour phone session on a Saturday night and I knew he had his son that weekend, so I didn’t expect to talk to him until at least Monday. We also traded emails daily up to that point. I (thought I) knew what to anticipate.

I didn’t hear from Mr. Incredible Monday or Tuesday either by phone or email. I left him a message and also emailed him and got no reply. I tried the same again Thursday with the same results. For all of the time we were together, a single day didn’t pass without us communicating, so I knew something was happening. Email and phone weren’t getting the job done, so I decided to stop trying to ask what the fuck was going on.

I drove out to his place on a Saturday morning at around 7 am, when I knew he would still be in bed. I was sick to my stomach and shaking. I rang his doorbell, and I heard some rustling around, and Mr. Incredible came to the door, his hair sticking up all over as if he had just peeled himself off the wall like velcro. He had horrible circles around his eyes and what looked to be three cold sores around his mouth, and all I could think was, “Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice!”  I said, “I don’t care what is going on. I came to get my stuff.” (Mind you, a lot of my belongings were forever donated to him and the house, but I definitely wanted to get back a quilt my mom had made.)

I waited outside while he gathered what he could. After I slammed the trunk shut and got into the driver’s seat, he hung off of the half-open window and said, “I know you were concerned about me finding a job, so I just wanted to let you know that I have some interviews coming up.” Nothing at all about why he had gone radio silent. I told him I didn’t give a shit and I tore away from the curb. I blocked his email and de-programmed my phone so that his number was no longer in my speed dial.

I really didn’t have any idea what happened until I went searching on MySpace a year later and discovered that while we were together, he was also messing around with his most recent ex-wife and got her pregnant.

In 2009, while I was living with Drummer #2, I got an email through YouTube. I didn’t even know that YouTube had an email system! There was a letter from a screen name I didn’t recognize, which started with Mr. Incredible saying that he was using YouTube because I had blocked him everywhere else. At the time he was writing the email he was in the process of divorcing wife #2 a second time (divorce #3, for the record), but the best thing that came out of their second marriage was their second child. It wasn’t an apology. Rather, it was a way for Mr. Incredible to talk about himself yet again. Drummer #2 was actually in the room with me when I got the email and told me I looked as if I had seen a ghost. All of the old emotions came right back up again, dominated by hurt and anger. I wrote back a scathing note basically telling him he was a piece of shit to treat me so poorly after all that I had helped him with, and why did he think it would benefit me in any way for him to tell me that he didn’t regret anything and that he got a daughter out of the deal to boot? Drummer #2, dick that he was, told me that I shouldn’t be upset because at least the guy tried to find me again. The reply I got from Mr. Incredible said that I was right and he was sorry, and he wouldn’t try to contact me again.

And he hasn’t. But every once in a while, I check his Facebook page, and I confirm he still sucks at dating.

Man Purse

Posted on by akiwifreund

This week I received my results from 23&Me; specifically they provided the raw data to me, and I opted to have another company interpret it for $5. Some things I already knew about, including my green eyes, inability to do anything except burn in the sun, and my dislike of bitter foods. The tests also confirmed I’m three times more likely than the general public to get lupus, rheumatoid arthritis or scleroderma. The kicker was the gene that makes me unable to learn from my mistakes repeatedly showed up. I was like, “Hey, 23&Me, get outta my dating life!”

Back in 2006 I was using Plenty of Fish for dating. As per the usual, I was getting messages from men who did not seem to be matches at all – they were just looking for a piece of ass and they couldn’t write a complete sentence to save their lives. Then I got a message from a guy that was an entire paragraph, showcasing his correct use of punctuation and grammar.

All of the advice columns I read about internet dating now suggest that before you trade too many messages, make a date and meet each other – that way you’re not entirely emotionally invested, and there is still a lot to learn about the other person through face-to-face interaction. Well, I did not adhere to that rule at all. I replied, then he replied, then I replied, then he replied, and so on, each message getting longer and longer. Then we talked on the phone a few times, and it seemed like it was an easy flow of conversation. Then we made the date.

I was  kind of excited because he was a bit of a traveler like me, he told me he was a massage therapist, and he looked handsome in his pictures, with surfer curly hair and big blue eyes. I mean, c’mon – a massage therapist, AND tall (6’1″) AND cute? It sounded like I hit the internet dating jackpot.

I picked my favorite place, The Blue Nile, one of the only Ethiopian restaurants in the Phoenix area, now permanently shuttered. I figured it wasn’t expensive and we’d be able to eat with our hands. I was salivating at the idea that he would actually pass the exotic food test, and I was mentally picking out curtains for when we moved in together.

So I was waiting in the parking lot for a few minutes and I got a text message from him that he was running late, but he would be there in about 20 minutes. This was at a time when everyone was using a flip phone and texting took forever because we all had to use the number keypads to choose the letters we wanted, and there were no shortcuts. I told him it was okay, and to stop texting and concentrate on driving.

When he arrived, he confessed he was late because his bus was late. If you don’t already know it, no one in Phoenix rides the bus. It’s a very spread out city and no one wants to transfer four times just to get to a location. So I was quite startled to find out that he didn’t have a car. The first thing that crossed my mind was, “Great, it’s all up to me to haul him around.” His attire for the date was less than impressive. He told me that he had spent time in Hawaii, so his attire matched that story, but the Hawaiian-print shirt had a 10″ slice across the front, and he was wearing a cross-body purse that was red cloth printed with black batik flowers. It was definitely a purse and not a messenger bag.

We went in to the restaurant and started learning more about each other while waiting for the food. My style is to make jokes because I dearly like to laugh. However, every time I said something witty, instead of playing along, he would stop, stare at me intensely and ask me what I meant. Every time I joked, I would have to explain it. Do you know how NOT funny that is? Also, he admitted he wasn’t actually currently employed and had just graduated from massage therapy school, so he wanted to pick up clients just by word of mouth. Oh, and he was sleeping on someone’s couch. Oh, and when he lived in Hawaii, his chest was temporarily pierced so that he could do the body suspension until either the cords broke or his skin ripped. Oh, and he walked over hot coals. (Okay, that last bit was cool, but it wasn’t enough to cancel out the rest.) So to recap: no car, no job, no place to live, no sense of humor, a cut up shirt and a man purse.

By the time dinner ended, it felt like the longest date ever. When the server dropped the check, Man Purse stared at it and said over and over, “Gosh, I wonder what my half is?” The entire meal for the two of us was $20. I took pity on him and grabbed the tray and slapped down $25 in cash and said it was my treat. He got a hug from me in the parking lot. I didn’t even offer to give him a ride home.