#Phoenix

Leaving on a Jet Plane

Posted on by akiwifreund

I always tell people who are struggling with dilemmas to make sure they are the ones making decisions for their lives, and not just waiting for things to happen to them. Hate your job? Look for a new one. Hate your climate? Move to another one. Hate your current relationship? Choose to leave or make your best effort at finding a more suitable mate.

Here I am on the eve of my departure of Arizona, with my car and pod of belongings already on their way to my new apartment in St. Paul. The decision to move back to my home state after being away for 20 years was one of the most difficult I’ve ever had to make, because since the age of 16, I have taken charge of my own life. Really, though, either path ahead of me this time around would have been a bad choice. I could stay in AZ but be at the mercy of the lack of social safety net programs and dependent upon my own friends with their own families and challenges, or I could move to MN and have better programs and healthcare options and help from family and friends but be taken down by seasonal depression because of the 8 months of snow every year. Let me tell you, I am going to buy one (or seven) of those sun therapy lamps and sit and bake in front of it so I don’t go bat-shit crazy.

My family is going to be very helpful with getting me to and from doctor appointments and surgeries. However, since I’ll be living near my family, that means that they are going to know more about my dating life than they have ever known before. I am literally going to have to sneak my date(s) through the back door of my apartment because my sister works across the street, and it’s possible that her minions are going to report goings-on to her, whether she wants to hear them or not. No longer can I get away with vague statements about my romantic adventures. Of course, I’m assuming that I will date again – maybe not immediately, but I can’t be held down for long.

I moved to Arizona in November of 2003 after vowing to never go through another Midwest winter again. When I rolled into town, I didn’t know a single person, I didn’t have a place to live, and I didn’t have a job. I quickly found a place to live in a convenient location with only one huge downfall – my apartment was frequented by many, many cockroaches and crickets. The complex was treating my apartment every month but those little jerks would still come out in droves. I think the worst part was that when I slept I didn’t wear my wigs, so the bugs would crawl up into the corner of the bedroom ceiling and then make death-defying leaps onto my bare head in the middle of the night. There was even one time that I woke up because I was bitten on the back of my knee. I awakened almost immediately and figured out it was a cockroach that got me because it was scurrying away from that area of my body. Then I Googled whether cockroaches do that sort of thing, and they do! It wasn’t my imagination.

Internet dating was picking up speed in 2003/2004, so to solve my problem of not knowing anyone, I decided to go on dates. (I’ll cover that year in a future post.) The internet let me go shopping for men with my grocery list of requirements, which included such necessary items as “pays his own bills” and “does his own laundry.” The list from my 20s was more like “can’t have a hairy back” – oh, how priorities change.

I managed to land my long-term gig after being in Phoenix for a month. I was incredibly lucky to have a workplace only 15 minutes from the apartment I chose, because the job offer came after the apartment, and Phoenix is a city of sprawl – traveling from the SE corner of the suburbs to the NW corner takes an hour and a half or more, depending on how far one has to drive to get to a freeway. As luck would have it, I was one of only three women and the rest of the 33 employees in my work group were men. That gave me an additional pool of potential dates, of which I dipped my big toe into often.

Finding and keeping good friends is always a challenge for any adult who doesn’t still reside in the place where he/she grew up, or who doesn’t attend college in person. After many stops and starts in the realm of friendship, I feel like this is the best part of the world I created here and I have the hardest time saying goodbye to these great people. I have a meaningful connection with more people than the total sum of my fingers and toes and recognize that I am indeed luckier than I sometimes know or deserve. After taking the time to say goodbye to each of these people, hug them, look them in the eye and thank them for their support, I know without a doubt that these friendships are the greatest love story of all of the time that I have been here.

Things You Don’t Think About Until You Lose All of Your Hair

Posted on by akiwifreund

The guy who has been my tenant for the last ten months just moved out last night. I waited until this morning to tackle his bathroom.

I’ll just preface this by saying that he is an extremely hairy guy. He’s got full back, front and arm hair (and leg and pit and let’s just get real here, probably pubes too, because who would let all of that hair grow wild but then trim around the frank and beans), plus he belongs to that club of men who are growing out their beards to ZZ Top lengths. He even has an emblem for that club on his vehicle. (Walks with Wood would tell me that every time he saw my roommate, he had to resist the urge to run his fingers through his beard and then mess it up.) I know about all of his hair because there have been numerous sightings of him in just shorts or a towel.

I suited up for this cleaning by wearing elbow-length gloves and a mask. Even with my gear, I had to hold back a few gags because there were all kinds of curly hairs floating around the tub and the floor. Since I haven’t had hair for about 12.5 years now, it’s not something I have to deal with when I’m cleaning my bathroom. It makes me recall certain events I can’t un-live, like the time a boyfriend and I took another friend to get food at Denny’s at 3 am because it was the only place open, and my first bite into pancakes resulted in a curly, coarse hair wrapping around my tongue. (I did not lose it all over the table but I also did not continue chowing, no matter how not sober I was.) It also reminds me of a few times when I’ve had my face in guys’ junk and one of the short and curlies got stuck at the gag spot at the back of my throat, instantly making me dry heave and my eyes water profusely. As a side note, I am torn about the whole shaving phenomenon, because nothing will kill the mood faster than dry heaving during sexy time, but then again, if guy has some stubble and it comes into contact with my bits, it feels like my most tender parts are being sanded with an 80 grit.

I still have a good number of men in my circles who are single, and the best, unsolicited advice I can give them when they wonder why they are single is that they should start with their bathrooms. Their toilets should be white, not white-and-brown-and-yellow-and-moldy. Same thing for the counter tops and tubs – clean, not hairy, fuzzy and moldy. And for god’s sake, clean out the piles of hair balls that collect in the corners of the room so that when a breeze blows through it doesn’t look like a rabbit has escaped. If a guy does manage to land and keep a woman, I can only say that she must have forgiven him.

I scrubbed the toilet and the tub twice. Twice.

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Ping Pong and Other Sports with Balls

Posted on by akiwifreund

I’m at an age now where I’ve had a chance to really build up a history with a man. In fact, I’ve done it with a few, though this person is by far has racked up the most time with me.

I have been in and out of a relationship with this man that I will refer to as Ping Pong since 2008 all the way to 2014. We met because he was my trainer for the absolute worst job I’ve had to date – calling people to ask them to donate blood to a blood bank. Everyone we contacted had either previously attempted or successfully donated a pint of blood, so it wasn’t exactly cold calling, but often people screamed in our ears or made crazy sounds and then hung up on us. His job was to prepare us for the worst. For the week that we had training, when everyone else would leave the room to take a break, he and I would stay and chat. (You support human rights? I support human rights! You are a democrat? I’m a democrat! You used to love The Scorpions in 8th grade? I used to love The Scorpions in 8th grade!) At least fundamentally, it seemed like we were on the same page about a lot of things, plus he was very cute with big brown eyes and curly eyelashes, and we easily fell into dating. He was very socially conscientious, affectionate and caring. I always liked holding hands with him because we were extremely physically comfortable with each other.

This was not my first or even fifth try at dating someone with children from a previous marriage. He has two daughters and one son with a woman that he married very, very young – mainly because her boobs were so big that when she sat down, they nearly touched her knees (his words). She proved to be very unstable and had numerous affairs during their marriage. At the time that we started dating, she had moved back in to live with her parents to raise two more children with her current husband, a marine. The first sign of trouble started when very early into our relationship, Ping Pong left his phone on the counter at his former in-laws’ house. This was when phones were rarely password protected. So Ping Pong and I were eating dinner at my place and I got this call from a number I don’t recognize, and it’s her. Good lord, she was drunk. She was slurring her words and shouting, and telling me that I needed to stop dating her husband. Ping Pong left to go over to her house and get his phone back, but of course, she wasn’t too drunk to plan ahead and she programmed my number into her phone. For the next 8 months I received all kinds of calls and messages from her with strange accusations, mostly with her being drunk. Whenever she called while he was at my place, he always left to go to her house, ostensibly to talk her down or through the latest episode of bad choices.

Ping Pong explained to me that because his ex was such a nut job and cheated on him constantly, he wanted to take things slow with me. His definition of slow, however, eventually evolved to mean that he would only want to see me once a month for sexy time, and he would not introduce me to his children. I got tired of it and called it off.

(Pause for time with Drummer #2, to be told at a later date.)

Ping Pong kept in touch with me while we had over a year apart, sending random texts saying he was thinking of me and just wondering how I was doing. I ended up in the hospital to get an appendectomy, and he visited. When I saw him again after so much time had passed, I felt as if I was seeing my best friend again, and all of the good feelings of love and comfort returned.

When Drummer #2 was finally out of the picture, Ping Pong and I fell back into dating. But again, it didn’t take long for the old patterns to emerge. I would only see him once a month for sexy time and I was not allowed to meet his children. Again, I called it off.

(Pause for time with Dumb and Angry, also to be told at a later date.)

After the whole Dumb and Angry guy, I told Ping Pong that I would really like to try to make it work, but that things had to be different. I had to meet his parents and I had to meet his children. He said he would definitely set something up where we could all go to dinner, and I wouldn’t be his dirty little secret anymore. Again, the old patterns emerged quickly. Every time I tried to pin him down for a time to get together with everyone, he would give me excuses on why either his parents or his kids wouldn’t be available. (By this time, the kids were 21, 19 and 14. Saying that young children shouldn’t be introduced to partners would not apply here.) But on days he said they weren’t available, he would get together with them anyway and then tell me later. My parents flew down from the Midwest to help celebrate my 40th birthday as well as my graduation with a bachelor’s degree Summa Cum Laude, so I thought it would be the perfect opportunity for him to meet them, and I gave him about 6 weeks notice with reminders so he couldn’t claim he was busy. The day we were supposed to get together he texted me to say that he was playing a softball game really, really far away and he didn’t think he could make it. My lie-dar was going off big time.

Ready for something weird? Sometimes at night I would receive these garbled text messages that would always say something like, “Why don’t you love me apoigfdahsdf alhdfgpoia qweonigdfgh” or “You are the most lgpohierthg ghpoiu ahs gthpia”. It turns out that he would take heavy medications including Ambien before bedtime and if he didn’t hide the phone from himself before turning in, he would send drug-induced text messages. I tried to joke about them or tell him it wasn’t a big deal but he was always embarrassed – but not embarrassed enough to put his phone in a different room. I’m a firm believer that you say what you’re truly feeling when you’re drunk or high, but I wish that he could have been able to actually finish those sentences so I could get the whole picture.

Another factor that sometimes interfered with our relationship is that he is bipolar. When the downward spiral of depression would hit him, which it would often because he wasn’t on the correct dose of medication, the text messages would get more desperate and garbled and he would be on the verge of tears when I would see him. He was never interested in doing anything when he was in the throes of the sickness, and I could not count on him for emotional support for anything that I was going through.

The last breakup happened via text. First, I think it’s terribly disrespectful to use this method for someone you have known for 6 years. Second, I didn’t get any closure. His message said something to the effect of, “I’ve really tried, but I have put my heart into a castle and built the walls and moat up around it, so that I can never be hurt again.” I mean man, for a 43-year-old guy, that suspiciously sounds a lot like his 14-year-old daughter got ahold of his phone. I texted something back to the effect of, “Maybe you should be honest with the women that you date in the future and tell them you are just trying to get laid.” And that was it. I was left alone to process this breakup without being able to say anything else to this man who had a sizable history with me – but maybe it was not enough, or never would be enough, because we didn’t have children together.

So the lesson learned here is a very simple and short list:

1) Don’t look back or go back to someone that didn’t work out on the first try.

By the way, this is a recurring theme. I’m human.

How to Kill a Relationship, Pt. 1

Posted on by akiwifreund

Not long after Eva Mendes gave birth to the baby she and Ryan Gosling created, she was quoted as saying something like, “Wearing your sweatpants around your husband is a surefire marriage killer.”

Okay, let’s review:
1. She isn’t peeing standing up or even trying to whip out her penis in front of him, which, if you’re in a hetero relationship, would be pretty startling if you think your wife/girlfriend is a woman with all of the associated lady bits and trappings thereof. 2. If wearing sweatpants is the worst you’ve got, you’ve got it pretty good.

I think we all have grandparents or even parents where we know the woman in the partnership does not let her partner see her without makeup, even when it’s bedtime. It was a concept that gained popularity around the 1950s, but nowadays most people understand that it’s not healthy to sleep in your makeup every night.

I am an extremely light sleeper and so it’s easy for me to wake up long before my bed mate does when I have sleepovers to brush my teeth and either furiously rub away the sooty eyeliner that has been smeared as low as my nostrils, or to apply just the right amount of eyeliner so that I don’t look like a cancer patient since I am missing my eyelashes. (It also gives me a chance to twist my wig into the right position. It’s very, very uncomfortable to sleep in my wig, but most guys freak out if they wake up to Mr. Clean in their beds when they went to bed with Christina Hendricks the night before.)

I think there is a much more realistic killer to a relationship and it has nothing to do with being beauty-pageant ready, and that is snoring. Inevitably with every couple there is a light sleeper and there is a snorer. In my house, my roommate is the snorer and I am the light sleeper. Sometimes the surefire way to be able to tell he is home without leaving my bedroom is to hear his unabashed open-mouthed, window rattling snores. When talking to other friends about the phenomenon, the one who is the light sleeper is constantly complaining of lack of sleep, and the snorer shrugs his or her shoulders and says, “It’s not a problem for me, I never notice.”

This turned into a debate with a friend on Facebook because he is a window-rattler. He insisted that I hadn’t thought of all of my options, which boiled down to him deciding that if he just purchased ear plugs for his partner, the problem would be solved. Of course, none of his options involved weight reduction of his 300+ pounds or different sleeping positions for the snorer.

So, 1) He is incorrectly assuming that he has the perfect solution (because he has a penis) and I’ve never thought this through. 2) As the person who would have to wear the ear plugs, I wouldn’t be able to hear the much quieter alarm go off in the morning to get up for work. 3) I hate to have shit stuffed in my ears. Doesn’t matter if it’s foam or cotton or ear buds, I just don’t like anything inserted in my ears. (And no, guy, you can’t fuck my ear either, even though I know you are tempted to because you have a penis.) 4) Losing sleep because you can’t even get 30 minutes of uninterrupted sleep isn’t just an annoyance, it’s damaging to the health, especially if it happens every night, not to mention the sleep-deprived person is going to be constantly crabby.