#relationships

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.

What’s In a Name?

Posted on by akiwifreund

Some time ago, I had an exchange of short messages with a guy on a dating site. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen with my most recent shunt surgery and how long it would be functional, but I was feeling, well, like I wanted to check out the pool. So of course my shunt went into failure immediately after I sent the first few messages, right around the same time he asked me what kind of relationship I was looking for. I sent him a message saying that I had to go into crisis mode without giving him any details and that it wouldn’t be a good idea after all to try to date, and that I wouldn’t be on the site anymore. His response was, “Well then why are you here, sweet pea?”

My first instinct was to get all poundy-poundy on the keyboard and slug him verbally. Then I took a breath because I needed to evaluate why that response got me all worked up.

This bothered me because 1) I was telling him that I was getting off of the site, so asking me why I was there after I said I wouldn’t be on anymore was at best redundant and at worst insensitive; 2) He doesn’t know me well enough to call me “sweet pea,” so that came off as being really condescending; 3) I’m still a human being trying to make a connection.

On a grander scale, how much does terminology affect how others see us, and how we see ourselves? If a man who doesn’t know me well calls me “sweet pea,” it tells me he doesn’t respect me (or women in general). It’s kind of like petting a strange dog without knowing if it bites people it doesn’t know. Maybe some women are charmed by pet names like that from strangers, but I’m not, and I do bite.

Back when I was in school all the way to my mid-20’s, I was still trying to figure out how I wanted other people to refer to me. One friend and I attached the word “babe” after our names, so she would call me the equivalent of “Kiwi-babe” and I would call her something like “Kristi-babe.” Another friend and I decided, after much debate, that we were not girls and not women, but rather “chicks” – the kind that could hang with the guys and play darts and drink whiskey and be super laid back. Later in my 20’s the “babe” moniker fell by the wayside, but “chick” stuck around. I also managed to pick up the nickname Chester the Molester while working at a restaurant, but I wasn’t alone – there was also Pea Pod Todd and Nicki Pickle. After living in a few more states and tucking more adventures under my belt, a co-worker nicknamed me Chuck. The guy I was messing around with at the time refused to call me that because it was too masculine, as in “Oh, Chuck, that feels so good.” Nope, it didn’t work for him, the straightest man on the planet.

In my 30s, I got further away from the usage of “girl” to describe myself, but was okay with the word “chick” still. But now I’m 41, and I realized that I immediately lose my lady boner when a man refers to “cute girls” or implies that I am a girl. I also don’t get hot for any man who is open to dating a 21-year-old when he is in his mid-40’s – I mean, really, how is it possible to have anything in common, especially if the man claims to be looking for a long-term relationship?

Now that I have decided I am a woman, it means I can no longer crush on Hozier or Ed Sheeran, because that would just be creepy. Pretty soon I am going to wear a variety of fabrics and patterns all mashed together, yarn tied into bows in my hair and garish blush and lipstick. I will forgo the awful perfume that smells like cat pee and cigarette smoke because I’m allergic to perfumes, but just know that I would make it part of the final package if I could. The biggest thing is that I will stop caring. I won’t give a rip if someone calls me a bitch because I’ll say it right back. That’s what I look forward to the most about aging – kiss the filter goodbye!

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.

Side Eyes

Posted on by akiwifreund

Internet dating takes a lot of patience. It takes a lot of patience, a sense of humor, a filter, a hard candy coating, and a take no prisoners attitude.

I have had many forays into internet dating, though the concept is a lot more organized than when I first dipped my big toe into it. See, kids, first there was instant messaging on AOL. Then MSN messenger became popular. Then Yahoo messenger joined the fray. Any other programs after those big three were copycats and fleeting.

The internet used to be very difficult to navigate and very boring. I remember poking around on it circa 1991 and thinking it wasn’t at all interesting – it moved painfully slowly, and it was like reading a 102-page term paper. But only a few years later, when these messenger programs were becoming popular, pop-up ads and porn were running amok like children who only ate sugar for all of their meals. So it didn’t take long for sex and porn to work their way into conversations happening on messenger windows.

By 1996, the internet was evolving quickly. I remember how exciting it was to join chat rooms to talk about a topic and actually connect with other people in real time. From my profile, other users could tell that I was a single woman in my 20s, and within a few minutes, I would be trying to juggle upwards of 25 windows of private chats – specifically, men who were trying to hit on me. Sometimes there would be bots in the room who would automatically start a chat when someone new would join, and they would include a link for you to click; but being the savvy users that we were, the other members of the chat would send out a general warning to ignore “STACIA69” or some similar screen name because it was a bot that would send your machine a virus. Decades before textspeak, we all had to learn cute codes and acronyms. There was no DTF (down to fuck), but I’m pretty sure the original was BRB, which, depending on who you ask, either stands for “be right back” or “bathroom break.” The chat rooms I chose to enter would be based on my location; at that time, I lived in Albuquerque, so I would enter a chat for that city or state. I hadn’t dated much before moving to New Mexico, so I wasn’t exactly confident in my ability to catch anyone’s attention. Suddenly, hoards of men wanted me! They all thought I sounded cute – blonde hair, green eyes, not too tall or short. If I felt like we could have conversations lasting more than two minutes before a guy started talking about banging, I’d go out with him. BAM! Internet dating.

Fast forward to 2003, after two live-in boyfriends: I relocated to a city where I didn’t know one single person. By this time, there were a few very popular sites set up specifically for dating, including eHarmony (which was heavily running ads on TV) and LavaLife. I tried to take the free eHarmony quiz, and at the very end of it, I wasn’t completely turned down, but I did get a message saying “Only 3% of the male population would be interested in dating you. Bear with us, it may take a few weeks to find someone who would be a match.” I joined LavaLife instead. I think they had categories available for people to choose broken down into “Dating,” “Long-Term Relationship” and “Just Sex” or something like that. I quickly found out that it didn’t matter which category you designated – the men would hunt you down for just sex. I remember that I went on a few dates with a guy who was a chauffeur, and I wasn’t feeling especially connected or attracted to him, but we were having an okay time – or so I thought. At the end of our third date, he turned to me, exasperated, and said, “So are we going to fuck or what?” I chose the “or what” and that was the end of that. Another guy that I started talking to through the site was in Italy (Yay! Very exciting!), and we started talking on Yahoo messenger. I think it was only five minutes into the conversation when he started sending me buzzes to try to get my attention because I wasn’t answering fast enough, then he told me he didn’t want me talking to any other men. To clarify, I wasn’t allowed to smile at or even look at other men, even if it was a guy ringing up my groceries. BAM! Internet stalker.

Around 2005, Match.com and PlentyofFish.com entered the picture. At that time, both were very rudimentary; Match considered you a “match” if your height/weight/age/eye color fell within the other person’s parameters, and Plenty of Fish allowed users to send emails, but that was it. It was around this time that I started singing to myself, “Shopping for men! Shopping for men!” every time I’d log on. I had become a lot more specific about what I was looking for in men, starting with their grammar – if they couldn’t formulate a complete sentence, I’d write them off and move on. I also noticed that the messages from the men on Plenty of Fish were getting more and more outrageous, so I didn’t really take anything on that site seriously, because I think all of the guys were DTF and crazy to boot.

OKCupid entered the scene around 2008 or 2009. Their contribution to the now-crowded internet dating scene was the questions. The questions ranged from “Are you looking to settle down and have children?” to “If you caught your husband looking at animal porn, what would you do?” You could answer as few as five questions or as many as a thousand, but the more questions you answer, the better the picture prospective dates could compile from your answers. (Of course, everyone is expected to be on the honor system and answer truthfully. You should always answer “No” if you are asked if you would do something immoral and/or hurtful, even if your instincts say that you should answer “Yes” to screwing that turtle if no one would ever find out.)

In 2011, after many starts and stops with internet dating, I was giving it another go, but sticking to the free sites – OKCupid and PlentyofFish. Surprisingly, on PlentyofFish, I had a decent conversation with a guy. We were talking about traveling and road trips and seemed to like some of the same things, but had enough diverse interests from each other that I would be able to look forward to new adventures. We talked about where to meet up in the next week. So upon waking up the next morning, imagine my surprise when I opened a message from him that was sent at 3 a.m. and it was a folder of dick and cum pictures. I replied back asking what in the hell he was thinking, because we hadn’t been talking about sex at all. He gave some lame excuse about not meaning to send them to me. I told him that shit would not fly with me, and he apologized. The next morning I woke up, and there were more dick and cum pictures, sent around 2 a.m.! I replied and asked what the fuck was going on, and he said he was a recovering alcoholic and had impulse control problems. I didn’t feel the need to stay in touch with him. (Also, just as a side note, if your dick is smaller than a thumb when it’s hard, I don’t advise sending unsolicited pictures. Warn a girl first.)

A lot of the messages I was receiving on OKCupid weren’t going anywhere either. I think I went on a handful of random dates, but nothing made it past the initial meeting. The way that I was being approached was pretty trite – almost every guy said, “What’s up?” or the bad grammar version thereof. At least when I approached men, I would find something in their profiles to talk about. One guy immediately asked me out for dinner, so I looked at his profile, which didn’t contain any information, so I next looked at the questions he answered. One theme that kept coming up was his dabbling with hard drugs, including meth, coke and heroin. I replied that I wasn’t interested and I wouldn’t date a user. His reply was, “C’mon, it’s not like I’m going to do blow off your tits. Big deal if we go out to dinner.” Yeah, buddy, still not interested in wasting an evening with you.

I swore off internet dating forever after having some bad experiences. However, now that I have relocated and reconnected with my uncle, I discovered that HE is doing internet dating. (He is also texting on a regular basis, which I blame on him having a 16-year-old son.) He found an age-appropriate girlfriend for the first time in his life – he’s in his early 60s. So of course I irrationally think, “Well, if he can do it, maybe I can try again.” Never mind the fact that I walk with a cane and have a droopy face, and most days I can’t be bothered to wear my wigs because they’re uncomfortable to lay down in…someone has to be okay with dating Quasimodo, right???

On second thought, no. I don’t want to be someone else’s internet dating story.

You Look Just Like My Dead Wife

Posted on by akiwifreund

In 2012, I was doing relatively well. Abdominal pains that plagued me for 8 months suddenly became a lot less frequent, and the shunt seemed to be doing its job, so I was actually able to work out and lose weight.

I got a message from a friend, S., telling me that she met a guy who seemed to be right up my alley. I’ll nickname him Take a Hike. He was widowed with two kids, had a foul mouth, and seemed to have the same sense of humor as me, so she suggested that we meet. We texted and talked and set up our first date, which included his two young children; I certainly didn’t mind if he didn’t. Take a Hike was a good friend of a female friend of S., Eye Cabbage, who had been in a relationship with another woman for 16 years, so I knew that he would be open-minded about my friends and beliefs.

We seemed to get along fairly well and I loved his kids. We’d see each other a few times a week, sometimes including the kids and sometimes not. We were having lots of dirty, dirty sex, the kind that my mother should never know about. Take a Hike would always tell me to trust him and to get out of my head while poking me between the eyes, because I would tense up and tend to over-analyze certain things that were bothering me in general life, which would lead to less successful romps. He very much appreciated my hard work on the working out as he was always telling me I had a beautiful body.

There were some things I found out later, like the deceased wife had the same name as my oldest sister and our first date was on the first anniversary of her death. I was a little upset that he didn’t tell me about it being the anniversary. I mean, we could have made it ANY day, it didn’t have to be that day.

After about three to four months of dating and being in constant contact, I went away to Europe for a few weeks because I had promised my friends I would come back to see them if I was well enough. We had tried to work it out so that Take a Hike could come with me for at least a week while the kids stayed with his in-laws, but couldn’t find a viable solution, so he stayed home and instead asked me for souvenirs. I emailed him regularly and relayed my adventures.

When I returned from Europe, everything changed. He was not returning my calls or emails. I conspired with S. and Eye Cabbage to meet up with him at a restaurant they were going to, just to try to talk to him face-to-face. He and I took the kids back to his house, put them to bed, we banged, and he told me he would be better about staying in touch – it was just that I looked so much like his deceased wife with my green eyes and bald head (which he had never seen)/red wig that he was starting to feel weird about dating me. When I left to go home, we kissed and made out, and his Newfoundland dog tried to tackle me to the ground like she always did – nothing was different.

But again, after that night, he wouldn’t answer my emails, calls or texts. I felt absolutely rotten about my appearance; it was nothing I could help, but obviously he didn’t want any reminders.

I really despise chasing a man down and begging him to treat me like I matter. I finally said “Fuck it” and wrote him off.

Not long after – maybe a week or two – I found out that he decided to shack up with Eye Cabbage. The lesbian friend. The woman who had been with her woman for 16 years. I was their “cover” while she worked out her plan to leave her girlfriend. I felt like the biggest kind of idiot – for being used, for being duped, for trusting ANYONE. They could have done all of this without him sticking his dick in me. She acted like she was concerned and wanted to help us connect, but really, I was just helping to propel her plan.

As far as I’m concerned, Take a Hike and Eye Cabbage deserve each other.

P.S. to Eye Cabbage: Be prepared to be the bread winner for the rest of your life. That lazy slug has never had a job and never will. Ha ha.

Can Men and Women Really Be Friends?

Posted on by akiwifreund

Recently, I had to cut off a friendship with a man I have known for 10 years. I did it very deliberately and specifically told him why we could no longer be friends – as opposed to other methods such as always appearing to be too busy, or never answering calls/messages.

At the beginning of this month my sister passed away, and ten days later, a friend passed as well, both from cancer. Both were young, and their cancer took over their bodies very quickly. I felt as if I had been crying non-stop since I moved to Minnesota. So when this friend, Clueless, texted me about taking care of destroying old, useless MRI films for me, I told him what happened. This is how he responded:

“How old was he? How did he die?”

Now, let me rewind a little bit and tell you that I had told him when my sister was sick that it was imperative that I move back to MN as quickly as possible so I could say goodbye to her. His response was, “Well, WHEN is she going to die?” Up to that point he had been calling me to complain that he didn’t have any friends, and the people he had considered himself close to – me included – were all leaving the state and he wasn’t going to have anyone left. So when he started quizzing me about the friend who passed, I ended each short answer with, “Why?” After the second time I responded with “Why?”, he told me he felt as if I was fishing for condolences.

Fishing for condolences.

He told me that he was justified in demanding that I defend why these deaths affected me.

Let me go back even further to February 20, 2013. That was the day I had my third brain surgery (I’ve had 10 at the present date), and I was lying in my hospital bed, in horrible pain as the anesthesia was wearing off. I got a call from Clueless. He wasn’t calling to see how I was doing; instead, in his most whiny voice, he said, “This is day one without Nasty, it’s your job to keep me from calling her.” Nasty was his ex-girlfriend, whom he wasn’t currently seeing, who ended up giving a cable guy a BJ like she was living out a porn scene, and Clueless found out about it. Nasty was a very mousy woman with glasses and braces who called in sick at least twice a week at her workplace because she didn’t feel like going to work. The only reason Clueless was so attached to her was that she is a swallower. They had nothing in common, fought constantly, and she didn’t understand any of his cultural references because she was at least a decade younger than him. That day in the hospital I tried to follow his rantings, but he got pissed off when I dozed off, and hung up on me telling me that he was going to call back the next day and quiz me about what he said. And he certainly made good that promise.

Let me go back even further. In 2005, I joined an online socializing group. We would sign up to events listed on a calendar, hosted by other members of the group. It was a great way to meet new people and try new things. I hosted a few events myself including a dinner night at an Ethiopian restaurant. Cluless joined the group at around the same time. At the events, we would often gravitate towards each other, always laughing and sharing stories. We ended up dating. Now, the length of the dating varies according to whom you ask; we lasted about six months, but Clueless says it was only one month because the rest of the time he was trying to find someone better to date. He also had a list of 42 qualities he was looking for in a mate. I met all but two because at the time I had already lost all of my hair and so didn’t meet his minimum requirement of shoulder-length hair, and my bachelor’s degree came much later. At the time we were dating he wasn’t working and he was getting his food from the food bank, but was still convinced that he should buy an investment property. Clueless would often tell me that he was different from everyone else – he really, really didn’t want to work, and he wanted all of his income to be passive income. No, really. So when he told me he was going to have his mortgage broker cook the numbers so he could qualify to buy another property, we got into it. (By the way, #3 on his list was to have a girlfriend who would NEVER question and always tell him he was doing the right thing.) During the fight he told me I obviously didn’t know what I was talking about because I had never owned a home. It didn’t matter to him that I had already been in real estate for 12 years at that point; he had just gotten his real estate license six months prior, and that outweighed any experience I had. I told him that the crazy prices in the market weren’t going to last and that he shouldn’t count on a house becoming instant income, and he obviously couldn’t handle taking on another mortgage. (Incidentally, six months later the market crashed and his properties were sold at 1/3 of their high values. He is still kicking himself 9 years later.)

Anyway, it got ugly. We didn’t talk for a year and a half. When he contacted me again, it was to tell me that he didn’t know why we broke up. I reminded him. He said it wouldn’t have worked out anyway because it always weirded him out that I don’t have hair. Lemme just tell you that he’s a few inches shorter than me, is losing his hair, and doesn’t care for his teeth, so his rotting mouth smells like moth balls. He’s completely obsessed with appearances and it kills him that other men are taller than him, and he has spent thousands of dollars on hair products. He doesn’t see the merit in making an effort with his teeth.

Since reconnecting, Clueless and I have kept in touch and even had times where we could comfortably be friends. We’ve shared birthdays, movie nights and game nights. We did not, however, resume dating. I couldn’t view him the same after knowing that he respected me so little.

Besides the phone call I got on that day of surgery and his jerky attitude with my most recent losses, there have been other times that he has not acted in a caring manner. For example, whenever he wanted to socialize, he would insist I drive 60 miles round trip to his house, because he could not handle driving from his workplace to my house, which were only 2 miles apart, and for all but 8 months in the last 5 years I haven’t been able to drive more than 2 miles or be upright for more than 30 minutes, if at all. In other words, if I couldn’t get myself to his suburb, he wouldn’t waste his time with me. Also, during one of our conversations in the last year, he told me that women do not age well, only men, his mother included.

So when I told him that I was no longer interested in being friends, he became very defensive, telling me that he was a much better friend than me because he would always reach out to me (and say incredibly shitty things!). I blocked his email, phone and Facebook accounts.

It doesn’t help his case that after I left Phoenix he invited himself to my friend’s house under the guise that he was sad that I left and he ended up trying to force himself upon her so that she had to push him off of her and kick him out of the house. He was mad. I was tempted to bring that up when i was telling him to fuck off, but why drag her into it? He thinks he has some magic micro penis that is going to put girls under a spell if he just waives it around.

Maybe the problem isn’t whether men and women can be friends, but rather what kinds of patterns of behavior do we fall into because of our history. When I think about what I enjoy out of any friendship, it’s sharing adventures and quality time together, and there’s give and take, plus a fair amount of respect for both parties towards the other. Ultimately I have decided at this point, Clueless can kiss my fat ass.

Goodbye, My Almost Lover

Posted on by akiwifreund

In 2013, I was kind of limping through the year. I had surgeries on February 20th, May 20th and May 26th, and by the time I flew back to Minnesota to attend a high school reunion and help my parents with organizing their house, my shunt had already formed a huge bubble in my back when it cracked after only being implanted for a month. I had just seen my neurosurgeon the day before flying out and he had given me the okay to leave Arizona because besides the large collection of CSF under my skin, I seemed to still be functioning.

What is really different about the school that I graduated from is that the majority of us lived on campus in a dorm, much like college. Only juniors and seniors attended, so the people in my graduating class were together for two years, and the class before us and after us were around for half of our tenure there. The advent of Facebook was really a boon in our attempts to stay connected with our classmates; we came from all over the state of Minnesota to attend the “Fame school” and basically felt largely that we were the rejects of our old schools because we were more intense about our art areas than most – and let’s face it, just different in general. So when one classmate organized yearly picnics for the students who graduated between 1991 and 1995 (just so there would be some overlap), we all knew that if we made the effort, there was a pretty good chance that we’d see some good friends.

I took up the task of being the event photographer. If you ever feel guilty about sitting around on your duff at a gathering, it’s a great excuse to talk to every single person who attends.

This one guy, Hot Dog (and you’d laugh if you knew his real nickname!), was in attendance. He was always in my peripheral group of friends, since he was a year younger and dated one of my classmates. He was wild. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that he had a wild mouth. He always looked a little wild, with flyaway frizzy hair, cherub cheeks and tree trunk arms, but his cutting wit was dangerous. I always thought of him as being an obnoxious younger brother while we were in school. If there was a way to make jokes about dead babies and grandmothers, he’d be the one to do it. And it was never at a quiet volume. Never.

True to form, while I was visiting with Hot Dog at a picnic table with a couple of other friends, he lifted a cheek and let out a fart. He did another one when I whipped out my camera, saying, “I was just blowing Brad a kiss.”

Only two days later, when I was back at my parents’ house, my shunt went into total failure and I lost most of my vision. I had to fly back to Phoenix to be operated on again by my neurosurgeon because the neurosurgeons at the Mayo in Rochester turned me down – they didn’t understand my symptoms, so they didn’t want to work on me. Any plans to socialize were impossible.

But after that reunion, Hot Dog stayed in touch with me. I’m not sure if I sent him a message first, or if he initiated contact, but we commiserated over our mutual disgust for my most recent ex-boyfriend (Angry and Stupid? Dumb and Angry? I will have to look back at what I nicknamed him initially.), because we were all classmates together. He actually married (and subsequently divorced) the classmate that he dated through his time at the arts high school; they were together about 13 years before she found Jesus, and I think they were as close to being soul mates as anyone could hope.

After a few months, our messages became more intense. He was always supportive of what I was going through with my brain stuff and tried to understand as much as anyone could who had never had a chronic condition himself. We had some discussions about my difficulty as a bald woman finding any men who were okay with my hair loss. It was immediately easier for me to open up to him because for him, my lack of hair never diminished my femininity in his eyes. Then I found out that some of my kinks were the same as his – not an easy feat, as anyone in the kink world knows. I’m not saying that I am anywhere as unusual as the guy who thought it was hot to have his jaw stomped on and teeth knocked out, but there are certainly more than 50 shades of dirty out there. We had many steamy sessions of sharing our wants and urges. He also talked about how good it felt to start working out again, getting back into the karate he had picked up as a boy, sweating and kicking and punching and trading fat for muscle. We discussed the possibility of coordinating a road trip for him to come down to Arizona.

And then he got sick.

At first he was joking that his intestines exploded. At least, that’s what it felt like to him. But as it turns out, after his doctor insisted multiple times that he suspected the atypical presentation was actually cancer, and his body flying apart was caused by stage III colorectal cancer. He had to go through multiple rounds of chemo to try to keep the cancer that had spread to other parts of his body under control before one big surgery was performed to cut it out. At the same time that he was going through that, I had already had four more surgeries and was waiting on another one, and was in excruciating pain for 10 months because of a leak that could not be fixed until we figured out what I was allergic to. Rather than talking about what we wanted to do to each other, our talks shifted to his fears about never having full functionality or a decent quality of life ever again.

The surgery was extensive. He had a bowel resection and they removed his rectum completely, sentencing him to a colostomy bag for the rest of his life. The surgery was not as bad as it could have been – the doctors had no idea what to plan for, everything would only become apparent after opening him – but it was certainly bad enough.

We traded more messages, but there were a few times when it sounded like he might try to reconcile with his ex-wife. Around the same time, Ping Pong came in for his final round, so I let Hot Dog know that I would no longer be able to talk dirty as we had been, but I didn’t want to lose touch. Our talks were never the same and we went radio silent fairly quickly.

Around the end of March of 2015, I saw an article about a guy who was modeling with his colostomy bag, and I sent it to Hot Dog letting him know that I was thinking of him and hoping that he was getting stronger. I didn’t receive a response. At the end of April, when I figured out that I would have to move back to Minnesota, I sent him another note letting him know I was landing very close to him. Again, there was no response. At that point I figured that he really didn’t want much to do with me after I went back to the ex and he tried to move on.

But then he died.

It was actually just two days ago. I found out because like every other morning, I started by opening my laptop and catching up on the news. That was the first thing that came up on my Facebook. It was like being punched in the stomach. From what I’ve been able to gather, they succeeded in removing all of the cancer, but the surgery was so invasive that the aftereffects were eroding his life on a grand scale. For a short amount of time he allowed pictures to be posted of some events he attended and it seemed he had taken up residence at his favorite coffee shop to sketch, but he did not update Facebook himself.

I was not the only one who was shocked by the news, but towards the end, he kept only his most loyal people close to him. I understand. I came in late and left early. But I still wish we could have had a conversation, and maybe some laughs, all better face-to-face rather than 1600 miles away, before the option was forever off the table.

On Friday we will all have to say goodbye to Hot Dog. He was so many things to so many people, but to me, he was my biggest regret. I didn’t see the diamond that was camouflaged by all of the shit jokes.

Been There, Had That Done to Me

Posted on by akiwifreund

For the past three hours, I have been reading all of the submissions on the “Straight White Boys Texting” Tumblr site. It’s for real. We couldn’t make this stuff up if we tried – and by “we”, I mean women. We are barraged by unsolicited sexual taunts, messages, photos, groping and slander constantly. Is it lucky or unlucky to be an attractive woman? Of course, this is a hypothetical question, because I don’t put myself solely in either category. No matter what, if you are a female, you’re going to be on the receiving end of stupidity and hatred.

Facebook has been great about allowing me to connect with people I haven’t seen in about 23 years or more. I get little glimpses into their lives, such as who is cranking out the babies, who is getting married (some even for the fourth time!), who is getting divorced, and who has left this earth – and everything mundane in between, including which recipes friends are going to try this week.

One such friend whom I haven’t seen for a few decades had many posts over a short period of time regarding his polygamous arrangement disintegrating. (By the way, he’s a self-proclaimed Christian and even posts church events he attends or pictures of the bands performing for whom he has run the sound. Polygamy isn’t just for heathens!) Both his wife and their girlfriend left him – and I have no clue as to why, because no one is going to admit how and how much they fucked up. Besides becoming “friends” on Facebook, he and I hadn’t traded any messages. Then BAM! Out of the blue, I get a message saying something to the effect of “Hi”. I answered back with a “Hi,” and then the next thing from him says, “I’m horny and lonely lol.”

Let’s break this down: 1) There’s no pretext before the declaration of horniness; 2) We’ve never previously talked about feeling lonely or horny; 3) Does the “lol” at the end of the message instantly make it a “joke” so that if I’m offended, he can just say he was joking and that it doesn’t mean anything? 4) So what??? Does he want a medal? Oh, no, wait – I know what he wants. He wants to bang, to be told he’s the best/biggest and that no one else compares, and he wants it NOW. Talking to me like a human being isn’t going to get him what he wants, obviously.

This is one of the biggest problems we face today as a society seeking social partners. Instant gratification is killing our skills. Now, males don’t want to “waste” time on such simple things like conversation – let’s get straight to the sex!! On top of that, anonymity makes it easy to throw out insults and degradation like handfuls of slimy shit. So if you’re a guy, or a man, or a boy, saying hello and then instantly wanting to know if someone is into anal sex is just like monkeys slinging around turds. Sure, if you do it 100 times, you might find someone one of those 100 times who replies back and says, “GOD YES, I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR YOU TO ASK! NO ONE HAS EVER ASKED ME THAT BEFORE! I AM DTF RIGHT NOW!” But my guess is that she is also going to sneak into your place and cook your daughter’s pet bunny. You have no filter + she has no filter = scary crazy and shit is going to escalate quickly.

And when women turn down these handfuls of flying turds, it’s disturbing that we are instantly and consistently called bitches/sluts/whores/ugly. Is that some sort of reverse psychology, where guys think that being nasty is going to suddenly open our legs? They don’t even make the connection that if they treated us like human beings, the Holy Grail might, in fact, be attainable – they just have to not act like assholes. As soon as they do, though, that shit slams shut and the rivers of love and affection dry up instantly. It should be no great mystery. In fact, what I am saying here has been repeated thousands of times over.

Occasionally the moderator of the “Straight White Boys Texting” posts question and answer exchanges that she has received. There have been many times where she has been told that she just needs to get laid. Therein lies a specific problem, too: The perception that the penis obviously solves all ills. Running a temperature and colors are coming out of your nose? Just get laid. Your best friend died? Just get laid. Lost everything in a fire? Eat a dick, it will make you feel better.

I wish I could say to some of these guys, “Hey, I’m someone’s daughter/sister/aunt too – would you want the females in your life to be treated this way?” Sadly, I don’t feel like this is an effective way to reach them. Often their impatience and hatred of females is universal. If they had a daughter who was being treated this way, it’s more likely that he would say she deserved it or that he should teach her how to defend herself, but never would it enter into his mind that he ought to not attack women or that he should lead other males by example.