Mmmm, That's Bass

Here I am in Manhattan, where I lived for 3 years. Okay, can't really prove it. You'll just have to take my word for it. I do my best to tell the truth.

It's a shame I don't have any photos from New York. There is no proof that I lived in Manhattan and no pretty pictures to make this story less wordy. Besides, it starts back in South Carolina with the Wicked Step-Ex-Boyfriend, or WSEB as he shall hitherto be known. Before I go on with this story, in the interest of fairness I will point out that the WSEB has actually apologised to me, in writing, for the whole shebang. In his defense, he pointed out that he was going through some turmoil at the time. In his defense, I point out that I can be a rather substantially-sized pain in the patootie.

Our main problem had been an inability to break up. I blame him for this. He directed the relationship and if he said we were broken up, then, by Om, we were bloody well broken up. He had, however, made some plans to attend a professional conference and for me to meet him there before breaking up our relationship. It seemed a shame not to have me around. He was planning to do some networking and he was hoping I could help. Probably a large part of our breaking-up problem was that we were so damned civilized about it. "Sure," I said. "Happy to help." Besides, it was in South Carolina and not too terribly far away from where I lived. It wouldn't actually put me out.

I had recently been outlet shopping with my sister and had purchased (on the strength of being a single woman again) a wonderful dress that was strapless and backless and held up solely by the power of molecular attraction. It was mostly white with tiny stripes of color running through it diagonally. The bodice clung and the skirt fanned out alla Donna Reed. I was on an Amalfi binge in those days and had some white heeled sandals with teensy straps. Yeah, okay - not Jimmy Chu or whatever, but I really liked the style Amalfi put out and they were all leather, so they would be good for dancing. (My feet now shudder at the memory of dancing in such things.) I brought this outfit along.

I actually attended at least one session at this conference, which was not in my field, and argued with the WSEB later about it. My main job, though, came up at the wine and cheese (Free booze? I'm there!) reception. My former beau explained that he would be chatting up future interviewers and my job was to line up the next one for him. He gave me a list of people he wanted cornered and the order he wanted them in. We all wore those adhesive, "Hello, My Name Is" labels. This is just the sort of thing I am utterly unable to do for myself. However, doing it for someone else is something radically different and seemed like fun. They were all men, so I would hold his drink for him and point my strapless bodice at the next victim. You'd think that what with all of them being professional psychologists that they would not fall for this. You'd think they'd say to themselves, "Look at that brazen and not-that-attractive hussy thinking she can point her highbeams at me and lure me to her!" No, men seem to be men. They were front and center in less than two minutes and I would charm their professional socks off of them until the WSEB was done with the previous employment candidate. To this day I wonder if they got together later and compared notes. "Did you see how that one guy brought a babe with him to line up interviews? How much you think he paid her? Ya think she was a pro?"

It wasn't a long evening, just one of those six-to-eighters where people drift off when the wine runs out. The WSEB didn't have many people he wanted to chat up and soon I was left holding his plastic cup and plastic hors d'oeurves plate with nothing to do. I noticed that there was another young person who was at loose ends and I leaned forward to check his nametag. It said "David Wechsler Revised." Ahhh, an alias! I recognized the Wechsler Revised as one of the intelligence tests the WSEB had studied. He had studied them by testing his friends, me being one of them at the time. (His conclusion was that I was an "underachiever.") I turned the same machinegun turrets on David Wechsler Revised I used on the others and beamed. "I know enough to know that can't be your name," I said cheekily.

He invited me to some radio station wingding that was going on in another part of the hotel. I had to admit that I was "sort of" with someone, but that it wasn't anything serious. I picked up the WSEB's reaction on my radar. He was disturbed. But David Wechsler Revised and I had a nice chat, exchanged numbers, and it was a long time before we met up again, but we did get together.

The next day, the WSEB apologised for his reaction. He admitted that he had said that our relationship was over and I certainly was free to find someone else and that perhaps he was having trouble letting go. And he had been drunk. And so was I. He had managed to score some interviews and it looked like he would be able to move to an area even closer to where I was living. Shortly after he moved within 100 miles of me, I moved to New York. That relationship was just not getting the chance to die the death.

Now, I told you that whole story, as Bill Cosby says, to tell you this one.

It was in New York that I ran into David Wechsler Revised. He was from Manhattan and had gotten a job as a liaison between a corporation and a group that supplied the less mentally abled into the workforce. His job was to keep tabs on, among other people, the mailroom guy who came to the office where I was holding a temporary job and hung around me, nominally creeping me out.

David Wechsler Revised and I met for drinks one night. Thrifty person that I am (or is that "cheap date"?), it was my intention to order a beer and nurse it for a while. I asked the waitress what they had on tap and stopped her litany at the Bass Ale. "Oooo, I'll have a Bass!" I said, thinking it would be smooth and filling. David Wechsler Revised, who had been bingeing with friends the night before, ordered an Amaretto and soda, hoping it would not reopen any wounds. This meant nothing to me. I had a good friend (also male) who regularly ordered Amaretto Sours because he wasn't much of a drinker and they were tasty. At least, he claims they were. Amaretto is something I use in baking, not drinking. But what other people opt to imbibe is up to them. The waitress, however, said, "Oh, Role Reversal tonight?" I thought that was pretty funny, but David Wechsler Revised took it in the gonads. "Geez!" he said. "Geez!" This went on for quite a while. Another trained psychologist allowing himself to be manipulated by chance comments (or wanton mammaries)! He never got over this and claimed that she was not getting a tip from him. (I actually sympathize. I've been the target of a humorous waitress myself. It was a Girls' Night Out and as the orders went around the table they were all for a "White wine." When it came to me I ordered a pitcher of beer, figuring I'd order once and not have to keep calling her back for another leg like the others were bound to do. Besides, it's more economical in a pitcher. Said the waitress, "You wanna straw with that?" Nope, she wasn't getting a tip from me.)

I was reminded of this story tonight when we met friends for dinner at Orde's of London. Our cat sitter had made a date with a customer at her place of business a couple of weeks ago and had met at this restaurant for a drink where she would then try to talk him out of a first date dinner at Captain D's. To my mind, the suggestion of Captain D's for any meal was a permanent deal breaker, but my friend ... has no man-sense apparently. She ordered herself a Chardonnay and waited. When her date arrived, he asked for a beer and then became incensed at the price Orde's was charging: $4.00. He couldn't let it go and eventually he had to leave to go drink somewhere cheaper. Abandoning her is a deal breaker for my friend, but she likes having a good story to tell. Last week we were at Disney World staying in the Sheraton Mouse Prison (don't get me staaated), The Dolphin, where a beer or glass of wine was $8 and a soda was $5 at the conference reception. I had to text her to tell her to tell her "friend" that the beer was $8 out here.

I'm really no better than her date. I went on and on about the price of a drink and the price of everything else there, totally ruining my own vacation. The killer was the $10 per exit charge for self-parking that, in the end, didn't even turn up on our bill. But each time we left the park my mind went "ka-ching!" and I added the cost to our dinner bill or the run to the drug store or my bead store trips. My only excuse is that I am not a professional psychologist. It should be easy to manipulate me and make me unhappy. Well, not really "easy." And not "should." In fact, I think I'll go work on that. My own shrink says I need to have a good, long talk with that person in the mirror.

Well, if I have time ...

The Day I Threw a Table at My Sister

Cartoon that pretty much sums up my relationship with my sister.

For the record, I did go through a period of time when I was about 15 that I lifted weights. I think that lasted 10 minutes. I am built like my dad, large muscles over a sturdy frame. My sister was built like my dad ... on grow pills. She was at least three inches taller than he was. I was visiting her home in Greensboro and was about to sit down in a recliner when I saw the little table next to it had a broken strut. "Oh, when did that happen?" I asked, thinking it had something to do with the even better developed children she had. "Don't you remember?" she said, settling into the other recliner. "You threw it at me and broke it."
Like many baby-boomers, I lived through the sixties and seventies and I know it's possible to lose track of every little thing that happened to one in those colorful days. I may joke around with my friends and claim to be having " LSD flashbacks," but it's all talk. My sister, nine years older, made a big deal over my putative forays into counterculture. I say "putative" because I was a Young Republican during a time when it was not very popular, making me a pariah in my day. Not many drugs actually came my way, but neither did I escape their siren song. I did, however, roll my eyes as my sister sniffed and proclaimed she never did drugs, as she held a frozen daiquiri in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
Doubtless you are imagining me in some rollicking (if infrequent) drug-induced fit throwing furniture at my defenseless and sober sibling. I didn't imagine that for one red second. My mind, still pretty sharp in those days, hurtled back to an incident in the early 1960s when we lived in Cincinnati. My sister had pushed me to my limit. As a child, I was pretty laid-back, albeit whiny. You could mess with my head all day long and just get your name strung out in several extra syllables and a penetrating nasal whinge. "Aaaaaeeeeeeeyyunnnnn!" Or, I might perhaps have recourse to our mother, whom I refered to as "my mother," much to my sister's consternation (but let's face it, when you have kids nine years apart, you're a different person by the time the second one comes along): "Maaaaaoooummmmm! Aaaeeyun isn't staying on her side of the caawaaar!" This, of course, cut no ice with our mother. One time she even got out of the car and walked home because she couldn't stand listening to us bicker in the back seat.
But in this case it was 1963 I was no more than nine years old, making my sister twice my age and twice my size. She was frequently left to babysit me and used that time to torture me in various ways: making me wash and dry the dishes when instructions were clearly left for us to divide that chore; creating unfair guessing games to humiliate me for her amusement; calling me names. And one night she just pushed me too far. I shoved the table. I didn't even shove it at her. I just had to take out my frustrations on something. I shoved a small drop-leaf table. I do not recall it breaking, but that just might be all those slaughtered brain cells from my counterculture past. Years later I recall one more incident where I pushed everything off the top of my dresser and she immediately accused me of throwing things at her. "I'm telling Mom," she said. I wish I had thrown them at her.
She did love me, though. She bought me presents, took me to movies, took me to fencing lessons and paid for them. She honed her mom-ing skills on me. She made birthday cakes for me and threw birthday parties - and then stepped in and made herself the center of attention. Years later I had friends who did the same things. Cindy would throw surprise birthday parties for me (I lost my appetite for birthdays early on, necessitating the surprise factor) and invite men she wanted to date. I'd come home from work and find my mother looking shamefaced. "What is it?" I'd ask. She'd moan, and then finally admit she'd been talked into another surprise birthday party after I had made her promise not to fall for it again. And Cindy was late ... again. I had wondered what all the idling cars were doing down the street. To this day I don't mind people knowing how old I am, but I hate birthdays. I'm 54, by the way.
If my sister were alive today (she isn't always speaking to me in my memory), I'd ask her why, if I'd broken the strut on that tiny table around 1963, it was not repaired, nor even looked as if it had been repaired in 1978 when she brought it up. It had been through at least two moves, if not four, and never been at least glued?! Was it thus as a constant reminder of my alleged violent temper?
No, it's just Aaaeeeeyyuuunnn messin' with my head again. Amazing she can still do it, and that I let her do it, from beyond the grave.

Can you tell I've been reading David Sedaris again?

Notes I made about the story when I was in Florida:

Why It Took So Long for Me to Get Married

Serial Fiancee and Mother Superior, partners in crime

Had a nice chat with the chiropractor today (after killing myself doing die-cutting) after all his patients left. Mentioned how Christine Baranski (since "Cybill" and now in "Momma Mia") reminds me of my dear friend NamelessHussy. I'm not allowed to talk about certain aspects of our time together. If she wants to tell stories on herself, that's up to her (ask me to remind you, Dear). But in "Momma Mia" they actually call Baranski's character a "serial fiancee." I'm just sayin'.

NamelessHussy used to say she liked to go out with me, because when she went out with other women, they just used her to attract men. NH would tongue-lash them away, and the other women would provide these reprobates with a soft landing. I didn't operate that way. If we went out together and some creep tried to chat her up in some obnoxious fashion (and NH particularly disliked the braggarts who tossed out their resumes as if they meant something), we operated like a well-drilled volleyball duo: she set 'em up, and I spiked them - wham!

Example: Oxford cloth shirt and power tie started in on NH with a "Why won't you go out me?" barrage and she finallly wheeled on him. "I won't go out with you because you wear those Euro-fag tasseled loafers." He was now dead to her, but he's still hanging in mid-air. He turned to the fat girl with the pleasant but dull face and tried the sympathy angle. "I had to wear these. I fell out of bed and hurt my foot," said leeringly as though there was something more than sleeping going on. "If you were doing it right, you wouldn't have fallen out," I pointed out cheerfully. "Jeesh!" he said, "Jesus!" and left both of us alone the rest of the evening. High fives, teammate!

I didn't do this just when NH was around. I also had a running game going with a male friend who continually tried my patience with innuendo along that same line. "Why aren't we sleeping together?" "Is that why we don't sleep together?" We don't sleep together, dear one, because it ruins friendships, just see if it doesn't. "I'd like to test that theory." And I kept count. "That's 37." It was more a game than anything, and one that I wasn't really winning (but he wasn't getting laid, either, so maybe it was a tie). It did, however, hone my skills. That and several years of back-and-forth with gay men gave me a competitive mouth. I'd like to think that I didn't start anything. I only volleyed back when it came into my court and I only go for the joke, not really the kill.

Still, it does keep the gene pool at a distance, dunnit? In the end, I had to be approached by someone gently. I then gave back the same way. I'm just a parrot, repeating what I hear. Y'all keep that in mind when you go a-courtin'.