Hear What They See

Saturday, May 31, 2003

Skin Deep

The wedding went fine.
The dress fit. I don't know how. Maybe I lost water weight, who knows.
Who cares.

Fresno was hot, a hell, like being stuck in a place that is only known from the main freeway as Gas, Food, Lodging - Next Exit.

I was the maid of honor. Or rather the matron because I'm married. Matron of Honor. I felt like an old cow hag who needed to be wearing pantyhose for vericose veins and sensible black shoes. Clare who I've known since childhood but who I never really KNEW was a bridesmaid and Michelle, the wife of one of the groom's groomsmen, was another bridemaid. They are both skinny. They both were telling me stories about bulimia & anorexia. Michelle said more times than I care to count, "We've all been there, we've all done that." Meanwhile I could only shake myhead inwardly in confusion thinking, "No, not all of us, not me. I don't know what you mean." And there was a part of me wishing, wishing for all I was worth that I could have THAT illness, that problem with my weight rather than the opposite. It's like people with straight hair who wish it was curly or curly-haired folk wishing it was straight. Only difference is, I don't think girls with skinny eating disorders ever wish they had fat eating disorders. I think it's only the other way around. Fat people wishing they were skinny while skinny people want to stay skinny but without having to binge & purge or starve or exercise like bananas.

There was a girl at the rehearsal & the wedding. Robin. Blonde, painfully thin, wide round eyes, long hair, whip-handle hips. Michelle & Nicola talked about her before I met her. The 3 of us were in the banquet room of the Fresno Ramada, trimming flowers for the wedding the next day. They talked about Robin, the groom's brothers' girlfriend. "She is sooooo wrong. That girl is SICK. Sick I tell you! She needs help. I caught her in the bathroom one time? At this restaurant? Ohmygawd, it was so sick. You know, we've all been there, done that, but you have to grow up, grown out of that phase. She was puking all over the place. Puking her dinner up. She hardly ate anything anyway. I mean, she, like, picked at her salad and wouldn't have it with dressing, she cut it up into a million pieces and moved it around her plate like that meant she was eating. It was soooo wrong! I mean, I didn't actually hear her puking, but it was like the tailend of it, you know? That gagging sound, that getting it caught in your throat sound." Their voices, as they talked about her, had that scimitar edge, that razor bleed of cattiness that women get when they talk about another woman, trying to tear the flesh into little, bloody ribbons without every saying a word to her face. They both had it, both Nicola & Michelle. Frowns folding in between their eyebrows, downturned lips, arched eyes, cocked-to-the-side heads. They were vicious as vipers hissing in their two-person huddle, oblivious to my muddled incomprehension, ripping thorns off roses with every condemnation.

At the church, a giant Catholic church of cement and Partridge Family colored stained glass, beneath the life-sized bleeding Jesus on the cross suspended with invisible cables above our heads, Robin stood in the aisle, alone, as her boyfriend Keith waited for his cue to trundle down the red carpet with Clare hooked to his arm. Nicola, all 5 feet, Italian sailor-mouth of her, descended on Robin. "Would you get the hell out of the aisle for Christ's sake? You're NOT in the wedding!" Robin, like a stunned and small-boned wild animal, ducked down and slid into the second pew, by herself.

I seem incapable of controlling that part of myself, the part that sees people being treated unfairly. I have gotten on Nicola's ass more times than I can ever or care to count about not treating people like they are inferior, stupid, or beneath her. She has been taught this behavior by her mother. I do not tolerate it when she is around me, and I am always right behind her, sweeping up her messes, placating and bandaging unneccesary wounds. "Ya, it's not like you're in the wedding, you know." I whispered conspiratorily to Robin.

She looked up at me, searching for more reprimands, but saw the huge grin on my face, and smiled. "Gosh, ya, I know. I didn't mean to get in the way."

"Don't worry about it, she's just stressed out." I excused Nicola's behavior because she is my best friend.

Robin looked like she was was not more than 19-years old. I figured she had to be at least legal because Keith is 33. I figured he was a horny old goat. She looked more like she was 16, but I didn't think he was that stupid. Imagine the look on my face when I found out she was 28. At the rehearsal dinner she insisted I sit beside her. Probably because I was the only one who said any kind of nice word to her. The boys ignored her, the women shunned her. Perhaps my ignorance of skinny eating disorders made her feel comfortable. Nicola & Michelle had gone on and on about how little she ate, that she never ate anything on her plate. Both Nicola & Michelle are midgets. Sitting next to me, Robin proceeded to down an entire loaf of sourdough bread, her whole salad, a bowl of marinara sauce and about 1/3 of a bowl of plain spaghetti. I made sure I didn't watch her as she ate. I made sure I didn't ask for any bread. I made sure I ate most of my food, even when I was too full. I did not want her attention drawn too easily to the fact that she had eaten, and eaten in my presence, and she had eaten an entire loaf of bread. Her stomach must have been stretched and bloated. I'm sure that night she was miserable, her stomach muscles aching from the retching.

I talked to Clare about all this. Clare told me about her own obsessions with food, about her prior exercising habit, about that consciousness that never really leaves you once it has introduced itself to you. "They go hand in hand, anorexia & bulimia. Usually, anyway. Talking to Clare it dawned on me that the reason Nicola and Michelle were so hard on Robin is because they themselves have struggled too with bulimia, in some form or another. It occurred to me that their anger bordered on jealousy, that if they weren't "allowed" to do it, then neither could Robin.

I am an outsider to all this, to food issues of deprivation. Mine perhaps are born from the same insecurities, the same discrepancies between image and reality. I've become more aware of my martyr-like approach to the world, this need to give of myself beyond the scope of what is necessary or even right. I give to the point of utter denial to myself, much of the time. Selfishness is a bad word in my vocabulary. I martyr myself to the altar of my husband, my mother, my friends. On the altar of strangers. To fucked-up-but-not-bad-girls like Robin who have in some way had so much taken away from them that they feel the need to self-deprive to control anything else leaving them unless it is self-inflicted, self-chosen. I hand myself away on silver and gold and platinum platters that I have hand-hammered and tempered - my creativity, my love, my strength. Given away freely. Until all I have left, it seems, is the pleasure of food, of fabulous and gourmet and prided upon food into which I pour everything I am so that I may have alittle bit of myself served back to me on a platter, on a white china plate with chipped edges, but a platter nonetheless. A platter I hand back to me.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 2:27 PM

I've been unable to view my blog for a few days. Some rigamarole that the techie wizards fixed for me. Thank you techie wizards.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 2:27 PM

Wednesday, May 21, 2003

Vinegar Head

I'm leaving for Fresno tomorrow for Nicola's wedding. I am so NOT looking forward to this. I guess because of everything that's been going on. Besides the fact that I'm too fat for the dress I have to wear as the maid of honor. I am so discouraged and feeling like I'd rather die than walk around all day in a too-tight dress that I'm going to look like an ass in. Dammit. I hate this. Hate it, hate it, hate it. But she is my best friend and I am not going to stress her or myself out over this. I just wish it was already over. I hate over-priced party dresses and uncomfortable shoes and stupid smiles for photographs no one ever looks at again.

Oh, I am a barrel of joyful tidings, am I not?

I saw grandma on Sunday, for the first time since her stroke. The difference was marked. My sister went to pick her up to bring she and grandpa over for dinner with the whole fam. All the aunts & uncles were discussing what's to be done. I held grandma's hand while she shuffled unsteadily down the brick path, past the roses and camelia, the hydrangea and fern, to the back yard. She kept running me off the path and I wondered if the shapes of all those plants looked like looming, dark shadows ready to trip her up at every step. She can see shadows, shapes and some color. But no definition. She has swapped right for left and left for right. She looks at you when you speak but it's because she is following the sound of your voice, the shape of your shadowy bulk. I broke down this morning on the phone while talking to someone about her.

My grandma.
The one & only person in the whole wide world who was aware, when I was a child & she was the coolest person I knew, what was in my head & heart without me ever once having to explain.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 6:46 PM

Friday, May 16, 2003

It is Friday.
I'm glad.
That's all for today.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 6:17 PM

Thursday, May 15, 2003

Spring is in the air. Ain't life grand?
Pic taken with my SuperSampler nifty camera.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 8:42 PM

Explanation of Blog

It's interesting what happens to your psyche when you realize other people are reading your words.
Let’s get to the point.
I’m talking about myself, right?
Ya.

Assumption: when others are reading my words, they begin to judge me by those words. Which isn't necessarily bad or good, I guess, it's just human nature. But if the people that read my words happen to know me or Dave or my family, do they judge me even more so, more harshly? That is the power of words after all, isn't it? They give people the ability to judge others as they will, I guess.

There’s always that persnickety trouble with writing of any kind. See, the internet is somewhat innocuous. If you blog, most people who read you don't know you and those who do know you were either invited to come read or else found you by pure fluke. When you decide to publish your work, when you're making a conscious decision to put your words out there for the greater public, there is always the risk that you're going to get people’s tail feathers in a right tight spin. That's the glory of being a writer. It is also the irony. The more successful you are with the words you write, the more likely you are to draw fire. From strangers and from family and from friends.

But I'm no successful writer. I'm just a woman who considers herself writer who works with a writing group, who writes in her blog, who writes in her hard-bound journal. I've never been published. I just write. Like lots of folks who do this very thing I am doing at this very second. By doing this, you agree that it’s OK that other people read what you’re writing. That’s kind of the whole point. It’s where I say what I have no other place to say.

What I write here doesn’t get said in my hardbound journal. My journal is my absolute place for saying what rankles my head & heart, where the bile & the burn, the glory & the hopes & the dream, those things that have nowhere else to go, it’s where they get put down.

So what’s the point of a blog, then, if I keep journal? Because let’s face it, I’m no dummy, this here wahine recognizes that this is a public forum, so whaddahell am I doing going about writing HERE when I can keep it all safe and sound and private in a journal at home on my dresser?

There are varying degrees of writing for someone who calls themselves writer. And to further add confusion to the equation, for every writer, these varying degrees vary. There is a need to know one’s voice is being heard. At some point, for most writers, you wants to know you are not so alone or weird or abject as you believe yourself to be, that there is perhaps another person who can understand and comprehend and GET what goes on behind the curtain. That is the void this blog fills for me.

Interestingly enough, the degree to which I reveal myself here is paradoxically expansive and limited. Some of my deepest wonderings get put on the page, inked out and given form. But I am a traditionalist at heart for the most part. My variety of “dirty laundry” is tame and contained. The degree of hurt and anger and fire that I am capable of does not get voiced in this realm. I have never believed this to be a place I could do that with any levity or freedom. 1) because of the risk involved with other people taking issue with this being “real life” not a work of fiction and 2) that is just not my style.

Anea the gossip columnist? Hardly.

People get embarrassed when you talk about things like being poor. Like what your family is like or, worse yet, what theirs is like. When you talk about dead people. Or people who are dying. Or people who have weird disease. Or people who’ve recovered from weird diseases. Or people with ultra-conservative backgrounds. Or people with ultra-liberal backgrounds. People who’ve had abortions or brothers who died in an accident or aunts who were kidnapped or neighbors’ husbands who wear pink frilly panties. People get embarrassed by the act of living that we do every day. Some people believe if they don’t say anything or hide behind silence, no one will ever be any the wiser about THEM. That’s the part that most people don’t get. Silence is so often the most telling indicator about what is happening to them. It tells a whole lot about that which people think they are keeping silent. A central paradox to human nature.

Husbands and wives disagree.
Mothers and daughters argue.
Sisters get pissed at each other.
Grandmothers and grandfathers die slowly.
Friends say stupid things to each other.
Families have tiffs and everyone thinks they’re right and everyone else is wrong.
People are unhappy.
Then they’re happy.
People don’t communicate.
Then they do.
It’s all part and parcel of what we call life.

And that’s basically what this blog is all about.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 8:37 PM

Sunday, May 11, 2003

Starvation

More wishing that weekends were solo ventures rather than coupled with a husband whose depressing nature is driving me to madness.

He went to the bank with money he had been ferreting away, without telling me. Money he wanted to put in a savings account he didn't want me to know about or for me to be connected to. Money for...what? Money to have for a rainy day so if we get in a fight he can flip me off, walk out the door, and have something to fall back on. That is my wild guess which I would guess is not such a wild guess after all. I would guess my wild guess is spot on and accurate. I would guess this is the case because I am usually spot on about such matters like wild guesses. But he went to the bank and they wouldn't open an account for him because you need a minimum of $300. He had $200 or so, dollars and quarters and twenties, wadded up in an empty plastic video case. He showed me it today so he could prove a point. A point about money and his ability to save but how it all doesn't matter anyway because he's still just a poor, white trash S.O.B. who can't even open a savings account because he doesn't have enough (his words, not mine). We were on our way to church. We haven't been in 3 weeks. I did not want to go again this AM. I feel like a cad, like a fake. What right to I have to be going to church, praising the Lord when I question my own belief system? Don't get me started on religion. I'll shut up now.

I didn't want to go. We were arguing.
Again.
Incessant.
Stupid.
Arguing about money because he has to pay $110 to get his credential from his piece-o-shite university. I told him it'd have to wait til next week when I get paid. All paychecks had been used to pay off bills, give my dad back the cash he loaned me to pay our taxes. "We will always be poor. We will always live like this. We will never have anything."

I want to slap him silly when he talks like that to me.
Ungrateful.
I want to shake him til his teeth rattle and come loose from his gums in his head like marbles in a vase of roses.
Unsupportive.
I want to scream at the top of my lungs til I've shot his eardrums and mine too and we can't hear each other anymore.
Unhappy.

There's a part of me that is starting to believe him. How can we ever get ahead? How can we ever live anywhere but with my parents? How can we ever do anything but pay off debt? I am starting to hate him for this inability I have to hang on to hope. I blame him for it. I am starting to hate myself for being so ineffective. It is evident just by looking at me, my ballooning, un-hungry body. Fatty ham hock body starved for a realness I have only felt fleetingly in this life.

My life is not my own nor has it ever been. It is a series of decisions I made believing I was being helpful to others. A series of selfless-seeming actions I made in an attempt to have others think highly of me, all the while grating against it, wanting to be selfish all along. I am a woman without a backbone whose roar and spitting hiss are little more than sensory social accouterments I dangle from my lips because I think I'm supposed to.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 7:25 PM

Thursday, May 08, 2003

Revlon Red

Outsiders create uncertainty, spontaneity. Alone, there is none of that. I know everything that I've thought and done. I am not surprised by myself.

This is wonderful insight. This is my freshest recommendation for the day, stolen from Michael, whose blog I was catching up on this eve.

Grandma had a stroke on Sunday. It was minor. It affected her optic nerve. My grandma is the closest definition of a Bohemian-before-her-time that I know. She will die soon. The thought is so saddening I can hardly bear it. She used to drive a convertible MG, this was in her 60's. We would drive to the coast together, she and I, and she would give me a green scarf to tie around my hair with the top down and KFRC on the radio. She would wear red Revlon lipstick and Jackie-O sunglasses, call me honey-pie and sing at the top of her lungs to the radio when she knew a song. We would drive to the coast and on those secret trips she would tell me about the mysteries this world holds, "Make sure you search out the mysteries, honey-pie. Life is just full of them."

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 7:56 PM

Tuesday, May 06, 2003

Lost

Not only was my last post lost in space, so is my heart, head, and happiness.
This is becoming an unusually common occurrence. Which sucks in a big and stupid way.
I imagine myself living the next 50-60 years with these pathetic expectations that life can and will change and still feeling exactly like I do right now, at 33. An 83-year old lady with none of her shit together. Perhaps I am doomed.

I was driving to work yesterday morning. 8:30A, yawning behind the wheel of my Dodge Ram 1500. I look like I ought to be the running a ranch of some kind in that truck. My previous car was a roller skate. Driving to work down Patten Street. Construction going on, Ellie Maib's house sold. They ripped down her place, the same place I've known all my life, brown paint with tangerine trim, brick porch and matching garage. Gone now. Someone with some cash to burn bought the place, ripped down Ellie's house and garage and are building a newer and better place. I used to deliver newspapers there when I was 11 years old. Passed by the construction, the empty place where Ellie's house used to be. Landscaper already out with his blower on the corner in front of the architect's house, Michael something-or-other, I used to run his blueprints for him back when I worked at Copy Sonoma and nearly asphyxiated myself from the amonia. Another one of the old guard that got sold off to someone younger with more money who remodeled. Old neighborhood changes. Driving past Bill Fernandez' place, there he was in his Wranglers, baseball cap, and denim shirt, standing, arms crossed, before a glorious rose bush whose blooms were in full regalia. I blinked. Bill Fernandez is checking out his rose bush. What is wrong with this picture? He's a contractor, not the kind of guy you'd expect to be outside at 8:30 on a Monday morning inspecting his rose bushes. Yet there he was. I had to look back and make sure it was actually him. Stuck with me all day. The property used to be his mother's. Perhaps that was her rose bush. I noticed today on my way back to work from lunch that the bush is carefully trimmed, carefully trained to follow the fence. Orange and red and yellow blooms, like fire. It shouldn't surprise, I suppose. These unexpected moments when people do not stay within the boundaries that we have set for them.

Bill Fernandez is a rose afficianado.
Somehow that tickles my fancy like crazy.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 6:52 PM

Friday, May 02, 2003

Oh, Donna!

Went out to lunch today with Jeff and his friend Donna. She's actually been a client in our office for years, but she & Jeff have become pretty close which was a little disconcerting for me at first (Mixing business & pleasure? Oh no!), but Donna's a cool gal and such a card. We're sitting at Round Table Pizza and I'm eating this crappy salad I got from the salad bar (major mistake...pukey spinach that looked like Jolly Green Giant snot and no cauliflower florets. OK, so I'm a weirdo and I love cauliflower florets and they're cheap and whaddaheck kinda cheap salad bar is it that doesn't have cauliflower florets, for cryin' out loud? Man alive). Anyway, Donna starts relaying this story about a little escapade she had at a local restaurant in town. There's a dinerish place (whose name I shall refrain from divulging here just on the off chance someone from there should ever find the evidence here in cyberspace) in town. They make great breakfasts, greasy-spoon hoggy heaven. Burgers and fries for lunch, tuna melts and root beer floats. Kind of a mini-Mel's Diner. So anyway, Donna's telling us this story about how she ordered fries from there and while she was waiting, she went to the restroom. Now, she's obviously been there a number of times because she was prepared with a screw driver and a replacement lightswitch plate. What was she doing with a replacement lightswitch plate? you might well be asking yourself. Apparently in the women's restroom at this diner, there was a lightswitch plate with Elvis on it. You turned the light on by flipping the switch which was cleverly placed in his grinding groin area. Donna just thought that lightswitch plate was da bomb, so she decided she was going to "borrow it." She planned it out so that she would order fries, took a screw driver with her and slipped into the restroom. "My hands were shaking so much while I was screwing the replacement in, I dropped the screws. I was so scared I'd be caught." But she did it and is thinking about making color copies of the plate so she can hang them all over town at other places of business. I think this idea is MARVELOUS. It's whacky and off-the-wall and perfectly insane. And random. Can you see it now in the local-yokel town rag? Headlines scream, Local Businesses Slipped the Switch By Mysterious Elvis Fan. Authorities puzzled by the recent theft of normal lightswitch plates to be replaced with lurid Elvis. The best part of her whole reprobate behavior was when she left the replacement, she had printed on it, "Elvis Has Left the Building."

She's thinking if she can get up the gumption to return it to its rightful owners, she'll put another sign on it that says, "Thank'ya. Thank'ya very much."

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 6:29 PM