This is entrepreneurialism

The storm hasn't even hit yet, but these bumper stickers and t-shirts are available at cafepress

As Gustav approaches

The good news is that the evacuation appears to be proceeding much more efficiently than with Katrina. Its comforting to know that some lessons actually were learned. Everyone I know seems to be out. But that will be of minimal comfort if the city takes another hard hit.

Happy anniversary baby

Today is the third anniversary of Katrina. Tulane is closing at noon, public transportation is shutting down tonight, etc., all in anticipation of a probable mandatory evacuation tomorrow because of Gustav.

And I'm not there.

I feel relieved, of course. I never want to go on another hurricane evacuation, ever. I also fee slightly guilty and slightly left out of the excitement. Worried, but with hints of a kind of schaudenfreude (sp?)--if something really bad happens, it will prove I was right to leave, and I won't have to second guess myself. But that's not what I want of course. I want New Orleans to be there, be healthy, get better, survive and thrive.

It's been a a hell of a three years, and I can't believe I'm still broke and unsettled--wasn't law school supposed to fix all that?

Things that have run out because I‘ve run out of money

• Contact lenses
• Wellbutrin
• Lawcrossing membership
• Weightwatchers membership
• Netflix membership
• Dish detergent
• Eggs, groceries in general
• Health insurance
• Yoga card

The Karen Jones Phenomenon

In grade school and junior high I was friends with a girl named Karen Jones. She lived in my neighborhood and our mothers were friends. Karen was the only child and her mother was overprotective and overinvolved. Karen was kind of a big dork, but so was I. But Karen was also delicate, fragile and always seemed to be sick or injured. Some of her ailments might have been psychosomatic or mother-induced. She had thin blonde hair cut sensibly short and big bug eye glasses. I had the big glasses, too. I’m not sure if we were friends just because our mother were; or because as geeks we were friends by default, or if I liked her and we had fun. I seem to remember roller skating in her garage; and a Shaun Cassidy poster in her bedroom. We must have a good time now and then, at least.

Karen and I were in girl scouts together, but we didn’t go to school together until I transferred from my Catholic grade school to public junior high, just when the cruelty of children reaches its highest heights. The other kids called Karen “hypo” for hypochondriac, because she always seemed to be wearing a neck brace, carrying her arm in a sling, or hobbling around on crutches.

I know I publicly rejected her, although I don’t remember the details very well. It was probably the seventh or eighth grade. She was on crutches, I think we were in the band room at school. It might have been that she asked me to do something and I just said no. I never picked on her or made fun of her. I just refused to be associated with her gimpiness. It was instinctive, unpremeditated action. I surprised myself and her. I wasn’t quite sure at first what my words meant until I saw that I hurt her. Afterward I felt guilty but relieved. I thought I should call and apologize but then I would have to go back to being friends with her and I just couldn’t do it. She and I ignored each other from then on until we moved away not much later.

I know this strained my mother’s friendship with Mrs, Jones. My mother asked me about it, but she didn’t pry too much or give me a hard time about it.

Mrs. Jones is also part of a memory that should embarrass me but somehow doesn’t. I’ve never been the naturally spic and span type and during junior high I went through a spectacularly untidy phase. Also, despite my mother’s great uptightness about sexuality and womanly concerns, she never imprinted this on me. Instead, her shame caused her to pretty much leave me alone about all of it, ironically granting me freedom from shame. When I first started my period I was kind of fascinated by all of it, but the color and smell of my blood and its saturated patterns on the “sanitary napkin.” (It also makes me feel old to remember wearing pads without adhesive on them that needed a “belt” to hold them in place—but this is also instructive about my mother, since it was the early 80s when I hit puberty, and adhesive pads had been on the market for a decade by then.) Anyway, I remember Mrs. Jones coming into my room to talk to me (maybe about my betrayal of her daughter?) and I was embarrassed that my room was a wreck. Karen never would have been allowed to let things descend into such chaos. And, as we talked, I realized to my horror that a used, unwrapped, bloody sanitary napkin was sitting out on my record turntable. I think this cut the conversation short. I was sure my mother was going to have to have a talk with me about that, but either Mrs. Jones was too embarrassed to broach the subject with my mom, or she was too embarrassed to bring it up with me.

With both of these memories, I think maybe I should be ashamed of myself, but I’m not. If I were going to do a 12-steps style inventory and make amends to those I had wronged, would Karen Jones be someone I owed amends? Or was it a necessary act of self-preservation, which is what it felt like? Ditto my rejection of the Spicy Orange Guy, and a few other suitors who I instinctively and abruptly rejected as too needy, too clingy, too pathetic. Certainly, I’ve learned that once I develop that sort of contempt for a guy, there’s no point in trying to work it out and it’s less cruel to make the break quickly and definitely. And there’s no doubt that contempt is what I felt for Karen Jones, and for Spicy Orange Guy, and poor old Micro Dick, and even my attractive but clingy young Honduran suitor with the older woman fetish. They were all too needy, and the need felt too impersonal, as it always is when they’re head over heels right away.

But contempt is a cruel and unenlightened feeling; and the accompanying revulsion I feel makes me wonder just what about them scares me so much—or, actually, there’s nothing to wonder about, I fear being just that pathetic, as I know I have been on occasion.

Spicy Orange Part 1

He said I was a soft shell crab. He had me figured out. Was he talking about my personality, or how I tasted? My personality, he said. My pussy tasted like a spicy orange. My ego got a big kick out of that. After all, I was recovering from J, who had desired me intensely before we slept together and apparently less so afterwards. My ego got a big deflating kick in the balls out of that.

But I already knew that I was going to break up with the Spicy Orange guy, and nothing he did the rest of the night changed my mind. He groped my tits while I was parallel parking the car. Which also reminds me that he can’t parallel park or drive a stick. We went to see a really great young brass band (who knew Richmond had such a thing?) and he hung on me the whole time. He put his hands in my back pockets. He put his nose in my hair. He was even more clingy in public than in private, which made me suspect that this was as much about marking his territory than about affection and desire.

You could accuse me of being the kind of girl who doesn’t want what she says she wants, because here is a guy who clearly wanted me and appreciated my charms. He was smart and had a career and wanted to spend money on me. He wasn’t all that good-looking, but less attractive men have put my heart in a sling. You could accuse me of only wanting what I can’t have, but you could accuse everyone of that and you’d be little bit right. Cue Amy LaVere’s “Take’em or Leave’em.”

But he was just too fucking much. Clingy like saran wrap and needy like a baby kitten. He gave me flowers on our first date, our second date, and the date after he came in my mouth. That was our fifth and last date. I kept telling him to chill out and back off and he thought he was listening to me but I could still feel the walls closing in every time he touched me. He was an awful, slobbery, suffocating kisser. I sent him an explicit email in which I explained that “it’s the clitoris, stupid,” and he got all hot and bothered by it without actually absorbing anything in the message. Later that spicy orange night, after I took a sleeping pill, he informed me that he’d taken a Viagra (!) and in a groggy act of misguided charity I lubed him up and let him climb on top. After complaining (again) about having to wear a rubber, he pumped away for a bit and then asked if I was close! Jesus Tapdancing Christ!!!

Any man with any sense or experience would have sensed a certain chill the next morning at breakfast, but he just blathered on about whether my parents would like him and how he couldn’t be expected to refrain from groping me when my mother was around.

If the above seems cruel and snarky—I sympathize with him but I don’t feel morally obligated to put up with him. He hadn’t gotten laid for eight years, so you can understand why he might overreact to finally getting some. But at the same time, when an intelligent, employed, reasonably attractive man does not get laid for eight consecutive years in his prime, you can’t really write it off as a cruel accident of fate. He is responsible. Six of those years were the last, sexless years of his marriage. And again, who would stay in such a marriage? It wasn’t a long marriage—eight years in total, six sexless. They didn’t have kids; he wasn’t an old man—the sexless years were late thirties into early forties. Neither party was incapacitated; he had the chance to commit adultery but didn’t take it.

He wanted to have fun. He thought I was fun. It had been a decade or more since he’d been with someone fun! But he was the anti-fun. Any glimmering of real fun terrified him. He was anxious and neurotic and so unsure of himself. He had a cute arts and crafts bungalow filled with arts and crafts furnishings but everything was too careful and unimaginatively just-so, like a bad museum setting.

He was a red-headed WASP who liked to imagine he was the lost Kennedy. He was political true believer, naïve in a way that shouldn’t survive one’s mid-twenties. That naivete extended to sexual politics.

Now he send me pathetic emails about how he misses me and how I made him feel alive again, and how if I gave him another chance he wouldn’t blow it, not understanding that he’s blowing it just be sending such an email.

I sympathize. I’ve been there. I sent similar emails to Mr. M at one point; and while the message was different, I engaged in emotionally needy pestering of Adam and of JPJ after we broke up. I understand the pain and loneliness that motivates him. But when I look back at my behavior with Mr. M and Adam and JPJ, I am only ashamed of myself, not resentful of them for not giving into my emotional blackmail. I’m grateful and amazed that I still have a friendly relationship with Adam; and that Mr. M came back around. I am embarrassed that I was behaving like that in my early thirties, when I should have learned the relevant lessons much earlier. The Spicy Orange guy is now halfway through his forties. I will not feel guilty about telling him to get a grip and back the hell off.

Wellbutrin

I'm out of money, out of health in insurance and still don't have a job. Which means I'm going off Wellbutrin at the worst possible time. I've been off for two days and so far I feel tired, sluggish and hungry. I don't want to be on this medication forever, so I hope I'll do okay without it. But I can slip into depression in slow and subtle stages. It's important to pay attention to my state of mind and hopefully catch myself before I fall.

Richmond has a brass band...

and they're damn good. Who'da thunk? Check out the NOBS Brass Band link below. I've been in Richmond a month. The pangs of homesickness have subsided and I'm happy to be here. I took the bar exam, but I won't venture to guess what the results will be. The test was in Roanoke, and driving through the mountains made me happy, despite the circumstances.