I was reminded of these moments last night when I ran into a man at the Geo Duck bar. I had seen their signs during the past week for happy hour 4-6 as I drove back and forth from my Hood Canal cottage on various adventures on the Olympic Peninsula. "Geo Duck," I kept saying to myself- the reward for staying put for a day and taking care of the grading for the online course I teach, the one that pays the travel bills. It was a tedious process getting through the grading. I couldn't wait to go.
I parked my convertible at the Geo Duck and was eager to burst inside. I was missing my own local spot, the place where I happy hour with friends once a week. I missed being a regular. I was anticipating camaraderie, interesting stories, and fascinating characters. As I walked into the bar, though, I could tell I would not be taken in as a regular here. I wasn't sure how to register the looks and pauses in conversation as I went to the bar, but I decided just to cross my fingers and hope the wait staff didn't spit in my food.
Then I noticed the deck.
While the bar was a perfectly lovely dive, resembling many of my favorites, with pool tables and wrinkled men with long hair in tank tops lining the bar, the deck was lovely on a different level. The deck was in the open and miraculously sunny Washington air, situated on the canal, and I could see birds flying around the impending waters of the tide.
I went to the deck instead of the bar, watching critters moving around in the water. Otters? I wondered, but they seemed bigger.
I had the deck to myself and pondered the menu for a good fifteen minutes before going in to order my food (wait staff hadn't seen me) and ordered the Oyster Burger at the recommendation of the bartender. Another man had joined me on the deck about five minutes earlier and said to me when I came back to the deck, "Boy, I bet those waitresses must be swamped in there."
"Yep," I said. Of course I didn't want to be rude, but I could tell from the inviting way the man talked that he wanted to keep talking, and I was sort of content to study my phone, which finally had service, instead. He was probably 5'9" and overweight, maybe about 60. His face was as red as the plaid shirt he was wearing, and his rapidly receding hair sort of clung to his head. He wore green shorts and hiking boots over tall white socks.
I think I was nervous to engage with this man, not because of his looks, but because of the terse way he was trying to reach out. I couldn't imagine that he'd care to know anything about me but sensed that he maybe just wanted to discuss his own life for a living audience for a while. His first few comments were authoritative and decisive, sort of like the comments coming from a man who had already decided what was the correct way to live life.
But we chatted anyway.
He asked what I did, and I didn't hide it. I said I was a teacher and a writer, something that doesn't always go over well with people. Everyone tends to resent the fact that you have the summer off and then tries to figure out how you could possibly afford to travel on your salary (answer? lots of student loans and a part-time job in addition to your full-time career, plus no mortgage, no kids, and my hobbies are virtually free: reading and writing and running). I always have to bite back the fact that I spend part of almost every weekend on schoolwork, that Christmas break is a time for me to catch up on my grading, and that I take sick days in order to do my work. Never mind the week of training in the summer, uncompensated. Never mind the two Masters degrees. Never mind trying to do my writing. Never mind the other job. Never mind the fact that I used to clock in at 6:30 and leave at 5 each day, just to stay ahead. Not that it isn't good to work hard, just not for the amount I receive.
In any case, I didn't want to get into it with this retired state employee from Springfield, Illinois.
I tried to be brief, but he caught my attention when he identified the animals in the water ahead of me.
"They're seals," he said. "They like to swim in and rest in the shallow area."
Real seals? I thought. Not in the zoo? Not in a ginormous clump outside of the beaches of La Jolla? Just two or three adorable little creatures that had eyes like my dog? Perusing the canal on their own?
I let down some walls and began to chat in earnest, interested to hear about what else this man knew.
My oyster burger arrived and we were becoming friends from across the six feet separating our tables. Turns out he didn't judge me for being a writer, he instead recommended a book, written by the drummer in Genesis called Three Ways to Capsize a Boat.
"It's real exciting," he explained, "because he takes this job in the Mediterranean working for a sailing company without having any clue what he was doing, but then--" and here is the pause that won me over, "it turns into sort of a love story. He's got this gal back home and he starts to realize how lucky he is and that she is really a singular sort of woman. You know, since she puts up with all this, him running off for five months and all."
I perk up and we begin to talk in earnest and before you know it we are comparing divorce stories and our accounts with loss- he having just lost his daughter to a drunk driver and his 2nd wife in January to Cancer.
"You know, I knew it was coming," he said, "so it was different from Nikki (his daughter), but I don't know-- it was like walking out of a room and turning off a light. It was really something."
He paused.
He was no longer a red-faced retired employee from Central Illinois. Now I realized we were two people who had both been through the wringer. His story sounded a million times worse than mine, but I told him about my ex, about my cousins that died the same year, one of a blood-clot and another of Cancer, both well under 40. My godmother that died of Cancer later in the year. And I talked about my divorce.
"See, I think from what you just said, that there might be part of your story in mine," he said. "My ex-wife left and I had to go through all of that, wondering if I was man enough, trying to think what ways I failed. It was awful."
"There were just so many nights when I was on the bathroom floor, crying," I confessed.
"Curled up in the fetal position, right?" he asked.
"Yeah," I said, although really it had been more like being in a ball on my knees clutching the fibers of a red shag rug.
"See," he smiled, letting me know he had done the same, "and men aren't s'posed to do that."
For the first time in that moment I thought of the privilege of grieving. In my divorce I had hid the grieving from people, of course. I tried to function like a normal human. I went to work most days. I only cried in the bookshelves once or twice during computer lab duty. But I never felt like less of a woman for crying.
In this moment, it occurred to me that our society is really fucked up about grieving.
This man and I talked and he relayed how agonizing it was to deal with the legal system, like in the case of his daughter, when you are reeling from an unexpected loss.
"It's like, you walk outta there, and you ask yourself, what just happened? And you're angry. For like a whole day. You're just angry. And you take it out on the people around. And they have no idea."
I agreed whole-heartedly. When my split happened, not only was I reeling from the trauma of divorce, and reeling is really the only word for it, being led by your sadness in a whirling circle through the air pulled by your grief, your anguish, your hollow core, but I also had to learn the legalities of divorce on the fly, AND step up to an addict not pleased with the current situation.
"I watched my best friend turn into my worst enemy." I told the red-faced man.
In this moment I remembered a conversation with an old friend-- "One of the hardest things," I said to her, referring to the complicated way our divorce pulled at all of our mutual friendships, "is that no one knew what was happening. Nobody knew he was leaving pictures out from our wedding when it was my turn to stay in the house." I stopped, but I thought about the way he would also text me every night just as I was falling asleep. Messages of guilt. Pity. Love. The way he would be cruel when we met to discuss how we would proceed with the divorce. How he'd compliment me but then shame me. Blame me for caring only about money when we both knew it was the lies that drove me away. All of this in addition to the roller coaster of guilt I was putting myself through already.
I will always remember how a friend left a message on my phone after my ex decided not to move out of our house when I told him I wanted a divorce, forcing me to find my own place or exist in an impossible state of cohabitation.
"Hey Katie," she said over my phone, voice full of light air, casual. "Depending where you are and where you're staying, I thought you might want to carpool for Kat's birthday."
That voicemail sent me into a rage. Depending where I'm staying? Did she understand that I was homeless and still paying half the mortgage? That I went from being a woman to a child living on my parent's couch, or my friend's condo when she was out of town? Did she understand that there was a bag in my car full of clothing? That I showed up to teach high-schoolers pretending I had a stable roof over my head?
But how could she know? She was someone I used to see 2-3 times a week, but even so I had never shared with my friends what was really going on in my marriage. I had never shared that my ex looked at porn all of the time, probably every day, from the time I left for work until the time he left two hours later. This is only what I knew of his porn habits at the time. It didn't count the $300 cable bills each month, or the charges on his credit cards over the years. Or all the times he acted out while I was coaching or grading at a coffee shop. I didn't tell people my ex didn't want to sleep with me. I tried to figure it all out on my own. We continued to act like the perfect couple in front of our friends.
So why should I think she would suddenly be aware of the manipulation my ex put me through? Of the homelessness? The utter shock of having my life turned upside down?
***
I confronted my ex about his pornography addiction in June of '06. The lying had become too much. I was finding a slew of addresses hidden away in the back files of our computer and I was disturbed. One site was a database of any type of sex you could imagine, including things as "benign" as threesomes and blondes, but ranging to more explicit scenes with grandmothers and teens, peeping toms and rape scenes. Another site was a teen website-- Carrie Sweets. She offered birthday wishes to her most loyal supporters (the paying customers) and teased all of her "fans" by trying on new outfits, sucking on lollipops, and dancing in the corner of her bedroom. Based on our computer histories, my ex visited this site every day.
When I confronted my ex, he agreed that he had a problem. I gave him numbers for resources that might help. He nodded and said he'd look into it.
What hurt the worst about learning about his addiction, was learning about porn-addiction in general. I had never heard of such a thing. I had never thought porn could turn into an addiction. It was something I had protested at age 11 with my parents and fellow Catholic church parishioners when an "Adult" store came to our home town, but by college I knew it was something most boys had on the files of their computer. Some of my girl friends even got off on porn and watched it with their boyfriends or husbands.
I didn't know it could be an addiction.
And worse than that, all of the resources on the internet that I had found, save for a fairly straightforward website by the University of Minnesota's Center for Sexual Health, were religious websites urging me to be a good Christian wife, to believe the pornography had nothing to do with me. Urging me not to leave him, my marital partner.
"Fuck you," is what I thought when I read that. "You add up the hours your wife spends watching porn, compare it to a part-time job, and tell me it's not about your dick."
I was dealing with what you might call the "anger" stage of grief in this moment.
I couldn't stand that patriarchy in these websites. I couldn't stand the dismissal that was given to a woman's feelings. I couldn't help but believe that the men writing these sites would feel different if it was their wives who were bound by pornography addiction. NOW I believe that the pornography addiction had nothing to do with me personally, but THEN I felt hurt, betrayed, rejected, stupid, and ugly. And it hurt to hear a male voice tell me not to abandon my husband in this state. What did he know about it anyway?
***
The unfortunate thing now is I can't help but see how my own image of myself, my self-esteem, got tangled up in all of this.
I have never and will never look like a porn star. The girls in the computer videos had perfect hair and cute faces outlined in thick black eyeliner. They had impossibly long lashes and impossibly hard looking breasts. Their mouths were outlined and covered with a shiny coating that circled into a perfect "o." They were shaved and in stilettos all the time. They were eager and bouncy and sultry and coarse.
I am sweet and innocent and silly and even sexy at times. I wear eyeliner and mascara and even stilettos occasionally, but I will never look like a porn star, no matter how hard I try. And frankly, I don't want to try to look like a porn star. But even if I wanted to, I'd have a hard time converting my girl-next-door innocence into sexual prowess.
***
My biggest dreams in life are that I will high-five someone driving (slowly) from the opposite direction on the road; that I will be able to teach part-time, write part-time, and host fabulous dinner parties in the evening; that I will have a deck divided into three sections- screened office, outdoor office, and sunny lounge-chair central; and that I will no longer care so deeply about my appearance.
One of the things I hate most about myself is my hang-up about physical appearance. It's something I can't talk myself out of believing. I look at my online dating pictures and worry that now that I wear glasses all the time, my potential match won't like me. I see the cellulite dimples on the back of my thighs and decide I am un-marry-able. I can't pass a mirror without seeing something I hate.
***
When I was a freshman in college for the first couple months, this mirror problem affected me. I would look in a mirror and immediately see my flaws. As a result, I couldn't stop looking in mirrors and cursing the parts of me that I deemed flawed. There were mirrors in our study lounge on my floor freshman year.
One day a guy on my floor teased me about looking in the mirror. He was from the very small town of Albany, MN. After he caught me I blushed and he said, "Yeah, there was a really pretty girl back home who used to look at herself in the mirror all the time, too."
Apparently he thought I was pretty.
It's not a very likable position to complain about how men think you're attractive, but I will say that the drawback for me whenever anyone has complimented me has always been that I don't see it and that I live eternally in fear of when the magic will wear off and the man who once called me gorgeous will see all the things that I see: the cellulite, the bloated belly after eating, the occasional detestable hairs that materialize on my chin or my nipple, the snoring, the I'm-too-skinny, the I've-gained-too-much-weight, the face that doesn't seem as young as it once was.
I can't stop comparing myself to the cutest girl on facebook, or even to my own pictures of myself in the past. What I was then was cute and what I am now is not acceptable. It doesn't matter when I'm looking at pictures, or that pictures this year will be the ones I wish I looked like next year. This is always the thought: what I am is not enough.
"Have you worked on that with your therapist?" a co-worker and friend asked recently while we were jogging during some down-time on a work conference.
"We didn't exactly get there," I said. "That was more like the refining-stage and we were in the triage-stage."
***
Of course, being married to a porn addict did not improve my self-esteem complex.
But on the other hand, it may be that it's pushing me to deal with it. I grew up listening to my mom complain about her weight all the time, I remember when people stopped calling me "cute" and when it went from all the boys liking me in 2nd grade to only the weird kid liking me in 3rd grade (coincidentally, this was also the time when I got glasses). I worried that I wouldn't be able to kiss boys when I was wearing glasses in middle school. I believed brides didn't wear glasses, and I was reinforced in this theory when I had to take off my glasses to act the role of Laurie, bride-ultimate, in the musical "Oklahoma!" in 8th grade. Brides didn't wear glasses. Cow-girls didn't wear glasses.
Just before 9th grade I got contacts, but I also grew about 4 inches taller than I had been in 8th grade. My body didn't fit. I was a size 0 tall, practically an impossibility. Girls would harass me in the lunch line and ask how I could even walk on legs as skinny as mine.
I can remember only three time periods in my life when I felt confident about the way I looked. The first was any time before age 7. The second was a week camping in the Boundary Waters in norther Minnesota after 9th grade, when there were no mirrors to look at and the boys with us still flirted with me despite lack of make-up and showers. And the third was the latter half of my freshman year in college and the beginning of my sophomore year. I don't know why exactly, but I just suddenly realized I thought I looked good and any guy who didn't was missing out on his chance to be with me.
I don't know what happened to that woman. I'm sure the porn whittled against my confidence, and now that I'm dating again, I'm thrown once more into a state of uncertainty about what men think of me, but without the body I had when I was 18. It's not that I see no merit in myself, it's just that I feel uncertain about the way that I look, or more precisely, that any man would want to be with me based on the way I look.
***
This past weekend I stayed at a hostel in Bozeman, MT, and chatted with a French man named Jeff who was 29 and traveling with his father before reporting to Chicago to teach Utopian literature to college students at the University of Illinois, Chicago. He offered me a couple beers, we discussed 1984 and Orwell, I attempted to use the little French I remembered from high school, and before long, after heading out to the bars with our new friends from the hostel, this Frenchman developed a crush on me.
"But what do you like about me, really?" I asked as we were kissing in my private room later that night, before I kicked him out for the evening, and before things "got out of hand." He had just told me that he was surprised, he had never anticipated meeting anyone like me on his trip.
He ticked off a couple comments, saying he liked talking with me about books, he admired what I was doing, I looked gorgeous in a cowboy hat, I had been through tough times, and, he added "you're completely adorable."
"Not all the time," I responded, in a way that belied the truth of a few beers, "sometimes I snore."
He laughed at this remark and said it further proved my adorable-ness, but later I reflected it was sort of defensive comment. I get nervous with men because I don't believe they will accept my flaws. I want to offer a disclaimer on the first date: I snore, I have detestable hairs that pop up in unwanted areas, there's cellulite on the back of my thighs and it's bound to get worse, some day my boobs will be sitting next to my belly button. If you think you can handle that, then we can go on a second date.
I want men to see the worst before they start making declarations of affection.
***
This is funny to me because even though I married a porn-addict, he never said one negative thing about the way I looked. Furthermore, I never cared a bit how he looked.
He was not the type I was typically attracted to, to be honest. He was tall and skinny, I liked his broad shoulders, but he was not really muscular. In fact, when we got married he was probably 30 pounds overweight, had a belly, and the love-handles he's had his entire life. He had a great sense of style, delicate features, turquoise eyes, and I grew to love his height, but he was losing his hair, and didn't get haircuts regularly. He was pale. He wore glasses later in our marriage. He had blackheads on his back.
None of these things mattered. I can't think of one minute I wasn't attracted to him or one minute when I thought, this man is not good enough for me to want him in bed. On the contrary! I loved him, his body, his soft belly, his blackheads. It was a special delight of mine to pop his black heads while we lay in bed together.
So looks aren't that important to me. I mean, yes, there's a fundamental, requisite phase in which attraction is necessary (during this phase my ex was admittedly skinny, with great haircuts, and had exceptional taste in hats). But I never would have stopped loving him after that period just because he gained a few pounds, lost a few hairs, or grew hair in unwanted locations.
I don't know why standards for myself are different.
***
What I most hope for in this world (besides the office-deck, the high five, and the awesome work/dinner life) is that any daughters I have will not question their value based on their looks, and moreover, that they will not have me modeling self-destructive, hostile behavior about my own looks.
***
I have been trying something on this vacation out west. I have been avoiding make-up. And, when I pass mirrors, I look in them and say, "Maybe this is beautiful."
The Frenchman seemed to enjoy the make-up free version of myself, but it's not him that I'm worried about--it's me.
I had a silly fantasy when I was 15 or so that I would some day go to the laundromat looking totally disgusting and meet a man there who would tell me I was beautiful, that I was perfect just the way I was. We, of course, would live happily ever after.
Now I realize I don't need a man to fulfill this fantasy, in fact, a man never CAN fulfill this fantasy. What I need is for me to say I'm beautiful, that I'm perfect just the way I am... flawed, imperfect, and dotted with cellulite dimples.
***
I don't know how to get to this new realization, but perhaps the simple act of wanting it to be true will set the wheels in motion, moving the right direction.
***
When my ex and I talked about my his addiction, in June of 'o6, I actually had drawn out a list of pros and cons to our relationship. I knew we would be fine. I told him I loved him.
Two months later, I found out about the credit card debt while sitting in a mortgage lenders office.
"And of course, there's this 14,000 debt on this credit card," he said.
"Uh, no," I responded. "I didn't know about that."
We both paused and it was clear I had entered dark waters. The mortgage broker recovered in a manner that now makes me delete his group emails that show up in my inbox: "Oh, well, here's the number you can call to clear up any confusion." And he continued to tell me how much we could borrow towards our new home.
So there were issues beyond image. There were financial issues, issues with lying. Throughout the course of the fall of '06 and the spring of '07 we would move into a new home, and I would ask my ex if he was still looking at porn.
"No, baby," he would say, "I saw the look in your eye and I had to quit."
Or he'd get mad at me for asking in the first place, lashing at me with defensive hostility.
When I found another $1200 cable bill the first weekend of August, 07, I realized my gut was right. He was still lying. WE could not change if he could not help but lie about his addiction.
A week later I said I wanted a divorce.
***
"Well," I paused on the deck, turning to the red-faced man. "My story is a little different in some ways to yours," I said. "My ex was an addict, to pornography, but I think a lot of the elements are really the same. I went through that too, the rejection, wondering if I was good enough..."
He nodded and pulled a chair up to my table. Before the waitress could take away the remaining food on my plate, I was telling him about the whole thing.
"And, do you think he's doing better?" he asked me. "I mean, obviously you are. Or you wouldn't be doing all the wonderful things you're doing. (I loved the red-faced man for this.) But do you think he took advantage of this and changed?"
"I don't know," I responded. "But I don't think so. I did A LOT of work during our separation. I went to COSA..."
He looked at me.
"Codependents of Sex Addicts."
He nodded
"And I went to my own therapist once a week, and the two of us even saw a therapist to work through the divorce."
This part of my life that I usually keep intensely private came tumbling out of me. I was telling this man about COSA, about how I had slunk into the first meeting I attended, so ashamed, and thinking, how the fuck did this happen? How could I possibly be going to a meeting for co-dependents of SEX ADDICTS??! It felt so sordid. Embarrassing. Impossible.
But what I learned at that meeting is that there were amazing women going through the exact same thing as me, whether the sex addiction took the form of pornography, or paid escorts, or phone sex, or multiple affairs, or even child abuse. Amazing women married men who used sex to soothe the aching rage in their bones. Women like Elan Woods and Sandra Bullock. Women like me.
What I love about COSA and what I have learned about myself in being "a co-dependent" is that there are no absolutes. One of the promises in the program says "No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others." Nothing is absolute. There are degrees. There is a scale. Maybe I am a co-dependent, but only I know where that places me on the scale.
A codependent enables an addict. She puts others' needs ahead of her own. She might lie or cover up her spouse's issues. She might retaliate against her spouse through emotional manipulation, through guilt trips. She might be the bitter counter-part to the fun-loving addict who presents only his best face to the world. But there is a scale and there are qualities that merit consideration.
For example, typically co-dependents feel a great deal of compassion for someone. In my mind, genuine compassion is an extraordinary quality. It is good to be compassionate for people. It makes me a better teacher. However, the typical co-dependent ultimately lets this compassion turn into enabling. Kindness out of fear or shame are acts of codependency. When I let my 8 year-old brother choose Chuck E. Cheese for MY 16th family birthday party, this was an act of codependency; I put his needs for fun above my need to celebrate in a grown-up way.
I know I have a lot of compassion for people. I LOVE that I have compassion for people. What I do now is be careful that my compassion does not overrule my own needs. I watch out for my blind-spots.
There is a scale for every behavior.
I don't know how far down the scale my ex went. I know there was a lot of money being spent each month on porn. I know he lied to me nearly every day. I know he stopped wanting to have sex with me. I know unlisted number frequently showed up on our caller id. I know he developed a strong interest in running and going to the gym. Beyond this, I don't know where he was on that scale of sexual addiction.
I also know that addiction of any kind stems from pain. An addict turns to a source to soothe pain, and I know my husband had plenty of this growing up in his family, despite how kind his mother and stepfather were. I won't go into all of his details, the secrets he shared with me in confidentiality, but what is commonly known is that his biological father disappeared with no warning during his senior year, skipped every basketball game, skipped state, skipped graduation, skipped acceptance letters to a D2 school, and in my opinion, this was the least of his father-deficient offenses. In fact, in my opinion, this was almost a blessing.
I think that's part of why I fell for my ex. That was my compassion leading me to ignore certain issues, like my ex's silence when his father died a torturous death from cancer. Well-intentioned ladies from the small college town where his biological father ran a pizza shop and was beloved by the kids at the schools, would call our house and leave guilt-ridden messages for my ex. He never responded to them. We visited his dad. His dad mocked my ex and belittled him in front of me while he was dying. And then he died.
And my ex could never talk about this.
***
Years later, when I discovered the credit card bills were not just for my ring and college living expenses (as my ex had told me) I found out that there were pornography charges each month, but that they were highest around the anniversary of his father's death, which happened only two weeks before our first anniversary.
***
Once when I tried very hard to pry for more details, beyond what I knew about the emotional abuse my ex had suffered from his dad, I asked him if he had ever talked about the whole situation with his mom.
"No," he replied, trying to end the discussion.
"Not even now?" I asked, "now that he's gone?"
"No," he ended the conversation. "Sometimes it's best to let the dead stay dead."
***
This is what I mean about how our society is fucked up about grieving. The red-faced man felt guilt and insecurity about grieving, like he wasn't a man. I hid my griefs from my friends throughout the course of my marriage. My ex turned to sex, or pornography, as an adolescent to cope with his splintering family and the pressures he felt to win approval from his dad (I think).
If we could all just be sad when we need to, maybe these problems wouldn't get so big.
***
Addiction can happen to anyone. I will never be so naive as I was when I was in my early 20's as to think that what happens in the past stays in the past. It doesn't. We all have our issues to work out. Issues that can turn into opportunity or disease.
I just hope I have a chance to work all the way through my issues, that I can look happily at myself in the mirror, before I have children of my own.
***
The red-faced man and I became fast friends at the Geo Duck bar. I felt his loss. He felt mine. We traded book titles and wished each other luck.
He asked if I was publishing any of my material or sending it to magazines.
"No," I said, "I want to make sure I really like my material before I send it out. I've really just been working on my craft for the last few years, trying to get it right."
"The reason I ask," he said, "is that some of that stuff can really be helpful, you know, to read other people's stories, even if your craft isn't perfect."
He paused and looked at me, wiping his mouth, "It's the emotion that's really powerful. That's what counts."
Ok, I thought. Here goes. How can I set my compass to anything else?
