Happy Moments

Recently I asked one of my match mates on eharmony.com to name one of his happiest memories. We had made it to "step three" and I wanted to ask a question that hadn't been made up by a god-like computer database. It was a question I asked off the top of my head.

"What is your happiest memory?" asked Lana, my dating coach, when I told her the question I had posed.

"Well, obviously that would be wearing matching overalls to a house party with you when we were freshmen in college," I responded, referring one of our most amusing recollections of freshmen year at the prairie-town school, the University of Minnesota, Morris.

Picture this, two girls in beige Union Bay corduroy overalls over baby blue polo shirts knocking cheerfully on the door of an upper class men house party. The going cover charge for a house party in Morris at the time was between $3-5 a cup, depending on who was throwing the party. Sometimes girls got in for free. The owner of this particular house and coordinator of this particular house party opened the door, looked us over, and after consulting with other people in the house finally decided we could come in if we paid a $10 cover charge. Bewildered, we returned to our car in the frigid early December weather of Minnesota to put our coats back on, the ones we had left in the vehicle so that we wouldn't have to worry about them while at the party, and drove on to the next location, self-esteem shaken, but not crushed.

We both laughed at the memory, and while this is a great one in the collection of fond moments in my mind, I don't know that I could quite call it my happiest memory.

Yesterday was the 4th of July. I met up with "the poker group", the families of the dads (including mine) who have played poker together since college, since they all went to the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. I went on a pontoon ride on McCarron Lake, (while visiting the Bob McCarron family), played with my adorable nephews, ate a lot of chips and salsa, drank a frozen, sugar-free margarita, played a round of bocce ball, stayed for the annual cutting of my mother's special "flag-fruit-pizza", and then politely excused myself from the group my family has spent the last 28 years with on July 4th. I told everyone I was going to watch the fireworks with friends.

I lied.

I went home and I worked on various little odd projects around my house. I walked my dog out into the balmy weather, admired the sun setting, the air so warm and thick it felt like a shawl on my shoulders, and returned to my apartment to the sound of rockets exploding the air. I didn't watch a single one.

For years, my happiest holiday after Christmas was spending the 4th of July with the poker families and playing with my "poker cousins." Jessica and Melanie were the oldest girls, almost too old for me to even fathom. Sometimes they just liked to sit with the adults, hang out and eat. Marjie was a year older than I was and sooooo cool. She read Stephen King books, and was gregarious, and magnetic, and joked with all the dads and watched sports. I was next after her, a quieter, creative girl who loved to make up the stories of what we were "playing" while we hung from our knees on the top rungs of the octagonal playground set the Voelkers had in their back yard on E. 6th St. in St. Paul, MN. Mary came after me, two years younger, a curly-brown-haired girl that would join in on any game laughing, and Sarah, who loved Buddy Holly was after her, and then Annie, who was dramatic and sweet and flirted with Nate, my brother, the sports fanatic who was next in line. After him came Tom who broke his leg one summer and survived a sailboat overturning when he was four, and then Kathy, Mary's sister, the one with golden curls who loved everything girly, and then Jim, and then my youngest brother Mark, both of whom competed in the "who's louder" competition and tormented the poker dads with water balloons and jests. I think all of us kids teased Ray about being bald mercilessly. We held mock-Olympics, water-balloon fights, piano recitals. We played seven-steps, freeze tag, water-wars, and told ghost stories. We ate cheeseballs and sat in the Voelker's basement watching Sixteen Candles and not understanding any of it. Then we'd change into jeans, put on the bug spray, pile into cars and drive to the Capitol of Minnesota, in downtown St. Paul. We'd pick out spots on the lawn of the giant domed building to watch the fireworks, back when they were free, and spread our our fuzzy plaid blankets before reapplying bug spray to our ankles and necks. When we got older, Marjie and her cousin Molly would point out the couples "having sex" on the lawn. We'd play frisbee, play more tag, and wear ourselves out until the moment a voice came over the loudspeaker singing "I'm Proud to Be an American." The show would leave little squiggly lines on my eyelids when I closed my eyes and my ears would be ringing. The littlest kids would cry and cover their ears. But I loved it. I loved the vibration in my heart, the exhalation of twilight into darkness, the white chandelier hovering closer and closer above my eyes as I lay on my back and watched black puffs of smoke float on a navy blue sky.

When we left we'd trot with our moms behind the dads who carried the youngest kids on their shoulders, above the crowd, down the streets, over the bridge, to the parking lot, where we all said our good-byes. I would lean back in the car and pretend to fall asleep on the drive back to our suburb, Fridley. When I was young my dad would carry me up the stairs.

This might be one of my happier memories.
Almost as happy, or maybe happier, were my July 4ths in my 20's.

For six years, my fiancee and then husband and I went with our college friends up to Bayfield, Wisconsin, where we took camping to a new level. The first year we grilled steaks in the Indian campground just outside of Bayfield, carried toilet paper into the woods to go to the bathroom, and took a little 14-foot sailboat out onto the water of Lake Superior. The first year it was just us and one other couple, then gradually we invited more people, and instead of taking one vehicle and a sailboat to Bayfield, we took three or four vehicles, two kayaks, a sailboat, and about four cases of Corona to Bayfield, and then to the ferry that took us to Madeline Island where we camped at a state park. The four or five couples on the ferry would toast each other with an open bottle and a lime wedge and we'd lean out onto the water and fantasize moving to this area, this little island, this escape from the world.

The weather was almost always hot, 85 or 90 degrees, and the water in the great lake was probably 50 degrees, so we would play frisbee up to our knees in the frigid water, beer in one hand, frisbee in the other. We'd set up a tent on the beach, haul down our three water vehicles, bring two or three coolers, and sometimes people would even buy drinks from us. I would bring a book I'd never read, preferring to chat, or play frisbee, or kayak around the hook of the island out to the giant rocks of the shore down the way. You could see the bottom of the lake to 20 feet and the rocks looked like giants had arranged a sort of underwater landscaping scene. Too cold for weeds, the lake was a turquoise in the shallow lip that extended about a hundred yards from the southern shore of the little island, and dark blue once you moved beyond that shelf. Again we'd go out in the little sailboat, and I thrilled to dodging the mast swinging when we would "come about." The friend that owned the sailboat taught me, almost, to sail by myself, challenging me to take the tiller and the strings the moved the sail sooner than I felt ready. We'd bring a Nalgene bottle of some horrible drink or another, usually gin and tonic, and the trip would turn into this heady adventure of water and wind and leaning this way or that, and trimming the sail to stop the luffing, and catching a breeze and flying out on the lake, water splashing up on my stomach and toes while we leaned backwards towards the blue to stop the boat from capsizing. We'd return to shore, my legs wobbling, and I'd jump out into the knee-high cold water, before walking up to the scalding hot sand, collapsing and asking for the chips.

Breakfasts were my number one sport on vacation. I would usually be the first one awake at the camp and would attempt to quietly work on the necessities, coffee being the main priority. Later, Dave would start cooking. Eggs, pancakes with peanut butter and syrup, bacon, and Paul would make bloody marys. I think I ate more at these breakfasts than I usually did in a week. Then Shannon and I might go for a run through the woods, before returning back to our group. Even with the added run, I'd still be the first one in my suit, practically dragging the rest of the team with me to the beach for our day of frisbee and relaxation. If it rained we played drinking games under the screen tent.

On the fourth, we made our way to the ferry landing, near The Burnt Down Bar and set up our folding chairs in the sand while the sun set. I took pictures of boats intersecting with a giant orange orb lowering into purple water, of pink-reflection water lapping the shore. Andy, the geology major, would describe the geological principles of each of the stones lining the shore. We filmed silly videos and said stupid things and wandered to the ice-cream shop for giant cones. I'd wear a hoody sweatshirt and lean up against my husband, or sit next to him and touch his foot with mine. Sometimes there were tense moments with him on these trips, moments where I saw a crabbier side of my husband, probably the side of an addict in withdrawal, but not during the fireworks.

The fireworks were nothing compared to the Taste of Minnesota, but the drama was greater. A crackly voice would come over the loud speaker and start reading the preamble to the Bill of Rights, then one firework would go off. Then the speaker would give us a little history about our forefathers. And another firework would go off. Music would begin and one by one fireworks were set to certain chords and crescendos. It was a very deliberate show, but the finale made up for the theatrics. It was as if the show's pyrotechnic could no longer contain himself during the charade of the Great American Firework Script and suddenly took matters into his own hands, sending up all the rest of the rockets in a streak of glory before the Madeleine Island police could haul him away riding buck on a bicycle. I'd hold Shawn's hand after the show, his long fingers, his smooth fingernails. We'd sit in the back of someone's SUV and he'd make a stupid comment, I'd roll my eyes, but be very, very happy anyway. Maybe sometimes, during the sad years, I wished one of these other men had been my husband, one less complicated, one that understood me better, but at the end of the day, Shawn and I were a team that knew each other and saw the world around us in the same way. Eventually his shoulders would be against mine, his arms around my body, hugging me at the waist.

I loved these July fourths on our little island in the middle of Lake Superior.

So last night, as the sun started to drop, and without warning it was already 8:00 at night, I suddenly couldn't be there for the fireworks. I couldn't be with my nephews when I used to watch fireworks with my husband. I couldn't be with the family of my youth when the family of my early adult years has somehow vanished like sands under a north shore wave.

There are no more trips to Madeleine Island and there will never be trips anymore like that.
There are no more fireworks at the state capitol. I am no longer watching for my brother atop my father's shoulders.

I am without tradition this Independence Day, waiting for the next phase to begin. Waiting for my next happiest moments.

Dating like it's 1999...

When I first started dating again after my divorce, there were all sorts of new technological advances that had developed since the last time I was dating... 12 years ago (!), back when I was 20.

Dating in my late teens and early twenties went something like this...

When I was in college, a boy might become interested in me by reviewing the pages of the "freshman shopper", the freshmen edition of the school paper at the small, prairie school called The University of Minnesota, Morris. It was part of the "main U" (University of Minnesota located in Minneapolis), but had not nearly the numbers. While the main U had nearly 50,000 students, including graduate programs and the St. Paul campus, Morris had less than 2,000 and the town had less than 5,000 people in it, many of whom were Mennonites and resented the rowdy, liberal students the college brought into town. I remembered feeling apprehensive about the number of sheep I saw on campus property as my parents turned our mini-van off of Hwy. 28 when I was arriving for my freshman orientation. Later, I would discover that the stabled horses on campus went out to graze the apple trees in the pasture located right next to the soccer field where I practiced. One day five horses got loose on the field during practice. I had a sprained ankle and could only stand and watch while my teammates chased them down to bring them in.

In the freshman shopper at this school was a compilation of all the photographs of freshmen who were tricked into sending their senior picture to the school and writing three of their hobbies on the back. I was one such freshman, who dutifully sent her picture in, believing it might be sent to my roommate or my orientation group leader for some sort of get-to-know-you activity, and thus choosing my "ugly" picture to send in because it was the one I least wanted to give to my real friends, the high schoolers who attended Fridley High (and some of them certainly were high, believe me). I wrote on the back "Soccer, Swimming, Dancing." I had censored my original third selection "Reading" because I felt it was too nerdy. I was determined not to be nerdy in college (even if I was in real life).

Little did I know that my "ugly" picture would be put smack in the middle of the school newspaper to be perused by older students before the first few house parties of the year. "Oh yeah," I heard on more than one occasion after telling an older boy my name, "I saw you in the shopper." Mortifying.

So while a boy might initially become interested through perusing the shopper, it did not guarantee any sort of communication. In order to actually talk to a boy, I could strike up a conversation with him at a house party and either tell him my full name so that he could look me up in the campus phone book, give him my brand-new email address (something I had never had before), or tell him my phone number, since for the last two years now every dorm room had its own phone instead of one for each floor at the end of the hallway. "It's 6518," I would say, listing off the four digit campus extension and adding, "65, like the age you retire, and 18, like the age you're an adult," a clever mnemonic device I had conceived in order to help the drunk boys remember after the house party was over.

Of course, there was one other option, which was to get sloppy drunk, make out with a boy at a house party, and then invite him over to my dorm room if my roommate happened to be out of town, (which was often, since her boyfriend still lived back in Watertown, South Dakota). We would make out on my roommate's bed (she had the bottom bunk and it was just too awkward to climb up a ladder) and I would always say, "but I'm not sleeping with you."

"That's fine. I wasn't expecting it," they'd almost always say. (Really, I've made out with some extraordinarily respectful individuals, not at all like what we learned about during the "safe sex" and "no means no" talk we all got during freshman orientation.) Then in the morning, the situation would become awkward. Either I liked him but he wanted to avoid me, or vice versa.

Make-out sessions very rarely led to relationships for me, though for many people at Morris a good make-out session was a sign of instant couplehood.

Provided I was actually going out on a date with a guy, the course followed a very different route. He'd eventually call me or email me and ask me out on a date. I wouldn't be able to think of anything to say other than "Sure." And then he'd cook me dinner in his dorm kitchen, having banished his floormates from the room for the evening, or he'd pick me up and take me to Alexandria, a town 45 minutes away that boasted a Chinese restaurant and current movies. On the worst of these occasions, the drive was painful, me attempting to make small talk with a very shy and sweet individual, but one who took me to BURGER KING for dinner and then made me pay for my own meal. I felt no chemistry for this individual and the Burger King expedition was a nail in the coffin.

Very few, if any, of these "real date" situations led to a relationship for me at Morris, either, though again, it was like insta-relationship for other couples.

If I were home for the summer, the dating scene took on a new form. Dance clubs were a part of the way to meet boys. I would go to teen night with my friends and we would pay our $3 cover charge and buy $1 waters all night. We'd check out the boys and smile at the ones we'd like. We'd speak in girl-talk to each other with eye-brow raises and head nods, letting each other know if the guy dancing behind us was cute or not.

If I wasn't into a guy, I'd perform the "t" move, meaning I'd position my body to be perpendicular to his whatever way he moved and thus, the only part of me he could rub up against would be my hip bone. This deterred most boys after attempting to get closer once or twice and they'd look for friendlier territory. If I liked the guy, I'd either face him while we were dancing, or allow him to grind on me from behind. (As I just chaperoned a high school prom three months ago, this methodology still seems to hold true.)

Then, after maybe a half an hour of sweaty dancing, we'd try to go get some water and scream a brief conversation at each other over the bass. I might even give him my phone number. If I did this, it was a week of anticipation, wondering if he'd call, and when he did, of course, he'd have to get through my mom, or dad, or brothers if they answered the phone first. Many a time I'd try to sprint down the hallway in my basement where my room was to be the first one to answer our phone, the one in the basement laundry room that was a beauty out of the early 1970's complete with rotary dialing. I'd have to really think about if I wanted to call someone while sticking my finger in each little number hole and pulling it up to the top of the circle. It was very exhilarating.

When I did actually talk to a boy, after first screaming up the stairs to my family, "I got it!" I would be almost as physically involved in the conversation as I was mentally. I would sit on the dryer, I'd kick my mom's sewing chair, I'd walk down the hall as far as the curly receiver cord would let me. I'd lay on the hallway floor and run my fingers through the tough bristles of the cheap downstairs carpet. I'd kick my legs up on the white walls of the hallway scuffed with black marks of my brothers' hockey equipment that they brought into the "sports room" after practice, an unfinished sauna room lined with cedar started by the people who owned the house before my parents and I moved in when I was 2 and-a-half.

All of this was very exciting and once in a while, after a hour long discussion about nothing in particular, a date would be planned.

But, again, very few of these dates or phone calls led to a real relationship, though I'm told they did for other people.

In my awkward early dating career, I really only had one big relationship (with the man I would go on to marry) and a couple of brief practice relationships. I think part of this was my own fear of relationships, and part of it was the lore I had built up around the legend of parents' relationship. They had met at a party during which my dad said to himself "she's the one," and my mom said to herself, "he seems like a nice guy." Four months later, they were engaged. Eight months after that, they were married. Thirty-four years later, they still are.

In my mind then, there was ONE relationship in everyone's life, and I believed my marriage was it, the relationship that would last until I was in my 90's.

But that was not to be, and sadly, or at least two years ago I thought it was sadly, I'm back in the world of awkward dating. And there are all sorts of technological advances that have made it more and more complicated, like facebook, and texting, and things I never even had to worry about back when I was 18 and the most anyone really might have was a pager. One of my friends had a cell phone to be used "only in emergencies!" because each minute was "really, really expensive!"

Through the last two years I've been awkwardly navigating the whole technological dating world, asking myself questions like "to text, or not to text?" But it's time, I've decided, to enter the final frontier: online dating.

I have decided to experiment with eharmony this summer, for one, because I actually have time to pursue this kind of adventure right now (there's a lot of homework involved), and two, because I suddenly realized I might not always be single, and how silly not to take advantage of this while I can.

It has been quite an interesting experience. I log on each day to review my "matches", profiles of men sent to me by a database playing God. Then I decide to either archive, contact, or simply leave the men in my homepage. "What happens to the archived men?" my dad asked when I explained the system to my family.

"They just hover in bubbles, like on SuperMario [for Wii-the new one], crying 'Help me!' until Katie lets them out." We all laughed, and I have to say, there is a certain power that comes with deciding to archive someone.

"It's not mean, is it?" I asked when I archived someone because I just wasn't that attracted to his pictures.

"No!" said my friend Lana, "It's normal! It's just like at a bar, the process of elimination."

And plus, there is just no way to contact everyone. I can only imagine how things could pile up if I wasn't checking my matches each day!

After the initial stage, there is a four-step process. First you send each other multiple choice questions, then you send your list of "Must-Haves and Can't Stands." If both of you are still on board after that, you send each other three short answer questions, and finally, you are allowed to email each other.

"Chompers," as Lana and I have fondly dubbed my first e-harmony date, (because he wrote in his profile that he had braces, 'the metal kind that most people have when they are 10' but that he was hoping for 'a nice set of chompers by the latter part of the year,') I have discovered was sort of an anomaly. He jumped right to step four and proposed we meet for a drink. We had a good time and swapped amusing stories about our families, and then, three days later he sent me a very polite email explaining that while he had had a great time, he had also been on a couple dates with another woman and he wanted to be exclusive with her. "I joined eharmony because I wanted a serious relationship," he wrote, "and for me, that couldn't happen if I was dating more than one woman at a time." It was so nice, and so filled with integrity, that I became even fonder of Chompers and decided we had been on the best first eharmony date ever. I wished him well and returned to my six matches a day.

The first time I got to step three with a man, I have to admit, I almost broke out into hives. The questions were serious! "Besides love, what one trait do you believe successful couples have?" and "If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?" and finally, "tell me five random things about yourself." The first question was the one that really caused me to sweat. How serious was this? What kind of commitment were we making? This was with Brian, or "Cheese-lover." I contacted him because he included cheese in his list of five things he couldn't live without. But, after making it all the way to step four, I suddenly stopped hearing from him.

No matter. What I like about eharmony is that I feel like I'm getting over the concept of rejection. I contacted another one of my matches, named Joey, who I was just swooning over. He was so cute, looked kind of manly, was in triathlons, said his daughter was something he couldn't live without, and here's the kicker, said he was looking for "someone who wants something serious." I contacted him and showed his picture to Lana, my dear friend and dating coach.

"He looks like Wes," she said.

Perhaps you have heard the new song by John Mayer, the one called "Friends, Lovers, or Nothing?" I would say this aptly describes my relationship with Wes. And we are firmly in the "Nothing" category as he no longer returns my calls.

I would like to say I simply ignored the comment, but with all the maturity of a seventh-grader I instead said, "Yeah, except taller and smarter."

Not that height is a "big" factor me (ha ha), but I imagined the 5' 8" Wesley would be chagrined to know I was dating a 6'1" version of himself, and so mentally I felt I had scored a point. And the smarter comment refers to the adage I coined this year in my 9th grade classroom when I would turn to the girls I was teaching after we watched the 9th grade boys hump each other and try to hit each other in the balls during the first couple minutes before the bell rang, "Boys are dumb." They would nod, and I felt like real learning was happening.

Here's the thing, it's not about me if a guy rejects me, it's about him or us or timing, but really, I am still quite a fine person. It helps me to remember that "boys are dumb," a comment I don't believe literally, but one that reminds me not to take dating so seriously or so personally. When it finally works out, it will be great. Until then, no fretting, just more surfing.

This is why when adorable Joey never responded and eventually "closed" me as a match, (sort of like death to an eharmony match, because you are never allowed to communicate again--Ever), I was not upset.

"But why would he close you?!" asked my dating coach, just the sort of unconditional supporter you need in the dating world. A woman who can't imagine any man not falling madly in love with me while I too quickly see all of my flaws.

"Oh, well, I just think it's probably because he met the woman of his dreams a month ago and now he's being respectful and closing all of his matches," I said, having no clue if this was the case, but choosing to believe that it was.

"Oh," she replied, "that's nice of him. I guess that's ok."

Whether Joey closed me because he met the woman of his dreams, or he didn't like the Kentucky Derby hat I was wearing in my first profile picture, or he thought I was too tall, or he didn't like that I did yoga, or perhaps he was against the dog I mentioned in my list of hobbies (as in I like to walk my dog around the lakes), it doesn't really matter. It doesn't change who I am as a person, which is the woman who "loves spicy food and dive bars, going out for breakfast with friends, curling up on the couch in front of candles, and singing Bon Jovi on karaoke night." I think that woman sounds great, and like a lot of fun, and if Joey doesn't that's fine.

Especially because Jason, who likes to go running and is going to a crawfish broil for the 4th of July, wants to go out for drinks next week! :)

Watching Porn

On New Year's Eve, a bunch of my college friends got together to wave goodbye to 2006 with skewers, hunks of bread and veggies, and vats of bubbling cheese. After spending an outrageous amount at an actual fondue restaurant the year before, we were determined to do it better and cheaper on our own.

It was a night of hilarity and laughs. Very few, if any, of the women there were pregnant (we were all married couples ranging from 4-8 years in wedded bliss) and at least one bottle of Hendrick's gin was consumed with small amounts of tonic water and thin slices of cucumber resting on the surface. This in addition to the champagne. And the beer. And the wine. Our host, a who liked to keep parties rolling along, made a play list of classics from our "back in the day" years. "Bust a Move" was one of the songs playing, along with Keith Sweat's "Twisted", and of course, a variety of Michael Jackson's hits. When "P.Y.T." came on, there was a lull in the ferocity of the party and in general people were simply sipping and chatting, but when that song came on, I started dancing in place, glanced across the room and saw my lanky husband bobbing his head in his chair and singing along as well. "See!" I exclaimed, moving across the room to perch on his knee while he rested his hand on the small of my back, "this is why I know we are perfect for each other."

It felt true. It felt like we were two people who danced when no one else was. Because we were so in sync when out on the town, I felt reassured, like the problems I felt drifting into our lives when we were home alone didn't exist, that they must be imagined, something only I felt because I must have a contentment disorder. I must be the type of woman who looks for problems where there are none.

Now, I realize I was looking for reassurance that our lives were fine because they weren't. I wasn't imagining problems. But I just didn't know the truth. I thought it was bad that Shawn looked at porn, but then I could argue against myself. I thought he had an addiction, and even he thought he had one, but he told me he was done, that he had quit. What choice did I have? He looked me in the eye and said it was done. I could choose to believe my husband wouldn't lie to me and ignore the nagging feeling in my gut, or I could choose not to believe him and instead feel crazy worrying about what was true.

All this and we were only three weeks in our new home. I was working full time and going to grad school. I just wanted to have fun at New Year's; I wanted to stop thinking about the problem.

But I couldn't. I would encounter sexual innuendos at every turn. My coworkers who teased me when Shawn and I moved in with my parents, joking that we'd have to put a sock on the door when we wanted to have sex. I blushed fiercely, not because it was true or I was embarrassed my parents might think we were having sex, but because we weren't having much sex. I was pretty sure my husband wasn't attracted to me.

Even this got confusing, though, because he reinforced my self-esteem, told me I was attractive, and clearly enjoyed when his friends flirted with me or told him he was lucky.

At New Year's I was sitting cozy wedged between two of my girlfriends on a couch and we were talking in low tones about sex with the men (our husbands) drinking tonic and gin at the basement bar. Emily was giggling about watching porn with her husband, a woman who was always open about her sexuality and who seemed to me to be the definition of Healthy when it came to sex.

The porn question came seeping back into my mind. If porn was healthy, was Shawn healthy? And if Shawn was healthy, what was I? I thought about the times I had suggested we watch CineMax together as an experiment, one of my many attempts to persuade my husband to want to have sex with me. Could it be he was the normal one? Was I just uptight about his habits?

"Well, what about if one person is watching porn in secret?" I asked, wearing a short-sleeved, body-hugging black sweater lined with silver threads. I felt Emily's arm against mine as we leaned back on the couch.

"Oh, no," she said, without a hint of hesitation. "If it's secret, it's dirty."

I nodded. Relieved. But I didn't explain why I asked. I kept my secret.

What troubles me now, three years past separation and into recovery, is that Emily, wise and healthy as she is, doesn't get to be the judge on what is acceptable and what is not. Emily can decide for herself what is acceptable. I can decide for myself what feels right. There isn't really a quota for what it takes to be a sex addict, there's no rule about how much porn you have to look at before it "counts" as addiction.

"It's like this, I think," said a friend of mine recently at the bar I visit for happy hour about once a week. "Addiction is when something takes away from your life. So, the guy that shows up smashed to work and loses his job is an alcoholic. The guy that drinks every night, gets up in the morning and adds whiskey to his coffee, but shows up every day on time and does his job, has a drinking problem and might not be living his life to the fullest, but he is not an alcoholic."

I don't know that I agree with this definition exactly, but I see his point to a certain extent. Addiction is a slippery topic.

I'm not sure how to handle the subject of pornography. "It's such an interesting topic," said one of my peers from class. "I mean, it is the internet." [Add research later]

The feeling I fought against when waking to the realization that Shawn had a problem with pornography was the feeling that everyone looks at porn. I'd broach the subject tentatively and my girlfriends would dismiss it as something every guy does once in a while. My sister-in-law said she knew there was porn on my brother's computer (ew!), and even my mom told me that my dad used to get Playboy magazines (double ew!). "Of course, I made him get rid of them when I moved in," she added. Both women told me this after finding out about Shawn's addiction. They didn't understand. I had never told them. It was the secret I'd been keeping to myself for three or four years.

Every man I knew in college had at least some porn on his computer, and they would amuse themselves by showing each other images. I still don't understand why guys look at porn together. It is completely beyond me, but I realize there's some sort of amusement factor there, especially, it seems, at the college level.

[Add research about the highly addictive nature of internet porn]

And it is addicting. When I was starting to realize Shawn's compulsion to look at porn happened more frequently than I imagined, I would trace the history files on our computer. When I confronted him, he started erasing the history, and I found the temporary files in our computer still held the downloads and links he'd visited. I would trace his steps through the internet, and I hate to admit it, but I would start to become fascinated myself. And sickened. And not totally unaroused. It is erotic and arousing to look at naked people having sex. It is fascinating to absorb the different links and channels porn took. It is sickening to see how porn reduces people: sex with Asian women, sex with teens, sex with grandmothers, with blonds, with brunettes, with redheads, gang-bangs, big dicks, tight pussies, black women, rape scenes, blow-jobs, cum-on-her face, look-up-her-skirt, watch-her-change, watch-her-beg, give-it-to-her-hard.

One site was just a spreadsheet of choices, and because my husband never told me what he watched, I assumed he watched the worst. I saw the rape scenes and thought about how one time he put his hands on my neck, though not hard. I saw the scenes where she begged and thought about how I would talk dirty to him to try to turn him on. I saw the scenes where men fucked teens and I thought about the girls I taught in high school.

I lost myself in that internet porn for hours, just trying to figure out my husband. Feeling pretty horrified.

I still don't know what he looked at on the internet. I probably never will. Maybe it wasn't as bad as I thought it was. Maybe it was worse. I know he went to one site everyday, Carrie Sweets, teen tease. She would change outfits and dance for her "fans" and tantalize them with her journal of daily events, like sucking on lolli-pops, trying on swim-suits, getting sweaty out in the sun. There was even a birthday club where she would send a birthday wish to her most loyal "fans" (the ones that paid a subscription) on their special day.

I know he purchased porn through cable television and that often the bill would be about $300 a month. I know he also bought dvd's from some company called Adult DVD empire. I know unlisted numbers showed up frequently on our phone. I know one of the other sites he visited frequently was a peep show site where you could chat with the strippers. I only know all of this in hindsight, through my sleuthing. By looking, finally, at the credit card statements he would never show me, the cable bills he hid from me when he got the mail.

I wish I hadn't had to be so sneaky. I wish I wouldn't have had to spy. At the time, I was a good-girl who got married when she was 24 and assumed it would be for life. When things started to feel distant and he wouldn't tell me what was going on, when he would say he wasn't interested in having sex because he was full, or tired, or busy, or whatever, I started to wonder what was going on that would drive so much distance between us. When url addresses popped up unbidden when I searched for grad schools, I began to get concerned.

First, it was the secrecy. "Just put a post-it on the computer when you look at porn," I said. "I hate the secrecy. It makes me feel gross."

But I would still find porn.

"Did you look at porn today?"

He'd confess and look remorseful.

"How come you didn't just put a post-it on the computer?" I would ask.

"It's embarrassing," he'd say, or maybe he'd just shrug.

I'd let him off the hook. We were too happy otherwise. He cooked, he cleaned, he was affectionate in public, he took care of me. He was attractive, he dressed well, he listened to great music, had great taste in books, loved eating at great restaurants, and was a receptacle of interesting though somewhat trivial information. He was generous and bought drinks for other people. He could break dance. People were forever telling me how lucky I was.

Porn shut me out of his life. His compulsion to watch porn caused us financial debt. His absorption in this "hobby" caused him to lie to me daily.

I'd call that an addiction.

In the end it was the lying that drove me away. In a way I thank God that he lied to me. Had he been honest, I would have stayed. I would have "helped" him through his "sickness." (For better or for worse, in sickness and in health...). I would have been the good wife.

But when I found out there was yet another $1400 cable bill in August of 2007, after he had told me weekly that he had quit looking at porn, I knew there was nothing I could do. I knew we were not in it together. I knew it was beyond anything I could control. So I quit. I left. I walked out the door.

A week later we were separated.

A year after that happy New Year's to welcome in 2007, I celebrated the birth of 2008 by myself at my aunt and uncle's condo in Florida, 10 miles from the beach. I cooked lobster. I cried. I drank wine. I ate chocolate. I bought myself a cute nightgown and a beautiful bracelet. I went to the beach. I wrote prayers on shells. I drove my rented convertible up and down the coast. I felt the sun on my skin and the wind through my hair.

I did not think about porn.

I don't know what will happen with me and pornography. "Look at you," said my wonderful red-haired motherly therapist. "You're so much stronger now, you know you wouldn't let a guy into your life who looked at that stuff."

But I'm not sure. I'm not sure if it's a deal-breaker for me, or simply something I would want to be completely honest and open about with my partner. Internet porn is out. Done deal. Something I can't stand because it can so easily go from silly to disturbing. But some porn, the silly kind that I feel quite certain was filmed in a studio and not someone's bedroom, the kind that is played on CineMax, can be sort of stimulating and might be fun to watch with someone else. But I'm not sure. I'm still not sure how I feel about porn.

What I do know is that I won't ask Emily, wise as she is, about what is right for me when it comes to porn. That is a decision I will make for myself.

A tribute to my cousin Andrea, with thanks to the poet Mary Oliver

Hospital tape leaves a gray sticky residue that seems impossible to get off the skin.

I know this because there is a line of it across my arm right at the elbow joint, where it was used to hold a cotton ball to the spot where a kind nurse stuck a needle into a vein while I was in the ER on Sunday. I warned her my veins were tricky before turning away to avoid the sight of a needle going into my skin and sucking out my blood.

"They just like to wander," she said.
"Well, that's ok, I guess," I said. "So do I."

She laughed. And I am realizing I am letting my thoughts wander right now. I thought I had this essay mapped out. I thought I knew where it would take me, but now I'm not so sure.

I'm feeling overwhelmed. And awestruck. I have just returned from the ER for the second time in a week, but this time it was for my dog, a 17 pound yorkie-poo named Friday who had tiny lacerations in his eye from visiting the groomer and getting soap in it. It's funny. I debated less about bringing him to the ER than I did myself, having been told by a woman at the nurse's hotline that I called that I should see a provider within four hours because of the injury, the bruise, on my head that I don't recall ever getting.

I have had concussions several times in the past, and migraines that have left me speechless, nauseous, and sightless, so I have visited the ER a couple of different occasions for brain trauma. This didn't feel like trauma, but the nurse sounded concerned. I thought of my cousin who died nearly two years ago. A freak blood clot working its way through her veins. She was 33. I would turn 32 in two days. I weighed the cost of an ER trip on my left hand, and my cousin, her beautiful life ending in a moment, on my right.

I went to the ER reasoning that I would have even less money if I were dead.

With my hound, I listened as the vet tech told me the cost of a visit and simply said, "Ok." There was no hesitation when he said it was better to take care of eye injuries right away. I just wanted my dog to be better.

Sometimes I think it's easier to love others, even if they are small, furry, and weigh only 17 pounds, than it is to love ourselves.

"Why didn't you call?" asked one of my friends on Tuesday night as we were celebrating my birthday with a few other friends. I had driven myself to the ER, a fact that caused my doctor to roll his eyes and smile, especially after hearing I only called the nurse hotline because I wanted the ok to play soccer that night, that the only dizziness I had felt was when I put the ball on the tee at my 8:30 a.m. golf game, and that the only possible moment I thought I could have bruised myself on my head was perhaps while swing-dancing the night before at the local VFW after riding a karaoke bus to celebrate a friend's 30th birthday.


Why didn't I call a friend to give me a ride? "Because she's stubborn," said another friend, a man with a white eyebrow, "and too proud to ask for help."

I nodded to this comment. It's true. I have such a hard time asking for help. I feel this is especially the case as a single woman. At least for me. When I was married, of course I had no problem asking my husband to help me. To do the things I couldn't do, like drive me to urgent care when a post-soccer game migraine had me lying on the bathroom floor with a towel over the crack under the door to keep the light out of the completely darkened room. But as a single girl, it's harder.

I did call my parents, though. And a dear friend. "Lan," I said while waiting in the lobby and trying to calm down so that my blood pressure would drop from the shockingly high number of 202 over 127 that it had just read a minute ago. "The only thing I could think when the nurse told me to go to the ER was 'I can't die. I have a book to write!'"

"Yes," she replied. "I am so glad you went. I know you are ok, but you are just too precious. The world and I need you!"

Her comments made me smile and made me feel loved, but strangely did nothing to lower my blood pressure.

"Someone just got moved to the top of the list," said a nurse in the other room when the woman who had taken my blood pressure reported I was still off the charts. The ER was busy and there was a shortage of beds, but apparently when you have crazy bp scores, you become a priority customer.

After a barrage of tests done by extraordinarily kind people, complete with witty senses of humor and everything, I was pronounced O.K. but told by half a dozen people that I had high blood pressure.

"Yes, I keep hearing that," I said and smiled at a red-faced middle aged nurse named Jim. He went over my post-ER directions of health care and smiled at me from his round face. After I changed out of my hospital gown and back into my normal clothes and emerged from my curtained bed, he pointed me in the direction of the lobby, sensing my disorientation and smiling when I left.

It was a relief to be ok.

I drove myself home on a gorgeous June evening, up France avenue and past Lake Calhoun. When I got home I greeted my yorkie-poo and we went for a walk to the lake, he stopping to make friends with every group of people and furry creature that was joining us for the beautiful Minnesota sunset that evening. Sailboats dotted the water, weeds broke the surface into the air, and an orange sun painted the sky pinks and yellows and blues and purples with large water-color strokes.

Friday went up to a group of three Somali women and pulled me along behind him. "What a cute dog!" they exclaimed as he snuggled into their laps and gazed up into their eyes. He is such a flirt.

We left and rested under the shade of the tree, Friday panting, I thinking. My cousin rarely leaves my thoughts this week. She had a dog, a pitbull who she loved. She was 33, blond, and had been through a lot of interesting life chapters: from high school valedictorian, to fashionista, to grunge music-maven, to girlfriend-of-a-druggie-who-had-a-son, to debt-stricken ex-girlfriend living in Vegas after the boyfriend took advantage of her, to woman pulling the strings back together only to hear her mother was dying of terminal cancer. And then she got a blood clot. And she took a nap. And she called her mom. And her mom told her to go to a neighbor's and call for help because of the mysterious leg pain she felt. And she walked out the door, pitbull on leash, and collapsed on the steps. A neighbor saw her and called 9-1-1 immediately. Her phone was still on. Her mother was still listening. The dog ran away. There was commotion. The ambulance arrived.

They couldn't save her.

"It was probably a blood clot that traveled to her lungs," said the doctor taking care of me, the one who had grabbed my toe when he told me everything would be ok, "and then it stopped her breathing." He was quiet for a moment and I appreciated his bedside manner, which only furthered the crush I had developed when he grabbed my toe.

But I couldn't stop thinking about my cousin. And I can't stop.

I remember telling a friend over buffalo wings on my 30th birthday how angry I was. We were sitting on the outdoor patio watching traffic pass on Hennepin avenue. I wanted to blame someone. I wanted to blame her dad. I knew her mother was terminally ill and I knew her father had always been too hard to live with, too hard on his only daughter. To me, it was as if when her mother died she would be an orphan. It almost felt like she chose to die, rather than be without her only ally.

This was grief talking, of course. Denial. Anger. Bargaining. I just wanted my cousin not to be dead. I wanted her to be alive.

I remember her burial, though I've blocked the funeral out of my memory. I remember the soggy ground, the smell of fertilizer and grass and prairie flowers in northern Illinois. I remember the smell of earth and the sound of birds flying overhead. The early July heat. The air pressing down on us and the heels of my shoes sinking into the earth. I remember the sky was bright blue and the grass was impossibly green. And I was still angry.

Life is so short. And life is so beautiful. Even the burials are beautiful. And the trips to the ER are filled with startling beauty in the jokes of the technicians and smiles of the middle-aged male nurses. And I am glad I took care of myself. And I am glad I took care of my dog. Because when all is said and done, we only get one chance to do what we want with our one wild and precious life.

Our Happy Hour

Let me tell you about the hat I wore to the Kentucky Derby this year.

Shoot, let me tell you about the whole adorable outfit. Head to toe.

The hat was large and floppy, drooping dramatically over one eye when I bent the brim a certain way. It was straw, lined with black dye for about an inch of the brim, a black flower, perhaps a hibiscus or peony, perched on the crown. The dress was a white halter dress with large black and yellow flowers and a black sash tied around my waist in a bow. The skirt flared slightly over a black netting rimmed with black ribbon and fell just above my knees. The shoes were black patent, rhinestone sprinkled, peep-toe wedges with a straw heel, same color as the hat, and I carried a black patent bag. I wore an antique necklace around my neck that I found at a flea market about fifteen years ago with a best friend. It is silver flowers that interlock and each flower holds a blue bead in the center of its petals.

It was a good outfit.

Today, in the humid June weather of Minnesota, 90 degrees, 52% humidity, I decided the hat was in order again as I was going to walk six blocks with friends for a happy hour at a Tex-Mex bar. I couldn't resist putting together another outfit, and dressed in a spaghetti-strapped v-neck black floral sundress, the same peep-toe wedges, same hat, and same black patent bag. It was pretty cute, despite the cleave sweat beading between my breasts, the sweat pooling in the small of my back, and the perspiration popping up on my cheeks under my eyes.

Dampness aside, my spirits were lively as we walked to our destination, two dear buddies and I. We discussed the details of my impending date with "Ryan", an e-harmony suitor who likes golf and wears braces hoping for "a nice set of chompers" later in the year. As I am new to the online dating scene, the discussion was light and fun. I, this silly woman wearing a big floppy hat, was planning a summer of whirlwind dating and casually archiving potential "matches" if they didn't seem to be my type. Then I told one friend about how the other had taken me on the best date I'd been on in a year- how she called twice to confirm, picked me up in her sweet ride, and dazzled me by bringing her own bottle of Sauvignon Blanc to dinner at Origami, our favorite sushi place. Our friend teased me about how she was disappointed I didn't put out and I laughed and said that was more of a second date sort of thing. We also joked about how, on the date, I told her about the very nice man who was my boyfriend, and who was now no longer my boyfriend. She was shocked, having not seen me in over six months, that she had missed the event. "How's Katie?" her husband had asked after our date.

"She had a boyfriend!" said my friend. "And he's gone. They went on trip and everything. Apparently I don't see Katie that often."

Which is fine. We love each other and it doesn't matter that sometimes our busy lives pull us in many directions. The point is we were laughing and joking about the events in my life. We were having fun.

And we continued having fun over margaritas and guacamole, and we continued having fun when our fourth friend joined us, and we continued having fun when she ordered a Sprite, and we continued having fun when she told us she was pregnant. And we started talking about babies and childbirth and labor and the adorable things children do and the trials of motherhood. And it pains me to say this, but I stopped having fun.

I love my friends who are mothers. I love my friends who are pregnant. I love hearing about their stories, about the great moments, the tough moments- really everything except the painful moments (I don't handle medical stories well). But unfortunately, due to the combination of two nights in a row of women saying they were pregnant (two at my book club the night before), two hours of talking about babies, and two drinks over our happy hour, I was bumping up against a sadness I never admit to myself.

I want a baby. Some day. But right now it feels like that day will never come.

"I can't even let myself go there," I said to my friends, "because it just isn't even remotely a possibility right now." I dismissed the possibility of kids like I had no feelings about the subject. They nodded and we returned to talking about babies, me piping in with a story about someone else I knew just so I wouldn't be completely silenced in the conversation.

We continued talking and laughing. "I mean, who else would have a pregnancy chart in their purse?" said the new mom-to-be to the rest of us. She explained what it was to my other non-mother friend and when she asked how it worked, she promised to figure out when the non-mother-married friend would be fertile and when she would be pregnant.

"Would it tell me who the father would be?" I ask, leaning in and looking at the chart. They all laugh. And I laugh. I am still telling myself I don't want kids. I am not ready to bump into the truth.

We say good-bye to new mom-to-be, a woman who went through a miscarriage in the fall, a woman who will be an amazing mom, and a woman I am genuinely happy for when I hear the news.

As we walk home, I want to be just as sincerely happy as the two women I am walking with, two college roommates, one a mother and one not. But I am starting to realize I can't. "You guys," I say, two hours of baby talk and two drinks later, "that was reaaaally hard." Before I know it, tears are filling my eyes underneath my big, floppy hat. "I just can't grieve one more thing. I already lost so much. I can't think about the fact that I don't have kids." I want to stop talking about it immediately.

"What are you doing?" I asked myself as my friends consoled me and reminded me that life just takes different time frames sometimes, that I don't need a man to have a baby, and that women have babies well into their forties. "You're walking around in this ridiculous hat, going on stupid dates with men who don't care about you and wear braces. You're playing dress-up. You're a failure. No one wants to marry you."

I wiped away the tears and we switched topics.

When I got home I cried. Not because I want a baby. I cried because I both want and don't want a baby. In my mind I know this is not the time, I know that there are things I must do before I give myself to a child. I know that I would not have wanted to deal with co-parenting children with a sex addict. I know that I don't want to be a single parent, that I would never trick someone into fathering offspring. I know that I am blessed to come home and be needed only by a small dog. I worked 60-70 hours a week this spring between my full time career as a high school teacher and my part time gig as an online instructor and I was taking a grad school class. And I dated someone. And I was writing. And I was spending time with family and my wonderful nephews. There is no way I could have a baby right now.

But there is a part of me that feels like life isn't fair. That of all people in the world, I deserve a baby.

Right now, I think my book is my baby. "It's not what you want," said my adviser when I met with him to discuss my thesis, a book-length manuscript. "It's what the book wants." He was speaking sympathetically about my resistance in hashing up the past, in telling my story, marriage, divorce, and recovery.

Sometimes I think I say too much in my writing. Right now, for instance, since my two dear friends are among the ten people that read this blog and I worry they will think I was upset or didn't appreciate them. Or when I look back at the graphic scenes I've revealed about my sex life and think about the people who will judge me for revealing my truth. Maybe it's ridiculous to be this vulnerable. To be this open. To risk hurting feelings of those I love.

But I think I'm doing it because I'm strong enough to be honest. I'm not talking about babies to guilt trip my friends. I'm not talking about sex to get attention. I'm talking about my life and my experiences. I'm talking about my truth, about learning a secret that destroyed my former self and gave me something so much richer in return. There are sad moments. There are moments I wish dearly to be a "we" or a "family." But without a doubt I know I am stronger and happier today than I ever have been in my past, and I know I will be ok. I'm ok where my life and my writing leads me. And I guess I'll have to leave it at that.

So if that means I wear floppy hats to cheer myself up once in a while, so be it.

My Blow Job Essay

It's strange to write this essay. I am not even sure how to begin or what I want to say. I just know the title came to mind and I thought, yes, that is an essay I need to write. And yet, I cannot help thinking of who looks at my blog, what they might think, how they might judge me for talking about blow jobs and sex and all the sordid details of life with a sex addict.

It's a topic I am reluctant to address at times.

It's hard, now, two years after the divorce that was final on 2/15/08, to make myself remember what my past was like, what my 20s were like.

I have memory problems when it comes to sad moments of my past. The events disappear like being erased by the sands of an etch-a-sketch board, a soft-shaking and they unzip from the screen of my mind almost as they are occurring. If I do not write them down right away, I lose them.

"I think you'll do a reading for Joanne, just like you did for Andrea," my mom said to me in March of 2009, the weekend after my g0dmother died. We were driving down to Port Byron, Illinois from Minneapolis, MN, for her funeral. A breast cancer survivor, she had gotten her final death sentence the April before: pancreatic cancer, six months. She made it eleven.

"What are you talking about?" I asked. In July of 2008, my mother, father and I had made the drive to Port Byron to bury my second cousin, Joanne's daughter, who had died while calling her mother, complaining of leg pain, a blood clot. Valedictorian who spiraled down through bad relationships, financial trouble, depression and substances, had hit bottom in Vegas and was making her way back up into the world. She was three and a half years older than me, 33 when she died. She had been the cool cousin I looked up to, the one who played strange music in her room to a strobe light and talked on the phone for hours to her friend. The one who wrote me letters in perfect handwriting about the Guess jeans she had bought, about shopping trips, and her new cat Hillary.

She couldn't be dead.

"I didn't do a reading," I said to my mom. I remembered the awful drive down, the hot drive back, the nausea I felt in the hotel room, standing in the cemetary, feeling the hot humidity caught between the blue sky and the yellow earth, the weeds and cattails in the ditch across from the road pushing up into the sky, the birds darting across the skyline, the moisture I could smell coming up from the earth. Fertilizers, decay, a soggy earth baking under the July sun. I remember standing under a tent, thinking it wasn't fair that her life end this way, that she be dragged back from Seattle, Chicago, Vegas just to be pinned under the thumb of her conservative farmer relatives. I blamed her dad.

We went out for dinner at a restaurant and I remember staring at the menu and feeling sick. A burger. Your cousin's dead. French fries? Your cousin's dead. Pass the ketchup. She's gone.

I remember the wake, the pictures, the cheerleader, the model, the new pit-bull, new friend, her mother. Joanne, in a wig and too much blush, held my arm but didn't cry. She would be gone within a year and she already knew it. Maybe Andrea knew it too. Maybe she knew losing her mother would make her something of an orphan. So she went first.

I'm probably not being fair, but this is how I felt. This is what I remember. I blamed her dad.

But I don't remember reading. I don't remember the funeral. I got to my godmother's funeral eight months later and the church felt familiar. The shape of the room, the look of the altar. I couldn't place it in the neurons of my mind, but I remembered the drive from the funeral home to the parking lot.

I didn't remember giving a reading.

When I told my mom that I had lost the memory, that I couldn't access it, that I had somehow erased it, she nodded sympathetically. "It happens."

Why do I bring this up? It's because it is so important for me to write the details I remember still before they slide away. I want to remember because it was nearly ten years of my life that I spent learning about addiction, and that I feel like things happen for a reason, and I feel like I have learned and grown so much and that maybe others can learn and grow too by way of shared stories.

This is why I'm writing about blow jobs.

It's an essay about sorrow, unfortunately, but let's start it with compassion. Let's start with the catlyst for this essay, the encounter with the ex.

My ex-husband, the one I met when I was 18, started dating when I was 20, married when I was 24, and divorced when I was 29, moved four blocks away from me when we divorced. We live in Uptown, Minneapolis, the trendy yuppie-granola section of town, filled with lakes and bars and restaurants, and outdoor apparel shops that have replaced decades-old small family-owned dive bars. I run the lake. He runs the lake. Today I saw him when I was running the lake. He was walking with his new girlfriend, cute as a button, stocking hat pushed down over dirty blond hair. Both were carrying coffee cups and walking towards me as I finished the 3.5 mile lap around Lake Calhoun.

As usual, I did not look my best. Running pants on, University of Minnesota, Morris hoodie pulled tight over my head and tied under my chin to keep out the unexpected cold of the Saturday morning in March. My hands were balled under the ends of my sleeves and I knew without needing a mirror that my skin was pink verging on red and that sweat was beading on my forehead, upper lip, and under my eyes.

He looked good-looking. Six-foot-three, blue eyes that captured the clouds of the day and spit them back out in a flash, the slightest lines edging his thin face. Hat on to cover the receding hair line. Down vest over broad shoulders. He walked like he was half-listening to his girlfriend, the cute-as-a-button woman who was clearly venting during their walk.

I saw him see me. Then he stared at the lake as if something really interesting was out there and nodded like he was considering an important matter. But I wasn't scared. So I continued to watch him as I puffed along, sweaty and pink. At the last second he glanced at me; I felt a swell of sad love fill my being and though I don't think my eyes watered, they do now as I write this, and I smiled. I smiled because I can't pass my ex-husband on a running path and pretend he doesn't exist.

He tries. Pretends he can't see me. And in this way I know he still grieves too.

I feel sorry for him.

I can't imagine she knows about his addiction. What do you say to someone when you admit you are a sex addict? That's all behind me know. Six hours of surfing a day, but it's over.

And sex addiction is so easy for many people to dismiss. Porn floods our culture. Affairs are commonplace and not seen as a cry for help. When a friend said, "with complete sincerity, I don't care about Tiger Woods's extra marital affair, his 'sex addiction' or his apology. Take it to the Maury Povich or Jerry Springer show" on his facebook page, I couldn't resist commenting. I sent him a message explaining that it was my belief that people suffering from any type of addiction deserve compassion and firm personal boundaries. He responded by mocking Tiger and pointing out that the DSM-IV psych book didn't recognize sexual addiction as a legitimate condition.

Nine years of my life. Not recognized as a legitimate condition. Belonging to the Jerry Springer show.

This is why I want to talk about blow jobs.


How important is sex to a relationship? When Shawn and I first started dating, first started having sex, we were in a long-distance relationship. I assumed our sex life was healthy because we had a lot of sex when we would see each other. I didn't feel scared the first time we had sex; he was my first. First boyfriend, first lover, first husband, first love.

How does one decide to marry a sex addict? At the end, blue comes to mind. The end of our marriage was blue and black and vacuous. The space between us in bed crushes me still today. We would lie next to each other and lie to each other. "I love you, baby," he'd say.

At the end, we had sex maybe twice a month. I would attempt to sleep with him about eight times a month. His penis would be flacid and limp. I would rub up against him, arch my back, nuzzle my mouth against his pants, undo his belt, look up at him from under blonde hair and pretend like putting his cock in my mouth was the most amazing experience of my life. Lick, suck, press here, gaze up- like magic, I knew how to make him hard. We'd fuck for a minute or two. I'd pretend to get off. Then I would slide off of him, go back down on him, lick, suck, press til he came. In this way I reassured myself that our marriage was just fine.

The time in between sexual advances on my part- and I tried so hard to be enticing, wearing heels and one of his shirts when he came home from work, strewing clothing and underwear on the stairs of our townhome and waiting in bed naked, pouncing on him after we came home from the bar, from a night out with friends- we spent making dinner. We were great at making dinner. He'd chop, I'd sautee. He'd set the table, wash the dishes, I'd make the dessert, put napkins in napkin rings. We would have friends over. We'd cook for ourselves. We'd sit at the table or in front of the tv. We went to movies. We went to bars. We went to plays. We went to the Farmer's market. We never fought. We talked politics. We talked movies. We talked dreams and he pretended to encourage me. We talked music. We went to concerts. We watched movies at home and I'd fall asleep; so tired from my job. We were great when we weren't having sex.

It was my job that allowed him flexibility as an addict. I would leave at 6 a.m. I would pull out from the garage of our suburban townhome and notice a blue glow from the bedroom. He'd wake up when I left but didn't have to be to work until 9. Later I would start to notice his porn use, I'd know from the url addresses and the history that he was looking at porn from the time I left until fifteen minutes before he had to be at work.

Later I would find the credit card statements: $14, 000. It was school, he said, your ring. I'd see the records a year after my naive trust and realize it was dvds purchased from the same adult video empire, this on top of the $300 a month cable bill. I don't know where he kept them. I think there was a closet at work that he used to keep his stash. The addict has to hang on to the trophies.

And I see him as two people: Shawn and the addict. It was Shawn who looked ashamed when he saw me run around the lake today. Shawn who felt remorseful. It was the addict that would lie to me. "I saw the look in your eyes and I knew I had to quit," said the addict. Earlier, as I was waking to the concept of addiction, he'd say, "But how did you know?" addict eyes all soft when I confronted him about the internet porn use. I told him, stupidly, and thus the addict learned how to better cover his tracks.

So why does a girl marry a sex addict? Because he didn't pressure me or force me to do anything that felt scary. Because maybe I had problems with intimacy as well. Because lots of sex meant good sex in my 20 year-old mind. Because I used to love making him have an orgasm, because there was a certain thrill in being able to give him a blow job that would make him get off. Because we would have sex on the floor of his parents' living room while they were asleep, because I gave him a blow job in the car while his brother slept in the back seat. Because we had sex up against his truck in the cul-de-sac where he lived. Never mind that I felt empty during the experience, look how passionate this was. It must be love.

Plus I said, I do. The good girl in me believed that meant forever. That meant convincing him to love me, trying so hard to be what he wanted. Posing, arching, gazing, sucking. I could make him want me. Sometimes it worked. I could keep trying.

Do I give blow jobs today? This is not an essay about my current loves, my current relationships, but I do. I have. I refused for over a year, but I have relented and at times I will at least give head. I don't gaze. I don't fawn. I don't pretend it is the most amazing experience of my life. I still enjoy causing a man to have an orgasm, but I am much more selfish. I don't fake orgasms. I don't pretend to get off. I don't scream. If anything I keep my orgasm to myself. An orgasm requires a certain level of selfishness. A selfishness I lacked in my marriage and in lacking this quality, overgave and enabled an addict.

I have learned that what I cannot tolerate is that blue-black-vacuous feeling between a man and myself in bed. I have learned that sexual intimacy is about more than frequency, more than theatrics and face-paint.

I am compassionate towards Shawn, though a part of me still hates the addict. I believe our dinners were the way we made love. I believe our conversations were our intimacy. I believe he wishes he could have thrown away his addiction, the addiction he told me began at 14. I believe he wanted our relationship to work just as he wants things to work with his new girlfriend. I believe he wants to think he is different. I believe he wants to forget what happened.

Sometimes even I doubt it happened. How could a man possibly look at that much porn? Not want his wife? "It's definitely not you," said a guy at a bar when I told him my story. When I see him walking with his new girlfriend I question myself: did it happen? Did I make it up? Was it real?

It was real. It exists. It's a real problem. Addiction soothes pain and sex-addicts numb out through whatever method works. All of us dance on the edge of an addiction, whether it is work, or sex, or drugs, or booze, or antiques, or gambling, or music: we all have our escape from the loneliness that fills heart blue-black-and-vacuous.

We don't need the DSV-IV to tell us whether or not our problems exist.

Fictional Essays I've Been Scribbling in Between Buying Gas and Groceries...

Part I. --The Next Town

In one of the many episodes and adventures with the imperfect being, she finds herself confronted with an age-old nemesis.

Our story tonight begins with the imperfect being, who, having newly found herself in the beginnings of what looked to be a safe and healthy relationship with a safe and healthy man decided she could not a imagine a happier place in life. Perhaps, she pondered, this was it. She had found it, a place she could exist forever. Perhaps she had finally found herself on the right track, with ticket already purchased, sitting next to Mr. Nice Guy and smiling while they waited for the train to the town called Happiness&Contentment.

But it happened, as it always does, that just as the imperfect being was packing her suitcase and imagining her journey to the town of H&C, that she met an untimely intrusion from her age-old nemesis--Favorite Mistake.

Picture this: bar-close, post-dancing, post-party, post-cab-ride, the imperfect being suddenly finds herself opening the door to her apartment accompanied by favorite mistake, a nemesis so familiar he felt comfortable. So seemingly benign, she forgot the danger. He helped himself to glass from her cupboard and poured water from her Britta pitcher into her new flower mug (the one a friend gave to her with intentions it be used for hot-chocolate with a nice guy on a cold day). It was only then that she realized her mistake. It was not Mr. Nice Guy drinking out of her nice guy mug; it was the favorite mistake.

What was imperfect being to do? Would she rid herself of the nemesis or would this episode become yet another re-run with the favorite mistake?

Luckily, the imperfect being had had a stern conversation with herself early in the evening and pre-bar, pre-dancing, pre-party-and-cab had given the vixen within strict instruction not to sleep with the favorite mistake UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.

But favorite mistake was not so easily dissuaded from the mission. What followed was a slightly inappropriate and excitingly dangerous scene that no doubt one could place in both the categories labeled "Unhealthy" and "So fucking hot!!!" Think Gone with the Wind, Wuthering Heights, Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Dangerous. Destructive. Hot.

The imperfect being argued with the favorite mistake. She swore at him, he ripped off clothing, she lashed out at him, he reasoned with her, and finally- she drew a line in the sand:

"Fine, tell me you love me and we can have sex."

The room grew silent and stopped cartwheeling. Favorite mistake looked at her in a blue-green lock-down stare. A year passed and she did not blink. Did not waver.

We all know his answer.

And after he left the imperfect being felt suddenly the silence and darkness of her room empty of her nemesis. She had refused the favorite mistake. She still held her train ticket to Happiness&Contentment.

***

Later, following this episode, the imperfect being will sit in the train station and look at her ticket to Happiness&Contentment... and, she will hate herself just a little for wondering what town the train visits next.

Part II> Who I Don't Write:Memories...

Who have I left out of my writing?

In thinking of this question-- of course, my father jumps to mind--the words almost flinch as I let them out onto the page and the only way I can even allow myself to mention he does not surface in my work is to plug my ears, listen to my own breathing, and imagine I am at the bottom of the FMS pool. It is 5:30 a.m. The lights are sleepy and glowing under the blue surface of the pool and the lights in the room are still turned off so that above the surface is gray and tired. Here I can let these words out.

I do not want to think about why I do not write him. I do not want to ask these questions.

In the past I have done much writing about my father. Writings like snap shots taken at birthday parties, the glow of candles flickering in anticipation of breath, candles that dance in the breeze of a song. Writings and letters and cards and poems. All so happy and perfect. Girl. Father. He smiles tears in her direction.

I only say this now because as I look at the list of other life characters I omit, I see... well, men. There is something so secret about writing about men. And instantly I'm working out a pattern. Even Shawn. I have been writing him elegies, or us elegies for a marriage lost now for two years, but what do I write about him? How do I even know where to begin? I write about my grief. My loss. I don't know that I actually write him.

The new non-boyfriend rattled me this weekend. We had been out all night and he said something about how we didn't really know each other, not yet.

I stopped.

I mean, we have our little routine.

I tensed.

No, no, I mean- I like it. I like what we have. Chemistry- that's what I mean. We have chemistry.

I can't quite let this go. Routine. We don't really know each other. The words pull at my arms as I try to move forward. Could it be that I am the problem? That I can't know men? When I think there's a connection, well, what is there?

And look-- I've done it again. Set out to write about the men I leave out of my life, set out to describe my father, and all I do is dance around these stories. Sidestep the land mines.

I stay in the shallow end. So afraid of what is in the deep end of that pool.

What keeps me from going there? Am I simply scared of being teased? Is the shy girl within just keenly sensitive and perceiving that to like men, to talk about men, is not allowed?

I am nine and the doorbell rings on dark-blue snowy Thanksgiving evening. For me.

"Is it a boy?" my uncle Jerry, the one who sometimes thinks he is my godfather and who I see maybe once a year, teases me.

"Actually," my dad clears his throat, shrugging, "ah, it is."

The spotlight lands on my face and I feel it grow a little hot. I walk to the door in a dress that has a black and white taffeta skirt and a black velvet body. I am pretty sure there is a red bow in my long blond hair, which may be curled since company is over.

My neighbor stands at the door and I am mortified by the significance of this event. And excited.

A boy means something different. It's not allowed. Not yet. But it makes me special. That he's at my door and all my family sees a boy has come over to talk to me.

I get the book he came to borrow for an assignment that he will not need to complete as school will be cancelled on Monday from too much snow. He looks pained for having intruded. We barely talk on Tuesday in school. He returns my book. It is nothing.

There is no significance to this event. I am still wading in the shallow end, watching the lights dance below the surface.

Part III. What I Write When I Don't Want to Write Pain...

I want to write about his adorable face when he's totally calm and holding me in his arms--eyes closed, romantic, a poet. I want to write how he played music, how he is a little thoughtful and remembers my schedule and calls when he knows I will be around, and how he is also just a little insistent, pushing up against me on the couch, pulling my dress up higher, higher, running his finger across my thigh, pressing on the shape of my hip bone, and sighing at the touch of my bare leg.

So smooth, he says.

Just like you, I say.

He laughs.

My awkward Romeo pulling off my too-tight tights, asking politely if we should change positions, after a night out on the town asking if I would go down on him

Don't do it if you don't want to, baby. I just think it might facilitate the process.

His room, my refuge, is blue. Dark blue walls, white trim, a room that suddenly seems filled with light in the mornings. A room where I woke up after the night I met him wearing the pajamas he offered me when I said I was not going to sleep with him. A room where I thought: I like it here.

There is a tree outside that fills the space of the window and a yard that sits on the top of a steep hill so that there is the illusion of no nearby neighbors--only stillness, the city skyline, and a train yard below the tree and hill that you can easily pretend doesn't exist.

That tree's going to fall on this house and kill me someday.

He says this from below our two dogs, the golden retriever, his, and the yorkie-poo, mine, who are wrestling with their usual ferocity. The retriever raises his paw from the ground, swiping at the yorkie-poo's face. The yorkie-poo, in turn, dive bombs the retriever from his vantage point on the bed like a WWF wrestler.

I laugh at his comment, watching as my small dog leaps off his back.

Labels, titles, chapters, and sub-headings...

"So I think I'm just going to start calling you my girlfriend."

"Great," I said to the man laying next to me, vastly relieved that we were simply going to choose our own labels for things in our tenuous new relationship with each other, "And I think I'm just going to call myself Not-your-girlfriend."

I giggled and he laughed, and I realized I was finding myself in an awkward stage of infatuation and revulsion. Despite my best efforts, I was falling into that strange stage of infatuation where even the sight of an unsightly nose hair causes swooning because of its vulnerability and exclusivity. And I was also finding myself in a state of revulsion where side comments about being exclusive, or answering yes when a co-worker asks if you have a girlfriend were causing me to break out in a sweat.

Girlfriend.

It's a label I've held only one other time. A label that led to the disintegration of self, the creation of a new married version of my identity, a label that ultimately led to my personal ground zero and one that I've struggled not to want for the past couple of years.

Girlfriend means danger. Girlfriend means losing me. Getting hurt. Feeling sad. Being lied to. Convincing myself to love him.

At least this is what a tenacious little fighter inside me is saying. Watch out! You know how this goes. It can only lead to pain.

While I appreciate this overprotective little voice for wanting to keep me safe, I am trying to have a conversation with her about letting go of old information, trusting my instincts, and opening my heart to possibility.

***

After our third date, this man beside me said to me, "You're the only person I've dated that I've really liked in a long time."

I paused upon hearing this, filled with anxiety and fear.

"Is that weird?" he asked. "Should I not have said that?"

"No," I answered carefully, "you should always be able to say how you feel." But then, in the darkness of a few seconds, I felt a swell of anxiety push up a sentence that I couldn't hold back.

"But I have to say, I'm a little gun-shy of anything too serious right now." The words spilled out and I held my breath. I had said something that might have hurt this man's feelings, a man I thought I might like, and despite the fear I have faced from childhood about speaking my truth, causing problems for those I love, I had done it. I had said how I felt.

"Oh, me too. Totally throw that out there. I feel the same way," and he explained how after the end of a big relationship in his life he had closed himself off, shut down, walled himself off from possibilities of new relationships. He had known what it was like to be scared of getting hurt again. "But," he went on, "I just have realized that you have to put yourself out there. You have to be vulnerable."

And it's true. It's no good to be closed off forever. As I tried to explain to the protective, anxious voice inside my head, there is no danger in a relationship. I can trust my own instincts. If things don't feel right, if I worry that he's lying to me, I can ask. I can explain my fears. I can end the relationship. I can walk away if it doesn't feel right. And maybe I will feel sad, but sadness is not permanent. It doesn't last forever. Sadness is replaced by joy and joy is replaced by loss and loss is replaced by acceptance, and by appreciation, and by love, and then, suddenly, in an unexpected way, joy returns.

It's no good hiding from life. I would rather go out and hold his hand, see where he leads me.

And so I returned to the conversation with the man laying beside me, to the giggling and laughter, and explained my label of Not-your-girlfriend.

"It's like goldfish," I said. "You can't put the goldfish in a bowl too quickly."

"What are you talking about?" he asked.

"You know, when you buy a goldfish from a pet store you can't just throw it in a fishbowl."

"You can't?"

"No. You have put the plastic bag in the water, let the water get to the same temperature as that in the bag, let the goldfish think about things for a while, check it all out, and then you let it out into the bowl."

"So you're the goldfish?"

"Yes."

"You should have explained that with minnows. That would have made more sense to me."

"Minnows?"

"Yeah. We lost so many minnows when I was a kid."

More giggling. More laughter. Joy, unexpected.

***

This past weekend, no real labels determined, but time spent together, I was telling this man about my adventures in Minneapolis parking, relaying how I had run out to my car to move it at 5:30 in the morning after waking to the noise of snow plows and finding a ticket on my dashboard reading "tow immediately." After rescuing my car from the plows, I parked my car on one side of the street, worrying about the vast quantities of snow lining the street, but taking my chances anyway. An hour later, realizing I was still on the wrong side of a snow emergency, I was back out into the morning to move my car again, only to find I was stuck. I explained how two still-drunk party revelers had approached and had offered to help, giving up after 15 seconds saying, "It's no use. Go home, little girl. Just give up." I hadn't bothered to explain the complexities of Minneapolis snowstorm parking to them, but had waited until they walked down the street, got out of the car, and using gloved fingers, dug my way out of the snow bank, rocking the sedan back and forth and emerging, victorious, from the snow.

"Adventures of the single gal continue," I concluded to my new non-boyfriend.

And that's what I realize I'm holding onto- it's not that I'm so resistant to the term girlfriend as I'm clinging to the term single. I like taking care of myself. Part of me cursed the fact that I had no boyfriend to call after finding myself severely lodged in a pile of snow, but a bigger part of me was proud of myself for finding my own solution. Part of me, after moving into my new apartment, lamented the fact that there was no boyfriend to help me haul my stuff into my new space, but another part of me felt free, liberated, safe in the knowledge that I will always be able to take care of myself and that I am a resourceful, independent woman who is going to have a happy life whether or not I find a permanent man in my life or not.

I will make my life what I want it to be.

So it's not so much that I'm scared of moving ahead with this man, or that I'm scared of the outcome of the way a relationship works. Maybe we will last six months. Maybe we will last six more weeks. Maybe we will last forever. Maybe not. It's ok. It doesn't matter. Either way I will be safe. Either way I will find happiness.

In my mind, I'm not quite a girlfriend yet. I'm a single woman dating one man exclusively.

And I'm falling in love with the new label.

Joy, unexpected.

Blonde Moment, with Apologies to Paulo Coelho

In The Alchemist, a book my ex-husband recommended to me because both he and his grandmother liked it, a book I now teach to juniors in high school, a book about following dreams and pursuing personal legends, there is a prologue I have never been able to figure out.

In the prologue, the Alchemist reads a legend in which the Greek character Narcissus falls in love with himself and withers away, so transfixed by his own reflection in a nearby lake that he cannot leave. But the legend does not end with Narcissus' transformation into a flower. It ends with the lake transforming from freshwater to saltwater after weeping for the loss of Narcissus.

"Well, he was very beautiful," say the woodland nymphs.

"Was he?" asks the lake. "I only cry now because in his eyes I could see my own beauty reflected."

And the Alchemist, upon reading this, thinks to himself, "What a lovely story."

I have never quite been able to figure this prologue out. I understand that alchemy is about transformation and the novel is about transforming into something greater than what you were, and about connecting to the pulse of the universe, but this story seems out of sync. It seems to be a story about vanity. A lake so vain it doesn't miss what was gone, but only the reflection of itself.

It's a thought that worries me.

A thought much like the worry love causes me. In my mind, all miracles are somehow linked. If love exists, it must mean God exists. But how can God exist? If we are merely particles buzzing with energy in a world so filled with practicality, how can God be real? And if God cannot be real, as all logic dictates, how can a romantic soul-mate kind of love in this universe? We must be just x's and y's linking with other x's and y's in a frenzy to find the right phermone. How can anyone trust the little voice inside saying yes or no upon dating someone? Shouldn't love, in this world of practicality and energy, be based on decisions, compatibility, and values? Can't we train passion to follow logic? Fend off heart-ache for friendship?

And if that is true, as it must be, why do I so stubbornly resist believing it?

Sigh.

But back to the prologue. Maybe it's about the idea of reflection? Of seeing something of ourselves in others? Of seeing God in surfaces shiny like bus windows and fragile as desire?

I am not sure I will ever be done worrying about the prologue. Or God. Or Love.

But the prologue strikes chords with me at odd times. This is what happens after teaching a book four or five times in a row. It seems to travel always with you. To ring bells at odd moments.

A bell rang in my mind upon reading an essay one of my students wrote.

Keep in mind, this is a student that brings a tornado of emotion into the classroom with her each day. A student who cannot avoid conflict with peers or teachers. A student who is as loud as she is angry, as loud as she might be sad.

We have butted heads. But now we get along.

In her essay, she describes the day her mother tried to kill her. She explains how her mother and mother's boyfriend were drunk as usual and how a disagreement escalated to physical blows. How she escaped and ran into the hall of her apartment screaming for help. How no one came or helped. How only the woman upstairs called her mom saying she didn't want her to go to jail, so keep it down.

She also describes how she went to the principal later for help. How, when her mom attacked her a second time, she went to her room and called the police. How she stayed in a shelter for teens.

She concludes her essay with a quote from Marilyn Monroe that reads:

"I'm selfish, impatient, and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I'm out of control, and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best."

When I read her essay, feeling the weight of each syllable press into my heart, I came to the quote and heard a bell.

"What a lovely story," I thought.