Dear Stepford Wife, Let Me Rephrase That.

Last weekend at my son Derek's baseball game, this British man/husband/father of one of the boys on the team, asked if Derek would like a playdate with their son Kyle. I graciously reciprocate the offer, but we decide on his house in the end. Several hours later, I go to pick up Derek. Here's how it went down:

Ding dong (...I wait..............................)

Door opens... wife is there.

ME: "Oh Hhhhiii!! How are you!!! (big Dawn smiles) I'm Derek's mom, Dawn? So nice to meet you!!!! " ( I solidly shake her hand )

ME: " I'm soooo sorry I'm 5 minutes late, i forgot I was picking him up here-because you're sweet husband usually always drops him off with me after the boys play, but i spaced there for a minute. " I giggle.

(no response)

(I enter the house.)

ME: "Woww!!! What a beautiful home. This is great!! So clean. My god!!! How do you keep it like this??!

Did you guys just move in?!!! It's so pretty! Wow this is great..." (I get the infamous female up and down scan...)

MOTHERS RESPONSE: "Ehm..no.. we've been here....'Derek! Your mother has arrived."

(I nervously giggle.)

ME: " Thank you so, so much for having him over this afternoon. He loves your son. Anytime you'd like your son Kyle to come by me, just call- he's welcome anytime. (pregnant pause)

MOTHER: 'Derek!.....your mother is here!" (I get the scan again.)

ME: " I'm so sorry hes taking so long...I think he likes it better here than at my house. haahahaaa. "

(awkward silence)

*throat clear*

ME: "...So what are you guys doing for the memorial day weekend? Just chillin out here? it's so beautiful out, it almost doesn't matter what you do right?" (I'm thinking, did i just say 'chillin'-this woman doesn't have a chill bone in her body. I'm 100% sure she thought I was there to mug her).

(I get no smile back.)

THE MOTHER: " Well I'm trying to have a rather big dinner party / get together tonight..."

ME: " OMG, I'm sooo sorry...I had no idea..Derek!!...come on hun, Mrs. Smith has some people coming over soon...we need to go, can you put some gas on it please?"

ME TO MOTHER: " Yeah I know how dinner parties are- so much work, I try and do it whenever I can...I love cooking for people...but it's not easy when the kids are home...giggle...I'm such a scatter brain that I actually have to write everything down that I'm doing- with the exact time I'm supposed to do everything, or forget it- the pastas overcooked, the chickens dried out, I forget something in the oven... if I don't write it down, I'll forget to even take a shower haha. ha. ha."

(stares at me)

(long stare)

MOTHER: "Yes. Derek's a wonderful child. Oh you have another child? "

(scan #13)

ME: "Yes. I have another KID. Justin. He's 13. Great kid. But was real challenging to deal with when he was Dereks age..." (Ooops, maybe too much information there. Because I'm getting the 'WE DON'T TALK ABOUT OUR PROBLEMS HERE' look.)

Derek rounds the corner in his baseball uniform I left him in after the game, but wearing his friend Andrews T-shirt instead of his own. ME: " Hi baby..wheres your baseball shirt honey? "

DEREK: " Oh they washed it for me and gave me this one to wear instead. "

She walks into the kitchen to grab Derek's T-shirt that she washed for him, that he initially came to their house wearing.

As I quietly follow behind her, I see the live-in housekeeper / nanny subserviently postured in the kitchen over a bowl that has about 15 nachos in it. I glance at the dinner table and see its set for 8.

Once again, I apologize for Derek being such a grassy mess in her house. She sort of musters a grin in my direction, and responds rather tersely and indecipherably as she escorts Derek and myself to the front door. I thank her again profusely for having Derek there, give a big toothy smile and wave goodbye to the housekeeper, wish her a wonderful weekend, and step outside with Derek and get in my car.

That's how it went down.

But here's how it REALLY went down, in my head:

DIIIIIING DOOOOONG.... ( Jesus Christ, what the hell was THAT.....guess I'm here to see The Wizard.)

(...waiting...) 

(.........judging......)

Door opens, "(Holy Fucking Never Got Laid) ... I mean, "Hi!!! ... I'm Derek's mom Dawn!...and yeah it'd be a super deal if you actually smiled back."

ME: "So not nice to meet you! " I firmly shake her hand and step inside.

ME: " Question...Does your hand actually have any muscles in it that contract, or have you been paralyzed by some unfortunate tragic accident. Wwwow....Sooooooooooo.....this is your lovely home... *snnnort* ... I'm guessing that either nobody lives here....or you're doing a commercial shoot for Pledge in 5 minutes. So I'll try and be quick then.

Hey, do you and your husband perform surgeries here in the living room, or is your home possibly always this devoid of love and life. I'm getting the distinct feeling that i should've been wheeled in here on a hospital gurney. My apologies for walking... I think my dirty flip flops may cause your Infra-red dirt detecting laser beams and alarm systems to simultaneously go off. Should I maybe start crawling on the floors to avoid the poison blow darts, or am I cool. If you'd like, I'll take my sandals off. Really. I will. It would give me great pleasure to see you wince at my calloused feet. So just say the word.

Hmmm. I see no cats or dogs either...maybe that's what you're eating for dinner. Well, I guess everything warm blooded and living is off limits here. So I'll make my visit quick. " Ooooh look...the diminutive housekeeper. Let me guess, you're here to whisk something off the floor in case it so happens to God forbid fall there. But yay. At least a person of color. Maybe you, Mrs. Buckingham, are an open minded, 'people person' after all. Or do you perhaps have a cotton grove in the backyard, behind the labyrinth. And you too could smile a little Miss Bodyguard of the nachos.. Unlike your master, I wont beat you if you should decide.

Let me see..what the fucks hiding in this bowl.... 15 chips?...for an 8 person get together? That's 1.195 chips per person. Lady, Auschwitz death camps gave more food. You call this a get together??? I call this a Get The Hell Outta Here As Fast As You Can, Together. And I smell a big fat nothing cooking. Not one braised or sauteed anything. All I smell is disinfectant combined with Febreze, and some odorless gas I call frigidity. So toots, a party huh? So wheres the wine? Where's the frivolity? Where's the laughter? And where the hell's a smidgen of dirt? Oh wait, THERE he is! Its my son Derek! The other pigmented person. But this one comes fully equipped with a big ass smile, and chunks of grass and soil and some decapitated slugs pressed into his knee caps.

ME : " Hi sweetheart! I'm so glad I got here before they performed surgery on you in their boiled living room and extracted your heart. Phew. Just in time." " So honey...how the fuck did you play in all this ....lack of fun. And where's your shirt Derek.....you know.... the one that I left you in this morning after the game that resembled 'The Shroud Of Turin'? "

DEREK: "Oh, they washed it for me and gave me this one to wear instead. "

ME : "Oh they gave you one of their sons to wear while they washed yours? Awww so delightfully germiphobic of them. "

ME: "...So....wheres that pompous British husband of yours that incessantly flirts with me at your sons games that you're too detached to come to.???... You know, that guy that's always bragging about his dumb ass sailboat to me? Oh right, you have him on another Decontamination Run. Got it. Then again, I understand why hes not here... if this mausoleum is what your house feels like, i can only imagine what the sex feels like. You know...sex? a man, a woman? passion?? ...eh never mind." "OK, well bye bye miss housekeeper... I'll pray for you, and I'm growing rather concerned about your lack of ability to smile by the way. And I've convinced myself that its due to embarrassment because you most definitely have a mouth full of broken teeth as a result of these hi-resin, ice skating rinks you call 'floors' (...and so you know, the key to your shackles are under the Soul Vaporizer machine in the vestibule, I peeked). "

ME: " Well, Gotta run Mrs. Buckingham, have a wonderful time starving your friends. And by the way, your little 'chip off the ole ice block' son is never allowed in my house- since i never did care for statues. And I'm sure you wouldn't approve anyway, because I, on the other hand, have 3 dogs, and cats and plants, and framed family pictures, and some dog nose smudges on my doors, and prefer a slight degree of chaos, rumpled pillows and litter pan aromas in my house to remind myself that i have blood coursing through my veins...unlike yourself, who I'm convinced, like a scallop, would not bleed if I cut you. But i wont stab you with a steak knife to find out, seeing that this is only our first meeting.

...and please...don't forget to tell your arrogant, bumptious husband that I'll see him next week at the game, where I'll continue to pretend I'm listening to him as he's waxing eloquently about his haughty, pontifical nautical adventures while I fart in the wind. " "Well, I gotta get the fuck outta here before my face cracks off from all this fake smiling. It was an absolute nightmare to meet you. Goodbye, and...goddamn. And I hope to never see you again."

Ta-Ta. For now.

;)

Massage, My Ass

This was no massage. 
Massages are those things that feel so good you almost fall asleep during them, right? And think dirty thoughts. Not be trampled on like you're at a fire during a Slipknot concert.


Afterwards, I came home and Googled it once more just to make sure that I went to the right place.


Shiatsu: A form of therapy of Japanese origin based on the same principles as acupuncture, in which pressure is applied to certain points on the body using the hands.

(Also known as: I May've Just Gotten Run Over By A Car.)


Maybe I'm crazy, but when I think of the word "massage", there's definitely a few adjectives that can't help but come to my mind: Soothing, relaxing, luxurious, hedonistic, and of course, sensual.  So when I say: "Wow, I really need a massage", those are the words I'm hoping to acquaint myself with. 


I've learned however, that these are the adjectives applied to the word "massage" only when your adorably hot boyfriend or girlfriend is the one giving you the massage. Or possibly the fictitious swedish lady with the big boobs.

However, my previous lingual perception of "massage" was all about to change. Like turn on it's head and slam you in the knee caps with a battering ram, kind of change. At 3 p.m. today, the words "anguish", "Help!", and "Anata ga daikirai (I hate you), made it to the top of that previous bullshit list.

As part of a holistic detox mission I'm on, I decided to book an appointment with a hugely reputable Shiatsu massage therapist from Japan. 

For weeks my whole body had been aching from numerous injuries and defeated muscles. 
And all I wanted was nicey nice.

I walk in today for this supposed, luxurious, deep tissue, relaxing, hedonistic "massage".
I was greeted by a rather small, very sweet, demure woman who for now, we'll call Miss Yamamoto, even though my heart is now tempted to refer to her as, That Little Fuck. 


She gestures toward our massage room destination, and I quietly follow her.

She opens the door and I walk into the room where my luxuriousness is going to be realized. 

It's uber clean, beautifully tranquil, and there's a delicious candle burning to my right, along with delicately audible sounds of Japanese music, possibly playing in the closet, as well as a wide massage table draped in eucalyptus scented, soft linens, beckoning my arrival.

Although now I know it was beckoning my quiet whimpers. 

The ceilings are pretty high, and I glanced up and see dark wooden parallel bars mounted to the ceiling. Interesting.

I assumed it was either nothing more than just a decoration, or she and I were going to partake in a little friendly chin up competition after this supposed massage.


I was wrong on both counts.

As it turns out, I discovered that the parallel wooden monkey bars contraption mounted to the ceiling were more than likely, the weapons of mass destruction that George W. Bush could never find. And lo and behold, I innocently find them just casually hanging from the ceiling of some Asian massage parlor. 
Huh. 


In broken English, she proceeds to tell me to take everything off, and go under the sheets because this type of massage is done with the sheet completely covering me. 

I was definitely a little relieved that she wasn't an orthodox Jew because I had no intention of going there to get pregnant. Don't kid yourself. 
I still checked for sheet holes as I got under them.

I lay down, completely covered in the hole-free sheet. She walks in, smiles, and tells me I look like Julia Roberts, (and by the way, that's the racist equivalent of me telling her she looks like newscaster Connie Chung ), and she immediately digs in and starts "massaging" me - like she was trying to exorcise several demons from my spine. 
So I'm assuming at this point, for some reason, she wants Julia Roberts dead.

She continually whispers to me, to "relaaaax….Breeeeeeathe". And I would be relaxing, if the Swedish woman with the big boobs were in here massaging me, but as it turns out, I had Miss Yamamoto trying to violently knead me into a 9" pie crust.

Sensual? No. There was nothing sensual about this massage. Relaxing? Nothing relaxing about this massage. Deep? Yes. At one point her hand came out of my mouth. There wasn't even anything massagey about this massage. Unless you consider being crushed under someones entire body weight for an hour, a massage. 
It was like she was trying to manually move my lower intestine up to my armpit, and my liver into my eye socket. Pleasant, like that.

One session and I'm convinced they should offer you a Xanax or, shit, keep it in the eastern culture and offer you a few Sake Bombs before this massage. Without it, I was about as relaxed as a high resin surfboard. 

But the fun had only just begun.

A little side note.
Starting this New Year, I had made a solemn promise to myself; I wasn't going to take anyones crap anymore. And what do I do? I start it out signing up for someone walking all over my back. That was already the second broken New Year's resolution. (First one was to only spend time with people whom I enjoyed).

After 20 minutes of "loosening me up" (?), she folds a small, beautifully scented towel into a rectangle shape, and puts it over my eyes. I think, great, nows she's gonna shoot me. 
At least my suffering will soon be over.

My eyes were closed this whole time, so I have zero idea about what is ready to happen in the torture chamber that is my room. It smells good. But all other sensory information is saying "Hell child has spawned". "Run".

It gets quiet for a few seconds, and a few moments later, I hear strange sounds, like clanking metal. For a brief second I thought it was because my jaw was closed so tight that my fillings were banging together. But then I felt a pressure on my back that I had never felt before.

My curiosity gets the best of me, and I slightly turn my head so I can get a firsthand glimpse of the sadism du jour.

This little, quiet, understated woman, has climbed on top of the massage bed, and is now hanging from the bars on the ceiling, and walking across my back with her feet. This is Shiatsu. Kicking and crushing me to death. Said nothing about giant angry feet in Wikipedia. Thanks for the heads up on that one.

For the longest 40 minutes of my life, she dug her heels into my spine, ass, neck, calves, forearms, ankles, liver, wrists, spleen, lungs and some other body parts I never even knew I had, with the force of a gorilla hanging from a vine, kicking for his life as it's unwillingly being torn from his natural habitat by poachers.

"Relaaaax. (clank, clank, clank)…Relaaaxxxx", she whispers. 
Yes Lucifer, I'm trying to.

With 160 lbs. of guttural conviction, she presses her heels even deeper into my back, flattening my lungs into the depth of a glaze on a donut.

"Relllaaaaaaxxx..." (crush, crush, crush, clank)

"Mis...tress Chang??… it's.... hard... to... re......lax... when... I'm... spitting... blood... and......i.... think ... one... of... my... boobs... is... gonna... ex...plode".

Desperate for relief, I decided to start trying this impossible technique she earlier on called "breathing", and I found that to tolerate the pain, I was breathing so hard that she probably thought I was having a quadruple orgasm. 
But when I finally squeaked out a  "please…sss.....ssss....sstop", in the high pitched voice of a helium balloon sucking hamster slowly being crushed by a titanium steam roller, she knew I probably wasn't.

Orgasms. Pfft. No such luck. No happy endings here. Just miserable middles. 

Finally, the torture is just about done. I know this because my body is buzzing, my organs are in there new locations, and she just did a double spin, triple summersault dismount.
She turns me over.
Paint thinner and a putty knife was required.

But this time, she pulls up the sheet, not just to my shoulders, but all the way over my head.
And for a minute, we sit in silence.

Makes sense.

I guess this is the part where she's filling out my toe tag and we wait for the coroner.

;|

~dawn

Plenty Of Stinky Fish

Plenty of rotten fish, spineless fish, slimy fish, cheap fish, dull fish, ugly fish, dumb fish, and late fish. 
But it's better known to the general public as 'Plenty of Fish', a dating website. Some refer to it as P.O.F. Or more realistically, once you consider how fast the actual date will make you want to disappear from the restaurant table, 'P.O.O.F.'.

This is a dating website that should be avoided at all costs. But that’s redundant. All dating websites should be avoided at all costs. However, there was this one stray fish who somehow snuck through the cracks. Recently, I've become one of these people who despise hours of lengthy emails and text messages. Why drag out the torture, when so much can be determined from a phone call. Especially when for women, a bad voice on the phone is an automatic deal breaker. So I’d personally rather just get on the phone and see if we either a} can have a stimulating conversation, and as importantly b} make sure his voice doesn’t sound like he's had a recent tracheotomy. 

We talked on the phone, and his voice passed inspection. It was fine, but the conversations being spewed by the voice were more or less the audible versions of a bottle of Ambien taken with a handle of whiskey. Beyond underwhelming and borderline suicide inducing. Like I was on the phone with my dry cleaners, trying to muster up some type of physical chemistry by discussing the chronological history of a lint brush.


Shoot me.

He asks me out for that coming Saturday night. Not for dinner, heaven forbid, but just to meet to see if we weren’t revolted by the sight of each other. I was already revolted by the inane conversation, so I couldn’t imagine the actual personification of this conversation resulting in a bigger, more gaggier revulsion.

Crap. Now what.

Well, I was meeting some friends out later on that evening, so initially, it didn’t seem like that big of a deal to meet up for a few drinks prior to that. And as everyone that's done Internet dating knows, you need a plan; If it's going well, you just stay out. But for the inevitability of it going horribly, you must prepare. This is done by first prepping your friends that within the first 10 minutes of meeting your date, you might be bolting into the public bathroom to send them the infamous S.O.S. text message, instructing them to call you immediately with some sudden, fictitious broken down car stories, or possibly some type of life threatening emergency that can only be resolved by you and you only. (You know, "she needs a kidney and we're both the same blood type." I don't know. Make it up.) So it's vital that your friends be kept apprised of the dates status, via live stream Tweets, so you can flee on a dime if the need should arise. 

And it always does.

I'm beginning to think that my dates must think my friends are the most accident prone, organ dependent, needy cluster of people on the planet.

OK, so the boring guy and I pick a time. 8:00 was my original time, but he said he was hoping to spend more time with me, even though he must've heard me hacking into my toilet as he said that.

He asked if we could do 7:00. A bit early for my comfort level. I was hoping to drown out his dullness in a bustling room of colorful alcoholics a little later on. But then again, meeting him a little earlier would leave me a greater bed of time to make fun of him after I left.


7:00 he wants? 
7:00 it is.

I walk into the bar, 6:59 P.M. I wait until 7:05, sit down and politely text him letting him know there's parking right next door, and I’m sitting at the bar. I also tell him he can’t miss me, since at 7:00 on a Saturday night, I’m of course the only asshole in the entire place ( the edited version of that ).

He sends me a text back: “Be there in like 15.”

Wait. What's that sound? I hear an umpire. 

He yells: “Strike 1!”
(Actually Strike 27 if you count the grueling 10 minutes of lame phone conversation, but let’s try and forget that for now. Because even starting at 1, come the end of this date, the umpire's coming down with an acute case of laryngitis).

I don't get this. A full-grown man asks out a full-grown woman. He bumps up the time a full hour earlier. I practically run over every squirrel and baby groundhog to get here on time, and ...“Like” 15??

I’ll be gone in “Like 13 and a half”.

Unreal. A 40 year old dude that can't be on time. Disgusting. This is why I usually date younger guys. The older ones are so irresponsible.

I take out my card and order a drink. An apple-pear martini.

And now I need to kill "...Like 15 minutes". 

Let the friend texting / man shreddage commence.

Just as I was just finishing up my second drink, and texting my friend that I wasn't staying any longer, I feel someone tap me on my shoulder. Here he his.

34 minutes late.

No apology, no acknowledgment of being late, and a severely annoying poke on my shoulder.

(Umpire: “Strike 2!”)

I turn around and see he’s wearing a beigey/grey t-shirt that was so wrinkled that by comparison it made a Shar-Pei puppy look ironed and starched.

(Umpire: “Strike 3!)

Me: “Oh hey, how are you. I’m sorry, did we say 7:34? I thought you emphatically said 7:00."

He kind of smiles, makes a stupid shrug with his shoulders, and basically ignores the question.

(Strike 4!)

The bartender asks him if he’d like a drink. He orders a Bud Light, (Strike 5!), and puts it on my tab, and then tells me I look exactly like a girl on TV (who I look nothing like), that he has a mad crush on.

(Strike, errr…13!!!)

Not only was he wearing a t-shirt that rivaled a ball of aluminum foil that was sat on by an elephant, and somehow peeled itself back open and molded into a homeless persons shirt, but I glance down and see he’s wearing a pair of ancient filthy sneakers, which were being tickled by pants that were so shredded at the bottom, they could’ve been used in a car wash in replace of those soapy dancing car noodles. Except unlike the car wash dancing soap noodles, his stringy pants noodles didn’t look like they ever had a proper introduction to soap.


At least be one. Either late. Or sloppy. If you’re always late, you better make sure you dress to kill. If you’re a fucking slob, you better be an on-time fucking slob. But whatever you do, don’t be a late, unforgiving, sloppy, cheap, tab-hijacking, boring, car wash noodle fucking wearing slob. Just a helpful dating tip.

Maybe it was a blessing. Because after nights like those, I always seem to find God again.

I'm sitting there thinking, “Please Dear God. Please God. Please. God? Don’t make me sit here any longer than I have to. My mother fell down a flight of stairs when she was pregnant with me, broke her water in her first month, laid in bed with me for 8 months, and I survived. I was on my death bed with Lyme disease for over 3 years. I’ve been tested enough. And I’m pretty sure I genuinely can’t make it through this horrid date / t-shirt disaster. Please God, set the restaurant on fire so I’ll have to run out mid sentence. If you do, I promise from now on I’ll just have sex to make babies. See you in church on Sunday. Swear. (Sorry God. No swearing.)"

I'm sorry but whether we want to believe it or not, first impressions are everything. That’s why when you go on a job interview, you don’t show up wearing a track suit, eating scrambled eggs with an armadillo in tow. And casual is one thing. I'm all for casual. Casual is great. Jeans and a nice button down or a pull over. But from head to toe, he was wearing something more like it was pulled-apart. This was like Friday Casual Dress Down Day at the oil refining factory.


Shoot me again. But this time do it so it actually pierces my front temporal lobe and kills me quickly.

And if this is him when he’s trying, what’s gonna  happen after 5 dates with him. 10 dates. When he's comfortable. He’s gonna meet you out in a used contractor bag and banana leaves for shoes, that’s what'll happen.

And guess what, if you’re going to show up looking like you pulled an all nighter with your drinking buddies, your intelligence and personality best be off the chart. And like I said, he was about as exciting as talking to a wet cotton ball. A wet, wrinkled cotton ball. Now I can at least die knowing, if a cotton ball were to talk, I’d know exactly what it would sound like. And it'd be late.

At this point, my normally talkative self apparently decided to go into hibernation for survival purposes, and was replaced by a reticent, bathroom-going, coaster-playing, bitch. (FYI guys…when a woman goes to the bathroom after meeting you for the first time, within 5 minutes of saying hello, she’s leaving in 10 minutes.)

He finally finishes his first shitty free drink, and orders another one. I think this time around he went for the upgrade and got a Pabst Blue Ribbon, and evidently decided to simply rollover the previous "Ordering Beers On My Tab" plan.

(Strike…what number are we on?...)

The depth of boredom in talking to this guy in person, actually made our previous phone conversation about road signs in Yonkers or guitar parts or whatever it was, seem like we were previously unraveling the origins of the universe. So for the remaining 5 minutes, I joyfully brought up guitar parts.


After a painful 45 minutes of what seemed like death by fire ants, I tell him I have to leave in a few minutes to meet up with some friends for dinner. "Have" being the integral word.

He asks me if I’d like another drink.

I said: “Awww no…that’s kind of you, but I’ve already bought myself enough drinks tonight. And I also want to be sure that when I tell my friends about you, and I’m throwing up, they know it’s because I’m describing you, and not that I just have liquor poisoning.”

The S.O.S. call finally comes in. It's my awesome friend, who upon my death, I shall bequeath all my worldly possessions 
(Which at that point could've been within 5 minutes). The call. That beautiful, "sorry dude, gotta go!" call. I stood up, shook his hand, bullshitted something about "nice meeting you", and left leaving a dust trail like the ones where Road Runner is being chased by Wiley Coyote.


The next day he called and asked me out for the following weekend.

I simply told him I couldn’t do it because he had way too much laundry to catch up on.


Clueless fish.

;)~