An Old Email Written After Our First Date

Right after our first date, my wife sent me an email to let me know she had strong feelings for me. This was my reply.

"Ditto. I was going to write you this long creative fairy tale about an owl that falls in love with a crow at a tea-house. They have all these cool adventures ... the owl shows the crow the night, and the crow shows the owl the day. But eventually they both migrate in opposite directions and wind up going their own way. The crow resumes collecting shiny objects and the owl resumes hunting mice and they die bitter, lonely and sad ... strangely they are both killed by hawks. But your way is much, much easier. I like you too."

On Welcoming Committees

I want to tear my life apart, dissolve it in alcohol and tell everything I ever considered precious to go to goddamn hell. I've been a decent person. I've gone out of my way to avoid hurting anyone and what the fuck has it ever got me. All the decisions I've made over the last ten years were the ones I thought I could be proud of and the sum of it all is that I'm going to be left holding my cock in my hand. I wish I could start this life again. I wish I could take another road.

I'm not in the least bit suicidal and you know why ... the thing that really gives me room for thought ? Who's going to welcome me on the other side. I'm sure I'll get the generic greeters with a plastic smile on their face and a weak sweaty handshake. Because all the women that were most meaningful to me in my life decided not to stick around and what does that leave me with ... no one but the goddamn welcoming committee and a fucking fruit basket. To hell with them. Sigh.

"But other than that Ms. Lincoln, how was the play ?"

Guinness

Side effects may include dizziness, nausea, vomiting, loose stool, and the removal of social inhibitions. At 5:17pm yesterday (Wednesday June 17th) I found myself sitting in my car. Hands gripping the wheel. I should have driven to class. I should have sat for 3 hours and 15 minutes and edumacated myself about accounting. But I just couldn't do it. I drove to the BART and went to San Francisco. I had gotten an email offer for a big marketing event in the city to promote the consumption of Guinness. Have they had difficulty selling it here ? Maybe Budweiser and Coors are cutting into their profit margins. Anyhow I became a "GUINNESS BELIEVER" and went to their event in the Merchant Exchange Building.

Surprisingly I had an incredible time. I talked for quite awhile with several complete strangers and I was at the top of my form. Relaxed, funny, pleasant. The insecure little emotional dwarf that I am around my wife completely disappeared. Is it redundant to say little and dwarf together ? Probably. After the event ended I tried to meet up with this drinking club that meets at dive bars in SF on week day nights. After two hours of trying to consume as much Guinness as I could stomach, I stumbled over to Market street trying to find a dive bar called Judi's something something. Eventually I found this no-name-bar in a very seedy neighborhood. Eureka. I get in and after embarrassing myself at a few tables trying to find the group, I just sat at the bar.

I had a great conversation with two women and this guy. One of the women was a little too friendly. At first I thought she was just a "close talker". But then she put her hand on my knee. I had been telling them the saga of The Shotgun Groom and she looked spell bound. Maybe it was just a sign of support ? I adjusted my seat - access to knee removed. And we kept on talking. At the end we pleasantly exchanged cell phone numbers. Which was a big mistake because she actually called me around 5am on my cell. Drunk of course. I'm just looking for friends ... without benefits. Also while she wasn't ugly per se, her personality could be described as a bit troll-like and brutish. In any case everyone shared their sob stories. The guy was very witty. It was great. I got home sometime after 11pm.

The call on my cell phone woke up my wife. I explained what had happened that night and she didn't seem upset in any way. Neither of us could get to sleep afterwards so we wound up chatting just a bit. I really enjoy her company when we're both relaxed and chatting freely. But a bit later I could feel the dwarf coming out of his box. You know, the little one ? The one who treasures his slightly crazy wife and feels overwhelmed by everything that's going on between us ?? I left for work. The first few hours of work are usually horrible. I always want to solve all my problems at once and it's difficult to take my mind off the troubles in front of me. Which makes this whole situation much messier.

I Am A Jelly Donut

Not a high quality designer donut. I'm half-baked with too much glaze and most of my jelly is oozing out the side. And it really, really hurts. To make matters worse this donut is now 34 years old as of this Sunday.

My wife is such a trooper. On Saturday she let me take her to an event in San Francisco but it went horribly wrong. During the drive back to our apartment she broke up crying completely out of the blue. She used to be part of the same creative crowd that had put on the event and to contrast that with the life she leads now is crushing for her -- almost five months pregnant, living out in the burbs, and with a clumsy awkward guy who inevitably seems to say the wrong thing at the wrong time. The drive back to our apartment was long. She couldn't talk about what was going on inside of her and I rambled on during the entire trip trying to fill an empty void. I did everything I could to try and convince her that she could make her life take any shape she wanted it to ... to convince her that she may feel stuck in a hole but that there were so many ways out. Hmmmm. Or atleast there were a few ways that she could rearrange her hole so that it wasn't so deep. I tried to let her know that I would support her in any decision or plan that she came up with. Even if that plan didn't involve me. It's still painful to think about that.

My actual birthday was on Sunday and despite everything my wife was very kind. I know she had been feeling exhausted and depressed all week but she still found the energy to get me a small gift, take me out to breakfast, and surprise me with a cake. I feel like something of a cad to be so absorbed in my own emotional problems. I know that there's a lot about her that I don't get. All I can do is pretend I'm OK and desperately grasp at the few things that I do pick up. She keeps her cards to herself and it seems like her emotions are for her and only her. Please someone, lend me a clue.

A Riddle Wrapped In An Enigma Packaged In Clear Plastic

Sigh, yesterday I broke down and wrote my wife a note telling her how much I love her. I wanted to tell her in person so badly. I wanted to look into her eyes and explain how much she means to me. But I couldn't bridge the gap. I wrote her a letter instead. Why is it so difficult for me to talk with her face-to-face ? I've never been this way before. A part of it is just that I know she's planning to move at the start of the next year ... as soon as she has the cash. It's taken some of the wind out of my natural cockiness. I'm so emotionally charged around my wife that I feel dry, mechanical, and witless.

But I'm glad I found some way to unravel my feelings. I wish I could be there when she lets her creative spirit flourish. I had looked forward to our marriage as a happy partnership where our creativity and natural playfulness bounced off each other ... where we raised a kid who would get to see the best of both our worlds.

Among all the people that have passed in and out of my revolving door heart, the person that I miss most is my first wife. When she held me in her arms, I could feel her love like a warmth that spread all through me from head to toes. She made me feel needed and desired in a way that was unconditional. Unconditional love is considered remarkably passe these days. I think the San Francisco ideal is a large pool of "friends with benefits". I hardly have the right to complain. I'm rotten about keeping in touch with people. And I stabbed my first wife in the back so many times I'm sure she lost count. Ultimately I drove her away in as slow, deliberate, and cruel a manner as possible. And I still hate myself for that. It's why I've become the exact opposite person today.

Close friends, romantic or otherwise, are difficult to come by. Speaking of which, I miss some of the friends that I had in the Navy. Like Simon. I remember when his mother passed away from cancer and when he came back from the psychiatric facility in Bahrain with all his hopes and ideals about the Navy completely smashed. Or the way it felt when I was stranded for months at sea among people I despise ... and then pulled into port and saw my good friend Scott. Going through hard times is what really brings people together. "Connection" is something that just comes naturally as the months pass into years and you share parts of your life with someone. At the very least I know that my wife's pregnancy is going to bring us closer together.

Boozy Britain Wary of Anti Hangover Pill

The pill, said to have been developed by the Soviet KGB so its spies could out-drink enemy agents, works by inhibiting the body's production of the poison acetaldehyde.

"Our national characteristic is as binge drinkers, which we do far more than our European neighbors," said a spokeswoman for Alcohol Concern. "In that way, we're much more like the Scandinavians than the southern Europeans."

-- actual title and quotes from Reuters 09 JUN 2004

This Is Also Me

I seem to close my eyes alot in photos but I'm not like that in real life. Nope, my eyes are always wide-open. Kinda guy who looks before he leaps.

The Dark Twisted World of Baby-Cam

Did I mention that my wife is giving birth to an angry fetus trapped in a small enclosed space within her midsection ? During last month's ultrasound we could actually watch as it shook it's enraged little fists. And this month the technician confirmed that the feet kicking my wife's intestines are now about an inch and a half long ... and female. It's going to be five more months before I get to meet her but I get the impression that we're going to have our hands full. How many difficult pregnancies could be successfully treated through the use of ADD medication - or by installing uterine televisions ?

In any case I had a relatively good weekend with my wife. Friday was great and so was Saturday. She always seems more herself in the morning and it helps to be as far away from the apartment in Dublin as possible. I've been trying to coax her out into S.F for a couple of weeks now but it's difficult finding the right "bait. She works in the city so driving there on the weekend isn't very attractive. And she usually has to get up fairly early so energy on week nights is limited. But I think getting out more would help the way things are between us ... even if it's just a walk in a local park. I still worry constantly about what's going to happen after the baby is born. The most important thing is that I want her to be happy. I want to be around that girl I met at the Blue Grass Festival last year. The one with the sharp sense of humor and quick-wit ? The one who felt so in control of her life that she abandoned her plans to move away from the Bay Area, married me on the spot, and agreed to beget my accursed hell-spawn ( with the cloven hooves ) ?

How This All Began

It began with an email reply to a Craigslist personals ad. My subject line read "Fossils Show Evidence Of Ancient Plants" and I took it directly from a news item on Yahoo! at the time. I ended the first date surprised that I had wormed my way into her bed and by the third date we were trying to have a kid. Marriage followed about three weeks later. And where the hell are we now ? I'm lost on that one. There isn't a map and the compass keeps moving. We're five months into the Bermuda Triangle of pregnancy and I'm beginning to have serious doubts that we're going to come out the other side. She's still the dearest thing in the world to me ... but she's unhappy, equally unsure where this is all going, and a lot of the time it feels like she's about five thousand miles away. Only a fool would have expected this to be easy. But hey, even the consolation prize is worth more than anything else in my life. At the end of four months I'm going to be a Dad. My own father died of a heroin overdose when I was fourteen. Before that he was the most inept long distance father imaginable. I'll be everything he wasn't even if I have to do it with one-hand tied behind my back. Tomorrow we learn if it's a boy or a girl ... and in the months ahead you'll find out whether I sink or swim as a husband. Stay tuned.