What Buffy Taught Me About Vocation…

….in which I try to explain the interconnectedness of Buffy, Radical Altruism and Attachment Theory. With mixed results.

My wife and I have conversations about how pop culture reflects our values. I think there is a large contingent of progressives who dismiss pop culture out of hand as toxic in all forms. We are not those people.

I actually get quite a lot out of pop culture. Like Buffy. Or SVU. Jill was talking about some crime drama she loves that I never saw, and she said “I love them because they are the kind of characters who, when there is danger, run toward it while everyone else is running away.

Growing up, if I could distill what I wanted to be as an adult in the world into one phrase, that would be it. I wanted to be the kind of adult who runs toward The Big Bad. But in a social-justice metaphoric-y way.

Which brings me back to Buffy. Buffy didn’t just run toward The Big Bad, she moved into its stomping ground, she bought real estate, she established a colony. If I had been born a generation later, Buffy would have been my role model. As it is, I had nuns.

Nuns model radical altruism. They place themselves into the places on earth where compassion and fairness and justice are least evident. And then they proceed to behave as though the Universe is ruled by justice, fairness and compassion. No matter the consequence. Even if it leads them to torture, imprisonment and death. Nuns don’t run toward the Big Bad, they calmly work around and inside it.

This explains the awkward mix of rage and pacifism in my character. Had I been a girlchild with access to the Buffyverse, I would most assuredly have a black belt today. Instead, I had The Sound of Music and Lives of the Saints. Long before I wanted to be Atticus Finch, I longed to be Catherine of Siena.

Once I got into law school, I struggled to remember how this person I wanted to be could operate inside the system. It had seemed clear when I started, but halfway through it all muddled. Attorneys don’t run toward danger, they descend after it has left the scene and attempt to assign blame and collect damages. At their best, attorneys are a social system’s accountability and it’s conscience. At their worst, they profit from misery and the doing of evil.

One day, we had speakers come into an ethics class, and they were from Circle of Security. By the time class was over, I was utterly convinced that I was in the wrong place. The road had diverged in the wood and I had taken the path more traveled. I blame hubris. I knew the system was A Big Bad. I guess I just thought I was going to change that.

The Circle of Security attachment theory goes something like this – children need to feel loved. If they don’t, they feel unsafe. If they feel unsafe, they grow up and seek safety in ways that, to the untrained eye, actually look more like seeking annihilation.

If this sounds wackadoo to you, I assume you had a loving childhood. And I am equal parts relieved for you and jealous. For me, it explained a lot. A whole lot.

I asked if Circle of Security could use a law school drop out with a background in Poli Sci and Women’s Studies, and strangely they said “Thank You, but no.” I had to go back and find my vocation. Where did I leave it last?

Parenting has always been my benchmark. Parenting changed me, parenting can change everyone. By extension, parenting can change everything. When I moved on from parenting as the central focus of my life, I got lost.

If you’d ever told me, even as I exited law school in the throes of existential crisis, that I would choose to work with addicts daily, I would have called you delusional. If you told me I would actually feel privileged and grateful to be allowed to do so, I would have gotten a little more cutting with my words.

My life has always been populated with addicts. Many of them died early and awfully. All of them broke my heart.

I now work with mothers who are addicted. Most of whom have been forced into treatment by CPS. Many of whom have abused or neglected their children, or failed to protect them from abuse and neglect.

I honestly believe being a mother can save them all.

Addiction and abuse have been The Big Bads in my life since forever. And I suppose I decided I could either try to build walls against them, pretend they didn’t exist, or I could gear up, put on my stompy shoes and walk right into the Hellmouth.  Like a boss.

I’m With Stupid

I think that if I have an enduring legacy at my job, it will be the daily affirmation that I assign my clients stuck in an awful relationship.  Every morning, they must open group therapy by saying “Stupid always wins”, to which the group responds – with great enthusiasm – “Yes it does!”

And on the surface, I think that my greatest distillation – this gift I have of taking a complex problem and reducing it to a catchphrase – may come off as pessimistic.  But in a way, it represents the best hope for women who are so much better than their partners.

My theory is that smart girls pick dumb lovers.  Not all smart girls, but those of us with control issues.  We get that we will never be allowed to actually run the world, so we pick a serfdom to rule.  Or more accurately, we fall in love with the first person dumb enough to accept our control.  If we can’t control the world to keep ourselves safe, we will control the person closest to us. And then they will keep us safe.

If we are the smarter, more responsible, emotionally stable person, we reason, we will call the shots.  We will naturally take on the leadership role in our home. Our partner will defer to our wisdom, and even express gratitude that they have a benevolent and brilliant mistress. All will be as we wish.

One problem. Stupid always wins.

In the end, Stupid controls the game. Stupid makes the rules. And then breaks them arbitrarily. Stupid has no internal logic.

Stupid will scream louder, tantrum harder.  Stupid will fight dirty and pretend they don’t remember that thing they did the next day.  Stupid has no shame.

Stupid will throw your shit in the street for the neighbors to see. And then set it on fire.  Stupid will dare you to call the cops, believing that officers will back up their infant agenda and sternly warn you to listen to Stupid and be a good girl.

Stupid has a grandiosity problem.

Stupid will scream at you in a nice restaurant in front of anyone.  Stupid believes that everyone around them marvels at their ability to put up with you.  That all your friends and family view them as long-suffering, as a saint.  Stupid can’t believe that they are saddled with such an idiot.  Stupid congratulates themselves on being able to love someone as damaged as you.

You can debate with Stupid – the preferred weapon of smart girls the world over. But Stupid doesn’t follow the rules of common civility.  Stupid can’t recognize a logical fallacy to save their own life.  You are speaking a foreign language.

You can try to beat Stupid at their own game. Throw a fit. Decide you don’t care who hears the brawling. Try your hand at punching back.  Throw open the windows and scream down the block. Do things you never believed you were capable of.

You won’t go the distance. You have dignity and Stupid doesn’t.  Eventually you just want quiet and calm again and so you always give in.  You will not win at the game of escalation.

This relationship that you entered believing you would be in control, is the most out of control experience of your life.  But smart girls love a challenge, and so you endure. Until you just admit it.

Stupid will always win.  Unless you leave. And then they can rage on, until some other smart girl decides to try her luck.  Poor smart girl. I wish I could warn her.

Yr Mangled <3

If everything you do has got a hold on me / Then everything I do has got a hole in it  

I have this problem with people who can’t get over things.

I have this problem with people who can’t get over things that have to do with me.

See, I can clear a room in this town.  I prefer to think of it as owning a room, but I suppose that is up for debate.

Many, many years ago, I had one of those social implosions.  Actually, several in a row.  You know, where people take sides and get hurt.  Multiple relationships end. No one can seem to repair some nameless damage.

Most of the people involved still live in Spokane.

Spokane has this Twin Peaksian characteristic.  All people and things are intertwined and enmeshed. I don’t care if there are actually over 200,000 people here, it feels like there are exactly 5,120. So I see these Formers quite a bit. And if any find themselves in the same place I am…they leave. Like a gather my things in a huff and make a hasty exit kind of leaving. Ungraceful. Anxious.

At this point, if Jill – whom none of them has met – comes into an establishment, the Formers make themselves scarce. Presumably in case I am not far behind.

You might think that the social implosion leading to these exoduses involved a lot of drama, yelling, sobbing.  Maybe some police action in the front yard. Nope. An atypically amiable romantic breakup of the long-term variety, another amiable romantic breakup of the short-term variety. A slow, wobbly decline to the realization that I didn’t much like a good chunk of my friends. Some delicately worded emails. And then 6 years of nothing.

No talking, no interaction, nothing.

And yet still – I clear the room.

Sometimes not immediately.  One lovely former acquaintance drunkenly hissed something at me while standing at a bar before gathering the other girls and flouncing. I think it was something like “So, are you still being mean to women?” I hear the general consensus is that I am unforgivably Not Nice.

(For more on that topic… Feminism Means Never Having To Say I Like You)

Mutual friends tell me that after exiting whatever joint I have entered, Formers call them sobbing.

She didn’t even acknowledge me!

Or text them furiously.

She bored holes in my skull!

(Bored is the word, but with the more usual meaning.)

They conference at cocktail parties regarding their assessment of my looks, happiness or unhappiness quotient, love life and general skullduggery

She doesn’t look happy, does she look happy to you? When I saw her she definitely seemed unhappy.

All have come to a general agreement that they are much better off without my friendship/romantic interest/positive regard.

Love me or hate me / It’s still an obsession 

I find this incredibly satisfying.  I suppose one shouldn’t say that, but it is a concession of something, this flouncing, isn’t it? Something powerful. About me. How could I not love it? I mean really, wouldn’t you?

Lesbian culture is tolerant about stalking behaviors – even affectionate about obsessive data-gathering as a staple of all lesbian relationships, whether platonic or not. Lesbians are data-gatherers. The age of information has made this simple.  I also hear from third parties that my Formers keep awfully updated on my personal info, pursuits, relationships. And they trade tidbits. Predicting failure. Anticipating the lovely Schadenfreude of watching me get my – what? Comeuppance? Just reward? Karmic retribution? Anyway, something bad.

I had a professor once who said that we can claim whatever values we like, but that the measure of what a person truly values is what they spend their time doing.  So I guess my stock is valued high.

It’s not exclusive to lesbians. Or women. But when I see men do it, it is nearly always about an ex-girlfriend / wife / whatever.  (See: any bitter custody case ever.)

I wonder how this makes the Current Romantic Interests of my Former Romantic Interests feel.  I would be furious. Actually, if my Current talked as much about anyone as my Formers talk about me – especially after 6 long years – I would be gone. But here is another staple of lesbian culture: acceptance that  overinvestment in lost girlfriends is a fundamental human right. I guess we think that if she can be so steadfast to a Former, maybe she can become so steadfast about us.

Cross pollination of two sacred lesbian concepts – doomed love and the fetishization of commitment.

How long is it healthy to hold onto an old relationship? To invest it with anger and resentment. Fuel it with new information, with gossip.  Skulk around hoarding crumbs. Construct elaborate conspiracy theories. Blame the Former for your lack.  Join with others also injured – to participate in the never-ending autopsy of your shared past. A support group for my Formers. They meet for drinks. Lots of drinks.

Everyone designates themselves Chief Mourner at a funeral. The Most Injured. It’s all very small. And officious. Victim status lends us an air of put-upon courage. Brave Little Toasters. Leaving the building because I arrive is a way of notifying everyone that I have hurt you, but you have your dignity.

No, no. No need to discuss it, I will just clear up my things and go. Be the bigger person. So sorry to leave, I was having such a good time. But as you can imagine, it is just too painful to be here for me right now. She’s just so… Oh, nevermind. Anyway. I’ll go. 

Call me later and tell me if she noticed I left.

I suppose people will stop flouncing when I enter now.  Or not. Because then they would be admitting they sought out, found and read my blog. And I am sure of one thing: I do not deserve a single moment more of their time.

Death in Florence

I will always associate Florence with grieving.  I went there in the death throes of my ambition to be an attorney.  In a way, Florence was my attempt to make finishing law school seem possible, or palatable. I spent quite a bit of time roaming around and shopping with a judge who was spending her summer teaching.  She spent much of our time together trying to convince me to return and complete.  My life had already changed too much to stay on that track. It was painful to think that I had taken a wrong turn somewhere and was now on the brink of having a life I knew I would never enjoy.

The trip came hard on the heels of a dramatic and eventful coming out.  Florence was the first place I had room to breathe and think away from the major players in the drama.  My ex of 12 years – who lived right down the street and still contended that our breakup was the most traumatic event of his life.  And my ex of 5 months – the first girlfriend, who dumped me suddenly and awkwardly while we were on a romantic getaway in Seattle. She then spent my remaining time before departing acting almost exactly like a girlfriend and expressing wonderment that she’d left a lovely girl like me without knowing exactly why.  Confusion and guilt on every front.

In Italy, I spent a huge amount of time wandering.  I would get up early with my roommates and walk to classes, grabbing cappuccino on the way.  Class was about a 45-minute walk if you had the luxury to enjoy it, and a 30-minute walk if you were late. Traffic was murderous, and by that I mean crossing the street meant taking huge risks with life and limb. I attended class and got out at lunch time, quite a while before my flatmates, so I would set off for the apartment in a random direction and purposely lose myself in the streets.  My homeward walks took at least 90 minutes, and had no agenda. While most students who spent a summer in Florence can tell you all about museums and art and churches, I never even set foot in the Duomo  – though you had a great view of it if you stuck your head out our kitchen window.  I am used to living in a city bisected by a large river, so I oriented myself by the Arno and the Ponte Vecchio, and I never once felt lost.

So it was, for lack of a better word, a beautiful kind of grieving. The kind that makes you wander the streets of one of the world’s most gorgeous cities feeling strangely energized by sadness.

Then someone I loved died. The first death in three that would happen in the span of a year.  A friend, my brother and then my first love.  June, February, June. This one was the hardest.  I called my ex-girlfriend, who really, really cared about me, but she only responded by asking if I knew it was 4 a.m. I wanted to go home for the funeral, but the ticket was going to cost thousands on such short notice.

Things became grey. I now walked to school briskly, walked home the same way every day.  Stopped always at an internet cafe to check on news and morbid details – because the death was confusing and unexplained. To read messages from other people who were shocked and sad, because I was shocked and sad. As with all deaths, I would forget and be distracted and then remember and feel ashamed of my distractibility.  I think this is when I went to my sole museum and saw the statue of David, and the small painting of the Magdalene where she is all ginger hair covering her nakedness – the most compelling visual memory I have of Florence and art.

Down the street were two lovely gay boys. One a law student like me, and the other his boyfriend, along for the trip with no business in particular to accomplish in Florence.  Jay, was the student and Adam, the boyfriend. But we had all decided early on that we would have new names in Florence.  Secret identities. So we were Carlos and Trev and Violet.  And Brandi, Caitlyn and Ingrid.

Trev began coming over at lunchtime when Carlos, and the rest of the dually named flatmates were still at school.  Often, he would find me lying in bed or on the couch. Sleeping or staring. He would entice me to his apartment with promises of Jager and Red Bull, and once there, he would fuss about my hair and makeup and then try to get me excited for some adventure.  We’d go do something random and then stop in the grocery to buy supplies for our communal dinners.  One day, we decided to dye my hair at least three different colors instead of just the two and spent all afternoon, tipsy in various farmacia looking for hair dye and bleach.  Another time, he asked me what would make me feel better and then spent a ridiculous amount of time looking for a yarn store because I just wanted to knit.  By the time we were cooking dinner and the students returned to eat family-style, I was a little drunk and much more prepared to socialize.  Also, better looking.

I try to regret not seeing all the things a student should see in Florence, but the rest of that terrible year had more grief in store, and the scenery was not nearly as lovely or the company so comforting.

And Now I Out Myself…

As one of those Anti-Marriage Feminists Bay Buchanon was prattling on about.

(From the wayback machine: My blog, circa April, 2004.  Present-day endnotes in Italics!)

I think marriage (and the frou-frou we call engagement) is divisive among women. It creates this hierarchy of socially acceptable sexual behavior/reproductive behavior.

Essentially, married = o.k. to be pregnant, not married = not okay.

If you refer to Babydaddy as ‘my fiance’ it makes your in-utero child more legitimate (though not actually legitimate). If you are a single mama, people sigh with relief when you say you now have a fiance; “Ah, she found a good man willing to marry her, all will be right with the world, God will smile upon them, she made the best of a bad situation. But too bad her kid is a bastard.” Men make us socially acceptable. But we never get to stop apologizing.

It is marginally more okay to be shacked up if you are shacked up with your ‘fiance’. This, as with everything, is also mitigated by class. When po’ folk shack up it’s trashy, when wealthy folk shack up it’s sophisticated or ‘European’.

Sadly, our lesbian sisters have no access to legitimacy. None whatsoever. We take our legitimization at their expense, our married privilege only reinforces their lack of privilege, their children’s social illegitimacy.

(As though children can be illegitimate – a Republican must have come up with that notion.)

And I see women using marriage and ‘fiance’ against the world like a shield, something to hide behind. As though we are not acceptable, our children and our sexual choices are not acceptable unless we are in a state-sanctioned relationship. That is so fucked up. And it only reinforces the idea that women and mamas without ‘husbands’ and ‘fiances’ are somehow lesser, lower class. You may not think that, but this culture does.

And it is transparent. When you are poor, when you are at the bank with your kid in tow and you are trying to convince them to cash your welfare check without an account. Saying you did it last week with your ‘fiance’ does not get you respect or your money. It just doesn’t.

And what is wrong here is that you don’t get respect in the first place, that you have to beg.

But please, ladies, please! Let’s stop buying into this bullshit, stop getting our little slice of privilege at the expense of our sisters, stop legitimizing the government’s role in our sex lives, in our children’s lives. It only hurts.

I was thinking of writing a blog about how I learned to stop worrying and love the Banns.  (Too Ethan Frome? Well, I endorse torture of the language in this instance, as national security requires a literary/cinematic hybrid pun…)

Just for the sake of full disclosure, I decided to go dig out this gem written for a Con Law class my senior year as a Non-Traditional Student Undergrad.  I was full of the fire of feminism, partnered long-term with a man (going on Year 11, as I recall), and quite angry about the Gay Marriage question.  

I thought that the bit would be more cringe-inducing to post here in the present tense, but actually I find I still mostly agree with this girl.  (I thought I had even announced ceremoniously that I wouldn’t get married even to a woman if I could. Luckily not, though I am sure I said it somewhere, and loudly.  Oops.)

This girl isn’t as strident or judgy as I recall, and in essentials, I think she is right.  People marrying in the full light and privilege of the State should consider how they can contribute to the cause of those who can’t. And most of all, let’s think of the children. But I am one dead-heterosexual-partnership and one years-long-battle over the assets of that partnership older now and I see that by choosing not to marry, I was choosing to lose financially if the partnership ended.  It did, and I lost a beloved home, the decent credit rating needed to buy another, the benefit of all my unpaid or underpaid work to build my family’s security, and my son became the fatherless child of a poor single mother.  Again.

Like many women, the price of  my leaving meant dropping back under the poverty level just when I had finally risen above it. And like most men leaving a long-term relationship, my former partner only benefitted financially from our split.  He left with a Master’s Degree and a middle class income.  I had nothing to show for the 9 years of our relationship that he spent earning his curriculum vitae because I had been working low-wage, no-benefit jobs to pay the bills and be present to raise our son.

I can’t see telling women who have access to more financial protection than I had to forego it merely on principle –  because women and poverty already have a far-too-cozy relationship as it is in this country.  Women also are overwhelmingly the primary caretakers of children after a split, and so the reduced resources of the non-married woman impact on her children and increase their chances of living in poverty.

I am sad that I am too jaded to ignore reality these days and urge a marriage boycott, because I do believe that straight people of good faith have a huge responsibility to force marriage equality down the throats and into the churches of the minority of bigots who hold the line and block progress.  I wish I could believe in a country where people with privilege will demand it be extended to everyone, to the point of refusing to accept that privilege until it is universal.  Sadly, I think the cost of giving up the Marriage Benefit would fall where social costs almost always do – on women and children.

 

Perpetual Coming Out Machine

I suffer from what I like to call straightface.

No one ever registers my queerness on sight.  Jill says she did, but she has superpowers.

I get that ‘passing’ has its advantages, in places like rural rest-stops, for example.  For just going about one’s business without feeling or hearing casual hatred.  I get that when I wander a grocery store with kid in tow, I am smiled at benevolently by my more conservatively-minded neighbors. They see me as a mother with an incredibly cute child, not as one of the chief catalysts for the end of Civilization, and someone who should have her parental rights removed.  By force, if necessary.

But straightface has its own pitfalls, and as someone who has never had any desire to be closeted, I have to say –  I fucking hate coming out constantly. Daily.  Perpetually.

Once, I endured – politely – a lecture by a local LGBT Activisty type on how hard it is for lesbians to get quality sexual healthcare.

I was thinking all the while about how I had erroneously been diagnosed with an STD because the brand new doctor at the clinic was so rattled by my response to “do you use condoms for oral sex?” that he summarily pronounced me infected without any lab testing.  Turns out I had a fever blister.  In my mouth. LGBT Activisty Type assumed I benefitted from the straight privilege of not making your Doogie Howser M.D. blush and stammer.  My relationship with my ex did not benefit from me needlessly accusing her of cheating, I can assure you.

Or how about listening to a law-school gay patiently explain to me that I should swallow my objections and vote for John Kerry, despite his move to block gay marriage in Massachusetts, because if he, as a gay man can see his way past that to support the common good, then why would a straight person like me be so condescending as to take up his cause without his consent?

These are funny little anecdotes, more about the hubris of exercising prejudice in defense of eradicating it.  The real sore stuff is when my revelation about my relationships occurs after – and often because – someone I am getting to know, and like so far, says something hateful about me, my family, or my community. That is the hardest coming out of all.  “Oh, by the way, I am in one of those relationships that you pronounced are nothing like a real marriage and make you feel pity for the children stuck paying the price.”  So, I guess my status as your new favorite employee/student/intern/co-worker/neighbor/fellow parent  may be reconsidered, right?

And then the awkward apologies and spin.  Which actually has me feeling sorry for the person who just outed themselves as a bigot.  And despite all my bravado about being out and proud, I often find myself telling them “it’s o.k., I understand…” as I back slowly out of the room, flush-faced and teary.

Damn it, some days, I don’t want to be the spokesmodel for Check Yourself.  I just want to buy my fucking groceries, finish a day of work, make idle chat with the person standing behind me in line, make new friends and influence people – not delicately attempt to win over some ignorant person who mistakes me for one of their own.

Then I think about another girl who writes blogs, a Straight Activisty type, who plays the pronoun shell game when writing about her ex.  Who presents a picture of straightest-straightness, and wonders disingenuously why her short hair got her mistaken for a lesbian. So she grows it out. And she supports the gay, in that not-narrow way. I can’t be that girl.  I can’t use passing to hide.

And hey, I get it.  I empathize.  Daily life is much easier that way. But in the end, it sounds like fucking misery.

Sometimes it’s all you can do to get out of bed.

I was 19 when I had my son, and no one approved.  So naturally I believed I had to be a perfect mother.  I breastfed, used cloth diapers, co-slept, and responded to every cry like a good little attachment-parent.

As my son weaned himself, my hormones apparently took a plunge, and my mood went down with them.  I was overcome with morbid thoughts of the thousands of ways an infant could die, and I could not sleep at night because I had to hear each of his breaths.  All this coincided with the end of my child-marriage, and the beginning of single motherhood.  Situation compounded chemistry. I couldn’t get out of bed many days, and since the child required nursing, changes and affection, I didn’t actually have to. Eating seemed like a chore, so I didn’t.  My house became filthy around me and I hardly ever got out of my pajamas.

People came by, family and friends, and I would show them the baby and they would cluck gently to say they understood that infants were so much work, but soon he would sleep more and then I would be allowed to sleep more and everything would be fine.  It went on for about three weeks.

My neighbor down the street, Doreen, was a large woman, with three children spaced far apart.  She was a former addict and prostitute and at some point well in, she began appearing every morning at my door to boss me around.  I had to get up and out of bed.  I had to wash my hair every day.  I had to leave my bed by nine and stay out of it until nine.  And above all, I had to make waffles.  She brought me a waffle iron.  She would let herself in the house in the morning and holler, “Get up and make that baby some waffles!”  Like babies eat waffles.

I’ve been around a lot of new mothers lately, and I see them struggle like I struggled, and I think that too often people’s response is that it’s normal, temporary and that women should just focus on the joy.  The first things are true, but no comfort at all, and the last thing is useless in every possible way.  So I think that more conversation is better than the none I had.

There’s no fresh perspective that will remind you that motherhood is all joy and bliss.  There is only routine, and possibly medication.  I know that statistically, most women supposedly do not experience postpartum depression, but somehow all of the mothers I know have.  Seems like statistics may very well be wrong about women’s experiences.  Shocking, I know.

We have to ask for help; we have to stop worrying that we are boring people, or taxing their resources.  We have to leave the house, wash our hair and eat food – even when it seems impossible. Hand off the baby – no one sees babies as a burden to hold.  We’ve all been so drained we can’t get out of bed.  It’s true.

One other thing Doreen told me at the time was, “If it’s all you can do to get out of bed in the morning, do it. And then congratulate yourself on your courage for the rest of the day.”

Feminism Means Never Having To Say ‘I Like You’

List Girl: “I saw her out, and she didn’t even say hello to me.  And she calls herself a feminist.”

She had called our mutual friend to report me for this violation of Girl Code.

I see a flaw in this logic. And I explain it to the Mutual Friend who has taken on this poor girl’s cause: “Feminism taught me we don’t have to be nice to people we don’t like.  Patriarchy is the system that says girls have to be nice to people regardless of how they feel.”

You can campaign for me to observe social niceties; you can insist it will decrease drama, reduce tension, defang situations.  You’d be wrong.  Nothing increases drama, tension and fanginess like capitulating to Faux Power.

Faux Power is when you get things by employing the following: whining, triangulation, splitting, social aggression, playing the victim, gossiping, ganging-up, backhanded compliments, intimidation, preening, sucking up, flattery and shit-talking.

I don’t like people who do these things. And here’s the biggest secret of all – no one really does. They pretend to, because they don’t want to be the target of these behaviors themselves.

Real Power is when you make decisions about your life, and you have the ability to inhabit those decisions without resorting to tactics and stratagems. My whole life post-age-14 has been a struggle to transition from being incredibly adept at Faux Power to being reasonably functional with Real Power.  For the sake of social nicety, people often ask me to regress.  It’s a problem.

Sometimes I don’t like people.  There, I said it. I am female, and therefore expected to like everyone and be nice to everyone – to their face. (Behind their back, I am apparently free to be horrid.  It’s encouraged. Kind of an acceptable sludge valve for all the toxic niceness I am to swallow in public.)

But sometimes I don’t like people and I have learned through hard experience that ignoring my antipathy will eventually cost me dearly. (See: List Girl) So I endeavor to allow myself this choice. To like or not.

It’s simple. Stupidly simple. I don’t have relationships with people I don’t like.  I don’t give trust to people I know I can’t trust. It’s one of the most liberating things being a feminist has taught me: my regard and my friendship are of value, my time and energy are of value. I deserve something equal in return for them.

I am never obligated to be nice.

I need to be kind. I need to be ethical. I need to be safe. I need to refrain from cruelty.

But no one ever needs to be nice.

This, apparently, makes me Mean.  I get called a Mean Girl a lot.  Not because I actively do anything to people I don’t like, but because of what I don’t do.  I don’t make small talk with them.  I don’t spend time with them.  I don’t invite them into my life.  I don’t do all those little human rituals designed to reassure them that we are friends. Because we’re not.

The social whirlpools and suckholes this creates are truly astounding. People I don’t like get butthurt.  They campaign, they whine, they stir pots. I get calls from well-meaning and beloved friends, exasperated with me. “Can’t you just say Hello?” No. “What could it hurt?” Me. And them.

Here’s what I know as a mother and a woman.  Faux Power is like toddlerhood.  It’s meant to be a phase; we’re meant to grow out of it. In order for this to happen, tantrums must be ignored.  Consistency must be maintained.  Faux Power cannot win, even once, even when things get awkward and strained. Because when Faux Power wins, when throwing a tantrum makes all the grownups in the room capitulate, the girl who wields it becomes even more certain that it’s Real.

And then she’ll never recognize her potential for something actual. Something potent. Something so far beyond the power of nice.  

I tell my clients when I teach my class on Faux Power – “While we’re playing nice and people-pleasing, shit talking and backbiting, men are running the world.”

: Communication by Triangulation

My former mother-in-law, a likeable if sweetly daffy woman, texted me the other day.  “I can’t find Scully, any ideas?”

Hm.  Curious.

Scully is my demented 21-year old Siamese.  She’s blind, occasionally incontinent, and has the personality of Bette Davis in her later, more acerbic years.  Scully lives at my old house with my friend, Victor, and my other cat, Ripley (geek cred) and my dog, Girlfriend (long story).  When I moved in with my actual human girlfriend, I left them behind due to Lesbian Menagerie issues.

I have not talked to my former mother-in-law for about 2 years.  I have no idea why she would be looking for my cat.  It got weirder.  She followed up that text with one that indicated she thought she had sent the text about my cat to my son, who has also not lived at my old house for over a year.  Still no explanation of why she was looking for my demented cat. Or why my son could help with that.

Then Victor texted me “Were you at the house?  The water bowls have been changed and Scully is missing.”  Apparently, my former mother-in-law was successful in her quest to find my demented cat.  I texted her. “This is not The Kid’s phone, it’s mine.  What is up with the cat?”  Two hours later I got a text back.

“Scully is with me.  Matthew wants her sent to DC to live with him.”

Matthew, of course, being her son, my Former of 12 years.

It’s ironic, because I have spent the last year anguishing over what to do with both of these cats.  I have many times over determined to put the incontinent Bette Davis kitty down because, well, she’s kind of a terror on my little fall-apart house and a burden on my tenant, the strangely animal-indulgent Victor.  My nerve failed me, and also – Victor protested.  “You can’t kill a cat because of that.”  I had many times said much the same thing – that I don’t want anyone putting me down when I age  just because I pee myself occasionally.  And the vet pronounced her in wonderful health, no pain, with a startling number of teeth intact. “She could live five more years, happily.  Her mind’s just gone.  She forgets the litter box.”

So now all this cloak and dagger to relieve me of a cat I was carrying huge buckets of guilt about.

I texted back.  “Matthew should take Ripley, too.”

When Matthew and I broke up, I lived alone for the first time.  Ever. At 34. Sleeping was an issue.  I wanted to get a dog, but Matthew and I had never settled the issue of where the cats we’d adopted would live.  He never wanted pets, and only caved because I insisted.  But both of the cats had lived with us so long, that he was also very attached to them.  I said I would only adopt a dog if he was keeping Scully and Ripley. He said that the cats were the last thing left from our relationship and he could not imagine living alone without them.  So he kept them.  For 3 years.  Then he dropped them off suddenly due to a new girlfriend with her own herd of 3 felines. All of whom Bette Davis Cat tried to eviscerate in the first 24 hours of their conjugal bliss.  So I had these two cats back, unexpectedly.

Shortly after the new girlfriend, our pleasant ex relationship was also unexpectedly and summarily dropped.  One year later, contact between my son and the only dad he’d ever known was also dropped. Matthew moved to DC without seeing the cats, or The Kid and never wrote / never called.  Not even Kid birthdays.

So imagine my surprise when he arranged this little caper.

Had anyone in this scenario called, texted, Tweeted, Facebooked, emailed or dropped a postcard asking for possession of the Demented One, my response would have been relief and gratitude.  I am still very relieved.  But it seems quite douchey to have an ex appear from nowhere and steal your cat.  Even if you want him to.  Right? I don’t know what his message was, it got garbled in the trans-national effort.  But I know there was one, and I know it was supposed to hurt.

This story serves to illustrate a general condition in my life lately.  People determinedly working to achieve an end in the most convoluted and indirect way possible.  With unintentionally comical results.  I am a different girl than I was, because instead of being outraged and starting a scrap, giving attention, I just relax and enjoy the show. And marvel that the Universe provides.  Even for a demented incontinent cat with a personality disorder.

He came back to the house last night and took Ripley.

That’ll show me.

Some girls, two letters and The List.

I’m 20. I’m sitting in a car looking over a viewpoint on the West Side of Spokane.  My high school best friend, one of many, is currently crying drunkenly.

“I hate you.  I hate you so much!”

I am just trying to understand the strange turn that this relationship has taken in the last hour.  We’ve been in this car forever, and the one thing I am clear on here is that she hates me.  I have no idea why.

I mean, there was a List:  I am thin.  I dated boys she secretly wanted to date.  I got married.  I make her feel insecure.  Not by anything I say or do.  I just do.

I don’t understand.  That’s the one point of agreement we can firmly establish.  I don’t understand, I don’t understand, I don’t fucking understand.  I thought our relationship, which spans grade 10 through this moment, was very stable.  Normal.  There was never a fight.  We didn’t argue or disagree.  We weren’t like other girls. Until this moment, no crying of any kind.  I’m mystified.

Or in the back room of a club with another one, she’s on acid.  Or ecstasy.  MDMA?  Dunno, she won’t tell me.  Because she is screaming.  And crying. This again.

I am a bitch. I think I am better than her. Everyone says I am a bitch. Also – I am a fucking bitch. She hates me.  Why? No idea.  Wait, she has a List: I make her feel bad.  I make her feel angry.  I make her feel like getting fucked up.  I went away.  I had the nerve to come back.  I was gone for weeks. What a bitch.

Anyway, she hates me.

As I aged, I actually got The List. Like, in writing.  Two separate friendships ended with a long letter detailing my crimes.  They were similar in that they detailed things so trivial, how could they end a friendship?  I forgot to return a book.  I also forgot to give her that one book I said I would.  I was mean to this one girl a year or so back, one no one is close to, and she moved away.  But that was not nice.  I didn’t remind one of the date of a meeting.  I didn’t try hard enough to integrate her into my social life. I turned gay and she had to find out through my blog.  I once asked her if she was gay, and then I was gay.  These were the mundane events that formed the spectacularly bitter end of our friendships. The unforgivables.

It took me forever to process why I always got The List. It still seems so impossible.  But the one in the club, frying out of her mind, had actually said it. “I hate the way you make me feel.”

My friendships weren’t like other girls’.  We didn’t just do our hair, gossip and giggle. We discussed how we would buy houses together. Go to college together. We planned lives together. They were intense. As I became an adult, the practicality increased, but the intensity remained.  I thought this was what female friendships were like.  I had no idea why the boys in the hallways, at the clubs or on the streets called us lesbians.

The first girl I ever fell for, the one who made me realize I could fall in love with a girl, she put me on the other side.  Before I realized, when I thought she was just another friend.  I used to get so furious with each new girl she dated.  They were stupid.  That’s all I could articulate.  They were stupid, and not good enough for her, and the fact she kept choosing these girls one after another made me positively hateful.  I meddled in her relationships, I caused a breakup.  I probably hastened a few others.  I honestly thought I was just a very invested friend. But she knew she was a dyke, and that changed the dynamics of everything for me.

Luckily, I figured out that I wanted her.  I got that, finally.  Before I ended up drunk and screaming, before I composed some dishonest List. Watching her with other girls, stupid girls, made me hate the way I felt. And I tried to justify the strength of my feelings with petty little things.  She doesn’t like dogs, you have a dog – dump her.  She isn’t as smart as you are, she has horrible spelling – break up with her.  She says she is bisexual, she can’t commit to girls – leave her now!  I had my own list, I just had the freedom to blame other girls and not the one I wanted.

There was no escaping the knowledge of why I was so angry.  I hated feeling un-chosen, but I chose not to make a move.  My choice.  She didn’t make me feel anything.  I had to own it.  I wasn’t happy, but I wasn’t brave enough to see if I could be happy with her.  She didn’t fail me, my nerve failed me.