so this is my fault?

First of all, I want to take a moment to acknowledge my current love/hate relationship with Mother Nature (if we get this impending Snowstorm of Doom and I have off work tomorrow and can therefore spend this evening getting shitfaced and playing Rock Band, I love you.  If it does not snow, and my sparkling coming-out as a playwright was postponed for nothing, and I have to come into work with a hangover, I hate you.)

Now that that’s out of our way, let’s turn our attention to this article that I found on Yahoo! yesterday – “7 Mistakes Single Women Make.” Obviously, with a title like that, I was bound to be intrigued.  I mean, is this not what I have been asking myself for at least the last year and a half?  What am I doing wrong?  Why can’t I make it work?  Why?  Why?  Why?

Well, according to Lori Gottlieb, author of Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough, it’s because I (and most single women) are neurotic, picky, conceited, judgmental maximizers who feel they are entitled to a perfect man who suits all of their needs and wants.

Ok, maybe she doesn’t say that exactly, but read between the lines, and the message is clear: Single ladies, you need to chill the fuck out, adjust your standards, and settle for someone who maybe isn’t perfect, but is pretty close.

Which is all fine and good, except that for our entire lives, women in my generation have been told not to settle – don’t settle for a lesser education, lesser pay, lesser opportunities, and certainly not a lesser man.  Even someone like me, who was in no way raised with a sense of entitlement (when I got my driver’s license and broached the subject of a car with my parents, I was told, “You want your own car, get a job and pay for it.”), was always told that there was no reason I should compromise my standards and expectations for a man.  If that’s what I was going to have to do to get a boyfriend, I was better off alone.  And I know I’m not the only young woman who’s been told this.  From the media to our mothers, my fellow female Millenials have heard the refrain again and again: “You are great, and you deserve nothing but the best.”  And that’s an excellent message, don’t get me wrong.  It’s made my generation ambitious, empowered, confident…and neurotic, picky and judgmental.

I can recall many an impassioned, desperate conversation with another female that includes some variation of the line, “Who thinks I would actually date this guy?”  And while there are plenty of guys out there who truly are undateable to anyone with standards, there’s a much larger population of men out there who fall into the sort of black hole of “good enough…but not good enough.”  You know, a guy who is maybe not as attractive as you would like, or not as smart, or has some annoying habit, but who otherwise would be good enough - were we not convinced that we not only can but should do better.  So we keep looking, keep hunting for that needle in the haystack, bemoaning the whole time that there is not one single man worth dating left on Earth.

But does that make Gottlieb right?  Should women settle?  If so, when?  I was having this discussion with my friend Carly the other day, about how we might feel differently about the whole concept of “settling” for a guy in, say, 10 years, or 15 years.  There’s a certain degree of invincibility one feels at 25, when life and opportunities are stretching before you, and you can say, “I have plenty of time to find my ‘Mr. Right.’”  But what about when you’re 40, and your biological clock is ticking, your friends are married, and your family is starting to age?  Then maybe settling doesn’t look like such a bad thing.

How will the women of our generation handle that?  Will we be able to handle it, or will we be so resistant to the concept of “settling” that we just end up bitter spinsters, bemused by the fact that we could never find a man worthy of us.

Maybe that’s Gottlieb’s whole M.O.  – to start preparing the females of our generation for the inevitable moment when we have to settle.  I’d venture a guess, though, that it will take more than one book to convince me and my fellow females that we are fabulous and great, and deserve anything less than the best.

And on a final note, I take issue with Gottlieb’s assertion that guy’s are not as judgmental as women.  Bull.  Pucky.  Guys will nix a girl for just as many reasons as a girl will nix a guy; it may just seem like they can find three things wrong with a girl because they can’t articulate as well as women.

intensity

Becky: Men don’t want intense women.

Andrew: Yes, we do.

Becky: You think you do, but you don’t.

You know when you have those “A-ha!” moments, when somebody says exactly what you’re thinking?  I had one of those moments last night, when the above lines of dialogue were spoken during The Wilma Theater’s production of Becky Shaw, my new favorite play by my new favorite playwright, Gina Gionfriddo.  (Becky Shaw closes this Sunday, but if you are in the Philadelphia area and are not blocked in your house by 8 feet of snow, go see it.  Seriously.)

But back to my “A-ha!” moment.  In that scene, Becky, a 35-year-old emotionally fragile secretary, is confiding the secrets of her traumatic past to her friend and co-worker Andrew, who is trying his best to convince Becky that she’s not as damaged as she thinks, and if she is, well, that’s ok.  Like many women (this blogger included), Becky sees her intensity as a detriment in her quest to find love – that no matter what men say, if she was just a little less neurotic, a little less aggressive, a little easier, finding a man to love her would be that much easier, too.

Of course, what really rang true to me is Becky’s acknowledgment of the contradiction in men’s words and actions.  Swap out “intense” for any number of adjectives – “strong,” “intelligent,” “not crazy,” – and you have a list of attributes men always say they look for in a partner.  And maybe that’s what they think they want, but when the time comes to choose, men have an uncanny habit of going with the needy, simple, make-up eating girl.  I know this, men know this, Gina Gionfriddo knows this and she put it in her play, and that’s why she’s the shit.

However, if you want to be really analytical, and fair and objective, which I always strive to be, the lines can be interpreted as Becky condescending herself, and all intense women – basically saying, “You think you want an intense woman, but you don’t because we’re not worth having.”  This interpretation would fit in with Becky’s distorted self-image and low self-esteem, but given the way the line was delivered, causing the audience to laugh instead of pitying Becky, I’m going to stick with my argument that my first interpretation is accurate.  And that is a good feeling, to know that someone else feels the way I do – in a world where women are constantly told they don’t know what they want, men can have motives just as confused (and confusing) as they say we are.

In an unrelated but completely amusing note, audience members at the annual Wing Bowl at the Wachovia Center gave Jersey Shore guidette Snooki a proper Philadelphia welcome this morning, to which she gave a proper Jersey response.  Normally my tree-hugging hippie self would make an impassioned plea of “Why can’t we all just get along?” but given my unabashed loathing of Snooki and all girls like her, all I can say is, “Way to go, Philly!”

i don’t wanna

In the summer of 2001, during the Britney-Christina-Jessica pop-tart princess heyday, another skinny, blonde, somewhat vocally capable female joined the fray.  Her name was Willa Ford, her one and only single was “I Wanna Be Bad,” and chances are, you’ve forgotten about her by now, if you even knew who she was in the first place.  I had forgotten about her until yesterday, when, inexplicably, “I Wanna Be Bad” came on AccuRadio while I was at work (maybe it was the “One-Hit Wonders of the Aughts” station?).  Anyway, hearing that song transported me back to summer 2001, when Willa Ford was not some easily forgettable, flash-in-the-pan pop act, but the bane of my existence.  You see, prior to making a minor splash with “I Wanna Be Bad,” Willa Ford’s (real name Amanda Lee Williford) claim to fame was that she had dated international pop superstar and my one true soulmate, Backstreet Boy Nick Carter.  And that was enough to make me want to cunt-punt her from here to the Pacific.

Now, I could talk ad nauseum about how naive, pathetic, and slightly deranged it was for me to believe, lock, stock and barrel, that one day I would meet Nick Carter, he would fall madly in love with me and fly me off to his mansion in Tampa, Florida, where we would live happily ever after and he would spend all his time making sweet, sweet love to me and writing songs for me, but that’s not what I’m here to write about today.  What I realized yesterday, while listening to the tacky, over-synthesized notes of “I Wanna Be Bad,” was that the whole Willa Ford-Nick Carter-Krissy Scatton love triangle affected me in ways I’ve never fully acknowledged before.

Bear with me, here: in the video for “I Wanna Be Bad,” Ford cavorts around in a low-cut jacket and short booty shorts, grinding on some dude with an Afro, seducing a DJ, possibly fellating two police officers  – oh, Christ, just see for yourself:

She sluts it up pretty good, right?  Now, I always thought I was too smart and too self-confident to be sucked into the “impressionable young girls who are influenced by what they see on TV and in music” category, and don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t like I watched this video and then blew half the football team hoping to be liked.  But yesterday, when I heard that song and remembered the whole silly, long-forgotten episode, I realized I had at least been cognizant enough to put this much together: this chick was sexy, seductive and slutty, and she had gotten the guy, specifically the guy to end all guys, as far as I was concerned.  Somewhere, in my impressionable 16-year-old mind, the seed of the idea was planted – in order to get the guy you want, it helps to be a whore.

As I said before, I have always been considered myself to be above the influence of mainstream media and the ideals and notions they hustle – I don’t starve myself because the supermodels tell me I have to be a size 0, I don’t drop $500 on designer jeans because the magazines tell me they’re better.  And I have always stuck to the belief that my personality, intelligence, abilities and beliefs count for way more than my physical attributes when it comes to determining my self-worth, and worth to others.  But the notion that sex is the easiest currency to get what you want, once planted in your mind, is hard to get rid of, and an easy trap that even the best of us can fall into at times, even if you think you’re above it.  Maybe I’m getting older, or wiser, or just crankier, but I think I’m finally starting to understand the whole “protect our children from sinful images” battle cry. It takes a high degree of character strength to resist the easy path, but I guess the best way for women to stick it to the Willa Fords of the world is to prove, time and time again, that we do have strong characters and will not dance like a video ho to get the man we want.

Or you could just take smug solace in the fact that a video ho like Willa Ford ended up being a one-hit wonder whose most recent contributions to society have been posing in Playboy, hosting Pants-Off Dance-Off on Fuse, and being name-dropped in vitriolic blogs written by neurotic twenty-somethings.

And as for Nick Carter, who was unknowingly caught in the middle of all this…well, time and experience have faded his luster as well.  I mean, in addition to Willa Ford, he’s dated Paris Hilton and Keri Ann Peniche…the guy’s got to have the clap like, 6 times over.  Not cool.

miss independent

I’m sure most of you readers out there remember “Miss Independent,” the song from Kelly Clarkson’s first album after winning American Idol (the good song, not that uber-cheesy “A Moment Like This” crap). Anyway, I was listening to that song over the weekend (yes, it is included in the “Girl Power” playlist on my iPod.  Don’t act so surprise) and it made me think about the conversation I had with Angela Freakin’ Brockman a few days before about, well, independence – namely, how difficult it can be to relinquish even a small degree of independence when you go from being single to being in a relationship.

One night recently, Ang had found herself with a gentleman caller visiting her apartment.  Ang was appropriately excited, and they enjoyed a nice evening together, but as the night was drawing to a close and Ang’s guest was showing no signs of leaving, she got a little disgruntled.  She was even more disgruntled the following morning when the continued presence of her gentleman caller knocked her morning routine out of whack.

“I have my mornings down to a science,” she said. “I get up, I shower, get dressed, put my coffee in a thermos, and I’m out the door.  Now he’s there, and he’s like, “Don’t you want to have a cup of coffee with me?”  And in my head, I’m like, “No, I want you to get the hell out of here so I can get ready and go to work!”

Therein lies one of the great paradoxes of being single – whether you enjoy being single or not, you get used to it.  You develop your own routine and get into your own rhythm, and when somebody else enters the picture, regardless of how welcome he or she is, there is a small part of you that’s vexed because your routine, your rhythm has been interrupted, and now, instead of waking up a half hour before you have to go to work, you have to wake up at 6 a.m. to have morning sex and stare googly-eyed at your sweetheart over coffee and eggs. (Btw, guys, on behalf of women everywhere – unless it’s the weekend, we’d rather have the extra half hour of sleep than morning sex.  Just saying.)

“What really worries me sometimes, like, genuinely concerns me,” I said to Ang, “is that the day will come when someone, miraculously, will want to be in a relationship with me, and I’ll be so used to being on my own and doing things my own way,  I won’t be able to deal with it.  I won’t be able to mesh my life with someone else’s.”

Now, maybe I think that because I am a world-class worrier, but even if being neurotic isn’t your favorite past-time like it is mine, you have to admit that reconciling your single life with your couple life can be challenging, and it grows more difficult the longer your single.  Case in point – my uncle, a perpetual bachelor at 56.  Whenever my grandmother, ever hopeful, expresses the wish that he would find a nice woman and “settle down,” my mom simply shakes her head and says, “He’s been single for so long, he’s set in his ways.  He’s not going to want to change his life around for somebody.”

Of course, the belief is that you love your significant other and enjoy his or her company so much, you gladly and willingly rearrange your life for him or her.  And I can say, from personal experience that…you do.  Part of the thrill and beauty  of a relationship is blending two lives together, and creating a routine that belongs to both of you, and it can be extremely fulfilling and rewarding…except, of course, when someone’s trying to dry-hump your leg when all you want to do is sleep for another half hour.

similies

Due to everyone in the world deciding today that they want to go to college at The University of the Arts, I don’t have time to write a proper post, but I do want to share with you my new favorite phrase that I came up with today, in reference to a friend’s quasi-paramour – “shady like a palm tree.”  Feel free to add it to your daily lexicon!

happy birthday to me

I think it’s common for people to get reflective around their birthdays, so, as I count down the final hours of my first quarter century on Earth, I hope you’ll indulge me.  (And even if you won’t, I don’t give a shit.  It’s my birthday and I’ll do what I want.)

In all reality, I shouldn’t be celebrating the anniversary of my birth today – my actual due date was February 16.  But, on the evening of January 28, as she lay on the couch watching the 1985 American Music Awards, my mom, who had already given birth to one child,  got the distinct sense that I would not be sharing her body for much longer.

Sure enough, the next morning, when my mom went for a regularly scheduled check-up, Dr. Li, her Korean-born OB/GYN looked at her already-dilated cervix and said, “I think this baby coming today.  I hope this baby wait a few more weeks, but this baby coming today.”

Immediately my brother, who was almost three at the time, was handed off to my grandmother, my dad was summoned home from work, and my mom was transported to St. Joseph’s Hospital, where, at 9:23 p.m., after a relatively easy labor (“I gave one good push and ploop! you slid right out”), I had arrived.  The first few moments after my delivery were a bit tense, I’ve been told; I was tiny, perfectly formed, but silent.  No cries, no screams, nothing.  Then Dr. Li reached his gloved finger in my mouth, plucked out the clot of mucus in my throat, and I “‘let out a howl,” according to my mother.  I have not been so quiet since (nor have I been early, for that matter.)

I know in the grand scheme of things, 25 years is not that long, but it still blows my mind a bit that so many years have passed since the events of that fateful night of January 29, 1985.  I could write at length about all the things that were different in 1985 (Bread was 55 cents!  A blackberry was still just a fruit!  Michael Jackson was black!  And rich!  And alive!).  I could document all of the joyful, sad, proud, humiliating, exciting, infuriating, beautiful, surreal moments that have made up my life (holding my nephew for the first time, having my heart broken, writing a play, the death of my dog, etc., etc.).  I could name all of the people whom I love, who have profoundly affected my life (I would do this, too, except I wouldn’t finish until I was turning 26).

But in the end, all I can, and should, say is this: In my life, I have accomplished much, though I still have much left to accomplish.  I have experienced the unparalleled joy of love, and the gut-wrenching ache of sadness and loss, and I know I will experience these emotions again and again.  I have come in contact with too many amazing people to county, and will continue to encounter more amazing people.  And when I look back on my first quarter-century, I see far more good than bad.  Looking ahead to the next quarter century and beyond, I realize that all I can wish for is that my next twenty-five years are as blessed with love and happiness as the first twenty-five have been.

don’t say we didn’t warn you

Around the time I was 12 years old, I became convinced that being adult was the greatest,  most awesomely bad-ass fun thing in the world.  From the point of view of an awkward, bespectacled, pimply adolescent in a small, dead-end town, adulthood was as magical and welcome as an oasis in the desert – no one could tell me how late I could stay out, what to eat for dinner, or what kind of clothes I could wear.  I would be sophisticated and successful, beautiful and rich, and many, many attractive men would desire me.

Whenever I vocalized these feverish visions to someone who actually was an adult, the typical result was laughter – sarcastic snorts, cynical snickers, or full-on belly laughs, usually accompanied by some form of, “Oh yeah, that’s what you think adulthood is?  Well, let me tell you, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”

I’m remembering this today because last night, I found myself having a similar conversation, only this time I was the naysayer, and the topic wasn’t adulthood, but singlehood.

Let me explain.  Last night, I was at the opening of InterAct Theater Company’s new show, “City of Numbers” (highly recommended, btw).  During the opening night reception after the show, I was talking with my friend Samantha and one of the theater company’s interns, DeAndrea, who had recently parted ways with her long-term boyfriend.  As is the case with many people who have recently been released back into the wild, DeAndrea was enthusiastically extolling the virtues of being single, and suddenly, like all those grumpy, over-worked adults who rained on my wide-eyed, naive parade, Sam and I found ourselves trying to disabuse DeAndrea of the notion that singlehood is all it’s cracked up to be.

“I know what you’re saying – it’s great at first,” Sam said as we tried to bite back our bitter, cynical cackles, “but try being single for FOUR YEARS.  I told my mom the other day that I just hope my body gets to the morgue before it starts to smell.”

“I’m just trusting that my cats will start eating me before that happens,” I said, and Sam and I dissolved into laughter as DeAndrea looked at us as if we had parted ways with our sanity.

“Come on, guys, it’s not that bad,” she said.  “Why are you so pessimistic?”

“We’re not pessimistic,” I said.  “We’re realistic.  Give it time, you’ll learn the difference.”

As if to drive the point home, later on in the evening, I was approached by a member of the show’s running crew who I apparently communicated with back in my early days on Match.com.  We had never gotten to the actual face-to-face meeting stage, and finally, last night, I understood why – with all due respect, the kid was a bit of an awkward creeper, of the I’m-going-to-hover-near-you-at-an-uncomfortably-close-distance-until-you-acknowledge-me-and-then-refuse-to-take-your-hints-that-the-conversation-is-over variety.  I’m ashamed to admit that I actually abandoned Sam with him for a bit, but it’s every man (or woman) for himself out there, and after three glasses of wine and no dinner, I was in no position to gracefully handle any remotely uncomfortable situation.  (Sam, I owe you a drink for taking one for the team like that.)

Anyway, the whole thing made me laugh, and as we were leaving the theater, I said to Sam and Julie, “See, that’s what we were trying to warn DeAndrea about.  She thinks there’s all sorts of wonderful, interesting, attractive men out there, but there’s not.  There’s that guy, and many, many others like him.”

“She’ll learn,” Sam said, laughing the way my parents laughed when I would express anticipation of adulthood.  “Just give it time, just give it time.”

back in the game

Excuse me, ladies and gentleman – we interrupt your salivation over Apple’s new iPad to bring you this groundbreaking development in the life of Miss Right Now: I had a date last night.

I know, I thought it would never happen again either, but following one Yahoo! Personals subscription and several completely hopeless potential matches (including a 53-year-old.  A 53-year-old! Christ, if I wanted to date my father I’d move to Alabama and do so), last night I met up with N., a 30-year-old Penn lab assistant and medical school applicant, for a beer a Monk’s Cafe.  It wasn’t love at first sight, but he was nice enough, and certainly interesting to talk to – he was born in Israel, moved to the U.S. when he was seven, and went back as an adult to work for the Jerusalem Post.  Also, he salsa dances, which could very well wind up being our second date.

Furthermore, in a classic example of “when it rains, it pours,” on Monday night, I actually managed to meet someone not online, not in a bar, but in an actual real-life environment that did not include alcohol.  This young man, who we’ll call N2, because his name also begins with an N, is performing in a reading of my ten-minute play, “Elevator Music,” and I met him Monday night at the first rehearsal.  That would have been enough, just to meet an attractive, smart young man out in the wild, so to speak…but then, he asked me to join him for a cup of coffee…and then, when I dropped him off at his apartment, and he asked if he could call me…well, let’s just say an ugly, rainy Monday had never suddenly become so beautiful.

But I shouldn’t get ahead of myself.  I am, after all, myself, and am capable of screwing up potentially good situations more spectacularly than just about anyone I know.  For now, at least, there are glimmers of hope of a future that does not involve me owning 86 cats, and if I can just keep my head on straight and my feet on the ground, maybe those glimmers will continue to grow even brighter.

the others

I have a friend, who shall remain nameless because of the somewhat sensitive nature of the subject, who is in a bit of a moral quandary  – to be the other woman, or not to be the other woman.

In a nutshell, here’s the backstory – for about a year, my friend (who is single) has been friends with this guy (let’s call him Bob) who works at the same place she does (although they’re not quite co-workers. It’s complicated.)  Anyway, the relationship between my friend and Bob was always a little flirtatious, and for a period my friend did have a crush on him, although it was pretty much a moot point since he had a girlfriend.  That is, until the sexual tension boiled over just before Christmas, and Bob and my friend ended up sleeping together.  Oops.

Not long after it happened, when my friend and I were discussing this new development, she was adamant that it was a one-time only occurrence, and that she didn’t want to get involved in a love triangle with him and his girlfriend.

“Obviously, there are problems in his relationship, or he wouldn’t be having sex with me,” she said.  “But then he either needs to deal with those problems, or leave her.  And I’ve realized that, while we’re friends and he’s a cool guy, I do not want to be his girlfriend.  So I’m just taking myself out of the picture so if he wants to fix things with her, he can.”

A few weeks have passed since that conversation.  While I was talking to my friend today, she gave me an update on the situation, and, as it happens, her tune is changing a bit.

“Part of the Sarah Palin-crazy in me thinks I should just sleep with him, since there are apparently no relationship standards,” she wrote.  “What the fuck is the difference anymore?”

That’s a good question, as is the larger question it begets – is it so bad to be the other woman?

Ok, yes, it has its disadvantages, like the fact that your relationship is built on lies and secrecy and dishonesty and will almost certainly never be legit, which can lead to irrevocable emotional damage, social ostracism, and this (FF to 1:58):

But…but…if your expectations are low, you can look out for yourself and your feelings, and you’re not a psychopath, sometimes you just have to ask yourself, “Why not?”

Maybe I’m the devil’s advocate.  Maybe I’m just a morally bankrupt person.  But as I said to my friend, “If he doesn’t care about the well-being of his relationship, why should you?”

Cheating is wrong.  I fervently and strongly believe that if you are in a relationship, you owe it to your partner to be one hundred percent faithful, and if you can’t be, then you owe it to your partner to address the root cause of that infidelity.  But what about when you’re the third point in the triangle, the other person?   Are you doing wrong, or have you just landed in the best position possible – a no-strings-attached, no commitment bacchanalia of sex and fun?

Thoughts?

p.s.

Sorry, Jenny Sanford, but this woman is my new hero:
(Per Reuters) Ex-mistress puts Oracle executive on the spot
Really, what woman out there hasn’t want to publicly call out her man at some point? Brilliant!