Did I Say Unfair? Unfair.
Dec. 21st, 2010 10:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraSet the alarm. Tried to watch the eclipse. But it was too overcast.
###
Been utterly brain dead since I finished the Legal Masterpiece. Forty thousand words in 37 days – is that a lot? I’m so brain dead I can’t really tell. The project was quite fascinating right up to the final chapter which was all about international Internet law about which I know nothing.
For two days I sat in the little cement bungalow, weeping hysterically and pushing out that final chapter. Not sure why I was crying – all I could think is that at a certain point when you’re writing to meet a deadline, the words stop making sense; all you can do is depend on your craft , trust that somehow, instinctively. your typing hands will bypass the brain to churn out dependable prose. It’s kind of like being ridden in the Haitian voodoo zombie sense of the word. Not fun.
(Plot to a good fantasy story lurking there somewhere, a world in which Little, Brown and Company want a sequel to Catcher In the Rye and rather than commission a writer, hire a medium who can channel J.D. Salinger.)
Would I do ghostwrite again? But, of course – only I would charge more. A lot more.
###
In other news, B and I have been seeing rather a lot of each other. We’re getting along better now than we were the last five years we were married. Every once in a while I get angsty about it – but I realize this has more to do with my own abandonment issues than it does with him.
Only yesterday was one of those times.
B had come over for breakfast, we had a long conversation about the tuberculosis sanitarium at Saranac Lake – doesn’t sound sexy to you but for me hubba, hubba. Plus, you know, this has been the longest interval I’ve gone without sex since I started having it, and I’m really horny.
That afternoon I wrote to the Girlfriend again. This time at her office:
Hi Girlfriend,
Forgive me for writing you at yr workplace -- yes, it DOES seem a bit like stalking now that you mention it :-)
She wrote back promptly:
Actually, I am glad to hear from you. I am also glad to know you would like to meet. I completely agree that it is important to get to know the people who are in our kids’ lives. It makes things less burdensome for everyone, especially Robin.
How do you perform personality analysis on an email? Clearly she doesn’t like contractions. And “burdensome” is always an interesting adjective.
But hey! We might end up liking each other. Stranger things have happened.
Braved the snowflakes and drove into town for my tutoring session which has become the high point of my week. Rubén works for a farm that produces fois grasse – we discussed the politics of that for an hour or so, way to generate vocabulary lists!
Picked up RTT for the ride back up the hill.
“So Robin,” I say with forced casualness, “you were saying this morning that you wanted to buy Jayne a Christmas present. Do you want to swing by Wegman’s and pick up some hard candy? Ben says she likes that.”
“Some other time,” says Robin, texting furiously to his friends.
“I’m going to meet Jayne next week,” I say.
This is enough to get him to put his phone down. “You are?” he says.
“Uh huh. Seems like a reasonable thing to do. Things are weird the way they are.”
RTT digests this. “Are you going to put up a Christmas tree?”
I sigh. I always put up a Christmas tree. But this year, with all my ornaments in California and a real dearth of what one might call holiday spirit – never my strong point in any year if I’m being perfectly honest. I did it for the kids.
“Dad has a Christmas tree,” says Robin.
“He does?” And this cuts me to the heart somehow. Only the day before I’d asked Ben, “So what are you getting Jayne for Christmas?”
And he’d snapped, “Nothing! I don’t have any money.”
“That’s horrible! You don’t have to spend a lot of money on a gift. You know the old saying, ‘It’s the thought that counts?’ Well, it’s actually true –“
That morning when he came over he had two gifts for me (“From Robin,” “From Meezer”) and RTT said, “He bought a drum for Jayne –“
“A drum,” I said? “Is she into drumming?”
“It’s a little drum,” said Ben. “I just thought it was cool.”
And she’s so adoring, no doubt she’ll agree. Although that wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when I’d said, “It’s the thought that counts.”
So the Girlfriend owes her Christmas present to me, me, me, me!
But they have a tree! I hadn’t expected that.
“Do they have lights too?” I ask.
“Uh huh. You were going to put up lights,” RTT says accusingly.
And I was. But I didn’t.
“Mom,” says Robin seriously. “Don’t blow things for Dad.”
“Blow things for Dad?”
“Well, I mean, if you tell her what he’s done, she’ll probably kick him out. The way he behaved.”
I consider this. “Well, I wasn’t going to tell her what he’s done. It’s ancient history at this point. The emphasis now is on getting along in the future. But do you think he did bad things?”
“Sure,” mutters RTT. He’s fingering the phone longingly.
“He treated me badly.”
“Yeah.”
“That seems very unfair to me,” I say. “He gets to be happy after treating me like shit. And I can’t do anything about it.”
“You’re a bigger person than he is,” says RTT glibly. “You’re noble.”
Only I’m not. And my head is reeling now with the utter unfairness of the situation – why should his guilty secret be safe with me? I could tell her everything – but of course her loyalty would not be to me. Would she throw him out if she knew how he’d behaved? Probably not – it would just turn her into what I’d been all those years, a knowing, possibly self-loathing co-conspirator in his bad behavior.
Fucking unfair. Unfair, unfair, unfair.
Been utterly brain dead since I finished the Legal Masterpiece. Forty thousand words in 37 days – is that a lot? I’m so brain dead I can’t really tell. The project was quite fascinating right up to the final chapter which was all about international Internet law about which I know nothing.
For two days I sat in the little cement bungalow, weeping hysterically and pushing out that final chapter. Not sure why I was crying – all I could think is that at a certain point when you’re writing to meet a deadline, the words stop making sense; all you can do is depend on your craft , trust that somehow, instinctively. your typing hands will bypass the brain to churn out dependable prose. It’s kind of like being ridden in the Haitian voodoo zombie sense of the word. Not fun.
(Plot to a good fantasy story lurking there somewhere, a world in which Little, Brown and Company want a sequel to Catcher In the Rye and rather than commission a writer, hire a medium who can channel J.D. Salinger.)
Would I do ghostwrite again? But, of course – only I would charge more. A lot more.
In other news, B and I have been seeing rather a lot of each other. We’re getting along better now than we were the last five years we were married. Every once in a while I get angsty about it – but I realize this has more to do with my own abandonment issues than it does with him.
Only yesterday was one of those times.
B had come over for breakfast, we had a long conversation about the tuberculosis sanitarium at Saranac Lake – doesn’t sound sexy to you but for me hubba, hubba. Plus, you know, this has been the longest interval I’ve gone without sex since I started having it, and I’m really horny.
That afternoon I wrote to the Girlfriend again. This time at her office:
Hi Girlfriend,
Forgive me for writing you at yr workplace -- yes, it DOES seem a bit like stalking now that you mention it :-)
She wrote back promptly:
Actually, I am glad to hear from you. I am also glad to know you would like to meet. I completely agree that it is important to get to know the people who are in our kids’ lives. It makes things less burdensome for everyone, especially Robin.
How do you perform personality analysis on an email? Clearly she doesn’t like contractions. And “burdensome” is always an interesting adjective.
But hey! We might end up liking each other. Stranger things have happened.
Braved the snowflakes and drove into town for my tutoring session which has become the high point of my week. Rubén works for a farm that produces fois grasse – we discussed the politics of that for an hour or so, way to generate vocabulary lists!
Picked up RTT for the ride back up the hill.
“So Robin,” I say with forced casualness, “you were saying this morning that you wanted to buy Jayne a Christmas present. Do you want to swing by Wegman’s and pick up some hard candy? Ben says she likes that.”
“Some other time,” says Robin, texting furiously to his friends.
“I’m going to meet Jayne next week,” I say.
This is enough to get him to put his phone down. “You are?” he says.
“Uh huh. Seems like a reasonable thing to do. Things are weird the way they are.”
RTT digests this. “Are you going to put up a Christmas tree?”
I sigh. I always put up a Christmas tree. But this year, with all my ornaments in California and a real dearth of what one might call holiday spirit – never my strong point in any year if I’m being perfectly honest. I did it for the kids.
“Dad has a Christmas tree,” says Robin.
“He does?” And this cuts me to the heart somehow. Only the day before I’d asked Ben, “So what are you getting Jayne for Christmas?”
And he’d snapped, “Nothing! I don’t have any money.”
“That’s horrible! You don’t have to spend a lot of money on a gift. You know the old saying, ‘It’s the thought that counts?’ Well, it’s actually true –“
That morning when he came over he had two gifts for me (“From Robin,” “From Meezer”) and RTT said, “He bought a drum for Jayne –“
“A drum,” I said? “Is she into drumming?”
“It’s a little drum,” said Ben. “I just thought it was cool.”
And she’s so adoring, no doubt she’ll agree. Although that wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when I’d said, “It’s the thought that counts.”
So the Girlfriend owes her Christmas present to me, me, me, me!
But they have a tree! I hadn’t expected that.
“Do they have lights too?” I ask.
“Uh huh. You were going to put up lights,” RTT says accusingly.
And I was. But I didn’t.
“Mom,” says Robin seriously. “Don’t blow things for Dad.”
“Blow things for Dad?”
“Well, I mean, if you tell her what he’s done, she’ll probably kick him out. The way he behaved.”
I consider this. “Well, I wasn’t going to tell her what he’s done. It’s ancient history at this point. The emphasis now is on getting along in the future. But do you think he did bad things?”
“Sure,” mutters RTT. He’s fingering the phone longingly.
“He treated me badly.”
“Yeah.”
“That seems very unfair to me,” I say. “He gets to be happy after treating me like shit. And I can’t do anything about it.”
“You’re a bigger person than he is,” says RTT glibly. “You’re noble.”
Only I’m not. And my head is reeling now with the utter unfairness of the situation – why should his guilty secret be safe with me? I could tell her everything – but of course her loyalty would not be to me. Would she throw him out if she knew how he’d behaved? Probably not – it would just turn her into what I’d been all those years, a knowing, possibly self-loathing co-conspirator in his bad behavior.
Fucking unfair. Unfair, unfair, unfair.
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Date: 2010-12-22 03:30 pm (UTC)http://mallorys-camera.livejournal.com/340803.html
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