I bailed.

Yep, I’m a weenie. Either that, or acutely wise to the ways of my body, which clearly does not tolerate vegetables, particularly in a most vile liquid form…

I couldn’t last a wimp-ish 12 hours. My gag reflex was failing me. With each 3-hour “meal” of yet more veggie juice it became worse. I knew when I was attempting to ingest what was euphemistically dubbed “gazpacho” juice, which tasted more like swamp mud, I was in trouble. After attempting to infuse more fruit in an earlier batch to mask the inevitable verdancy of my juice, only to realize it only made the concoction more visually murky (even less appetizing to observe), and completely failed to enhance the flavor, I was downright giddy when we stumbled upon the gazpacho recipe. I could handle cold vegetable soup! The main ingredient was tomatoes! My fruity friend of the veggie world!

But ugh, the end result of my tomato, carrot, parsley (2 cups!!!), celery, pepper, and red onion juice surprise was that the joke was on me. As I attempted my first sip, my son standing just two feet from me, I paused, juice settling in my mouth like an unwelcome houseguest that won’t leave. I proactively plugged my nose in an unsuccessful attempt to mask the rank odor. I knew then and there if I didn’t employ an Oscar-worthy effort of mind over matter, I would soon spew the intestinal-discharge-colored liquid all over my wonderful child.

I had to keep it together for the sake of dignity (not to mention common courtesy). But I also knew that I could no longer pretend I’d get used to this. Rather I found vindication in admitting it was getting worse. Instead of drinking veggie juice as part of this collaborative family juice fast, I’d simply not eat rather than attempt any more adventuresome juice combos. After trying five different variations, I felt like I gave it the old college try.

By dinnertime, I was certain a cement truck had rumbled down my gullet and set up a construction project in my stomach, every now and then launching that rolling barrel belly just to remind me of my digestive misery, as if the lump of death piling up in there wasn’t enough of a constant reminder. Constipation has nothing on complete arrestation of forward motility that seemed to plague me. I can only imagine an H-bomb of toxic gases was building up in my stomach, with no solid food to propel whatever I was ingesting through the digestive process. One would have thought liquid-in equalled liquid-out. Clearly it’s a more complex math computation when it comes to veggie juice.

To make matters worse, I fear I can never drink a Bloody Mary the rest of my life, what with it’s V8-like ingredient list being too comparable to the near-spewn gazpacho.

By nightfall, the mere smell of juicing was sending me to another room, the aroma so reminiscent of the flavor I couldn’t bear to inhale it. But with an open floor plan in my house, escape was impossible. Our enthusiastically-commenced compost pile — now a trash can probably weighing about 50 pounds with the spoils of juicing — wafts its putrid contents throughout the kitchen at all hours. About that weighty compost pile: it sure is staggering what fiber weighs! No wonder I’m so heavy! No doubt it’s all that fiber I usually ingest…heh…

I admit to almost being a bit jealous of our dogs’ excitement toward dinner on Saturday night: their meal was probably far more delectable than was mine. You know things suck when dog food sounds good.

And that headache I’d been nursing since midday in the fast? By Saturday night it felt as if The Massey Corporation was fracking for natural gas in my brain.

I admit a flood of relief washed over me when I awoke in the middle of the night and realized I wasn’t doomed to face a 24/7 veggie juice fast the next day (or the subsequent 8 that would have followed). Lame of me, I know. But I was elated. While on the juice fast, everything I was ingesting was earthen, and I discovered how much a fan of earthen flavoring I am not. Beets in juice taste like dirt (which admittedly is at least better than the vomitrocious flavor they impart intact). Greens tasted like, well, pastures. And not in a good way. A lot of veggies simply tasted of compost. Not like I’ve ever eaten compost, but I’ve smelled it, and believe me there is a direct correlation. Veggie juice tastes as if you are munching your way through Tarzan’s jungle. Minus the munching action.

Of course now I’m left with the guilt of failing my daughter. And the disappointment of my family for not hanging in, not to mention the shame of not being able to tough it out for even a full 24 hours.

In deference to those who can tough it out around here, I’m left to sneak around the kitchen at mealtimes like a junky slinking around dark alleys and crack houses in search of the next fix. I gingerly open and close the microwave door so as to not betray my food betrayal, willing the inevitable timer beep to shut the ever living fuck up. I prep food quietly and in solitude. Last night I ate in the butlers pantry (since I have no butler, at least I’m making use of the space). I hang my head in shame (while actually cloaked in a blanket of sheer relief) as I prepare my morning cappuccino.

Concessions? I really wanted to whip up a Sunday morning omelet, and I actually craved the aroma of frying bacon yesterday, but in deference to my family’s sacrifices and my sheer, unadulterated loser status, I couldn’t reward myself with that breakfast prize. Maybe I’ll work my way through the fruit stockpile assembled for juicing — I have a large share of responsibility to the farm’s worth of veggies sitting in my garage; after all it was my idea to undertake this solidarity juice fast in the first place.

The bummer is I’m now finding that fruits I once loved are completely repulsive, instead only harkening back to the flavor of them combined with juiced kale. Blech.

Yeah, I feel like I let everyone down, to a certain extent. But like a friend said to me, “Juicing’s not for everyone.” Indeed, I can attest to that.

I’m reminded of an old Lays potato chip commercial “I tried, but I couldn’t do it”…

Perhaps had it been a potato chip diet I’d have had a fighting chance (with french onion dip, natch).

I will not quit I will not quit I will not quit…

This has become my mantra today, Day One of the Great Reboot, undertaken in solidarity with my daughter, who has had to begin a vegan juice fast for some stomach problems she’s been dealing with.

My daughter is already a vegetarian, so the idea of a straight-up veggie liquid diet ought not to be so foreign to her, though it is. She likes her veggies in a chewable state, thank you, and isn’t thrilled with this whole juicing mandate, which his why our family decided to support her cause by joining along.

Me? Well, I hate vegetables. I was weaned on Froot Loops and it was only downhill from there as far as my nutritional intake from the get-go. I grew up on a steady diet of Fluffernutter sandwiches and Twinkies and processed garbage that tasted not too shabby, if I do say so myself. Sure I ate fruit here and there. Usually in the summer when peaches and plums were in season. But veggies? No way, man.

It wasn’t until adulthood that I gradually incorporated a handful of vegetables into my annual diet repertoire. Yeah, you read that right: annual. Not like veggies are a daily part of my life anyhow. I’m exaggerating a bit — I do consume vegetables, but not often. With the ironic twist that I’m all about the Buy Local food movement, and buy local produce as much as possible. Mostly for my family.

I mean I’ll eat a salad if someone else makes it and it’s super gourmet. And contains things like nuts and dried fruit and goat cheese and artisanal croutons and homemade dressing. Now that’s my kinda salad. And I pick around all of the vegetables in it and mostly eat the add-ons. I’m fine with a veggie platter as long as it’s really fresh and it has a homemade ranch yogurt dip in which to drown said veggies. Throw in the occasional asparagus, maybe a mushroom or two (only if they’re fresh white button mushrooms), perhaps a sugar snap pea (the operative word there being sugar), and well, you’ve got the extent of vegetables I can tolerate. In fact most of the “vegetables” I find palatable are technically fruit, anyhow (tomatoes and peppers, for instance).

So you can imagine me trying to fathom undertaking a vegan juice fast. Might as well insert the true name: starvation diet. Alas, as explained by my daughter’s doctor, you have to keep your grehlin levels on an even keel, which means starvation isn’t an option, because it will defeat the whole idea of a juice fast. So avoiding vegetables as a means of this juice fast is not an option, darn it.

What, you may ask, is the idea behind a juice fast? Um, hell if I know. I’ll get back to you on that one. Okay, I lied. Basically the plan for your average Joe is to detox, get rid of all that crap and sludge that builds up in your system. Cleanse the liver and whatnot (note to self: no need to make matters worse with that liver by overconsuming delicious red wine on the eve of said juice fast. Of course my liver’s still trying to process that bad Advil I popped at 4 a.m…).

In addition, it can give your stomach a rest if you’re having trouble digesting solids. And by juicing you are piling on the nutritional value of plates full of vegetables, with every glass you drink, while enjoying the benefits of micronutrients or some such gobbledy gook I’ve been told. You’d be hard-pressed to ingest the normal way the amount of vegetables that you’ll consume in a juice fast. Check out the obscene volume of produce we had to purchase for four of us to fast — and this is just for the next several days.

I have a friend who undertook a juice fast last year and became downright evangelical about the benefits of juicing. She’s already one of those age-defying, gravity-defying women who you want to just assume has amazing genes, because most people her age look her age, yet she looks a good five years younger than me and she’s got a decade on me. She’s been a great source of encouragement and a wonderful resource for information. Shame she can’t also just drink my juices for me, since she loves them and I, well, I just don’t.

Which brings me to my first encounter with juicing today. Until now I have used one of those old-fashioned juice presses to squeeze delicious blood-orange juice, which I incorporate into my morning smoothie. That smoothie I thought was so healthy for me, what with mounds of berries and greek yogurt (all that protein!) and protein powder to boot. With fresh-squeezed blood orange juice. But evidently that’s nothing on plunking an orange, skin and all, into the juicer and consuming what comes out. Unfortunately mixed with all sorts of less-desirable greenery.

So breakfast today consisted of a bunch of kale (that’s about 14 leaves), a half head of romaine lettuce, a host of carrots (probably about 8), a cucumber, a lemon, and about 1/2-inch piece of ginger root. I will tell you never once in my life has kale (or any other healthy green, for that matter) passed my lips. I’ve probably eaten about 10 carrots in my whole life, and hated each bite. Cukes? I can deal with them in small quantities in salads. I mean they’re practically tasteless. I do love them in tzatsiki dip, if that counts (which is primarily simply a vehicle for the pita bread, which is what I really want). It was fun watching all those veggies transform into a bright green juice. It was not fun putting that juice to my mouth and knowing it had to go in. And down. While ensuring no return visit.

(Click here to see how that first glass went down)

I tried the first sip cold turkey. It was not delightful. I even put it in a martini glass to make it more festive. The thing is I couldn’t fool myself. It was green juice. I felt like I was on a goat diet. And I don’t mean a diet of eating goats but rather a diet of eating what goats eat. Actually goats probably have it better because they’ll eat the occasional shoe. Plugging my nose helped somewhat but there is always still that moment when you can’t run from the flavor a minute longer. And that’s the moment when you have to gulp and gulp fast, just get it down there, away from the taste buds, and have it start doing it’s thing.

As far as it’s thing? I’m not convinced of that yet.

“Your skin will look great!” Said the doctor (and others have corroborated this allegation).

“You’ll feel so energetic!” Says my friend. She is awfully energetic. I still chalk it up to genetics for her.

“You’ll lose weight!” Claims Joe What’s-His-Name, creator of the inspirational documentary Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead (more about that in a minute).

Right now I have a headache drilling through the center of my skull. My stomach is growling like an angry wildcat. I feel weak and woozy and just screamed at the dog for barking. I’m that surly that I can’t even let the poor dog do what a poor dog does. Ten days from now looks like eternity as I face the prospect of what the hell I can juice without dry heaving?

For me, food is such an integral part of daily life: the shopping, the preparation, the meal, the conversation, the communality that comes with it, the whole thing. So to have fueling one’s body being boiled down to its essence: i.e. stuffing a slew (and I do mean a slew) of veggies down the throat of a juicer and throwing back the end result as quickly as possibly just to get it over with, well, it sort of takes a bit of fun out of the day.

To make matters worse, already I find myself hand-washing dishes out the wazoo: bowls and cups and strainers and knives and cutting boards and all the receptacles that go into the production of a measly bucket of juice have to be re-used frequently all day long, especially when there are four of us juicing. My daughter who is away at college is grateful she’s off-the-hook for this one, happily ingesting dorm food (oxymoron, I know). “Well, looks like I’m not coming home till you’re done with this!” She said. You go right ahead and enjoy that dorm food. Which is going to start sound downright tasty before I know it. Grrrr.

My teeth are lonely and bored. They’re waiting for their chance to get to work. And they’re not gonna get it for a good long while. I wonder if bubble gum counts in a juice fast?

I swear to God my burps taste like meadows. My friend said, “Let’s hope you don’t leave behind meadow muffins!” I second that. I can’t fathom ingesting enough calories this way for that to be a worry.

My juicing daughter says she now has more empathy for her rabbit–though at least he gets to eat things whole!

So far I’ve done two rounds of juice — which translates into about a whopping 16 ounces and it’s nearing 2 o’clock. I tried to make the second juice more user-friendly (i.e. upped the ante, fruit-wise). You can’t get too aggressive with fruit, or you’ll end up with a sugar high and a sugar crash, and insulin levels off the charts. There’s clearly a fine line in introducing sugars (via fruits) to cut the edge off the green. I’ll be working on that. My second juice consisted of: a stick of pineapple, a blood orange, a handful of kale, a half head of romaine lettuce, 6 carrots, a cucumber, an inch of ginger (too much!), some watercress, some mint, and the kitchen sink (well, practically). The ratio is supposed to be 25% fruit to 75% veg. My daughter and I object and wish to reverse that, though clearly we don’t get a vote in the matter. That said, fruit in the juicer isn’t like fruit juice: once you throw it in there with the rind and all, well, it just doesn’t taste spectacular. Or maybe it’s the added kale juice that’s the killjoy.

The irony is my husband and my son, neither of whom needs a juice fast, are totally loving it. My daughter and I, the food lovers in the group, are muscling through, like it or not. For her, it’s not an option: she has to in order to maintain enough nutrition to not need medical intervention. For me, I have to, primarily to have her back while she’s suffering through this process. Though I admit I could definitely use the weight-loss that sure as hell better happen in great volumes from this thing. I’ve admittedly been in food hangover mode from a 3-month long food bender thanks to extensive traveling and celebrating a landmark birthday, with holidays to top it off.

For my third juice of the day (and I’m at half as much consumed as I’m supposed to be — I’ve only had 24 ounces and should be double that), I came a bit too close to puking it all back up. My daughter cackled at me.

She shouted up to my son, “Did you hear that?”

“The retching?” he asked.

Clearly sound travels. Glad we’re all getting a laugh at my expense.

“Think of barium, Mom,” my daughter said, cheering me on with glass #3.

This in reference to the hideous chalky liquid one has to ingest by the gallon when having an Upper GI done. Swallowing barium is an unpleasant experience, to say the least. And it ranks a close second to this juice fast so far.

Even the dogs are averse to this thing. When my daughter dipped her finger in and gave it to the dog to lick, she backed away with a shudder. So clearly even dog food is preferable to this stuff to some of us…

My evangelizing juicing friend had told about the documentary Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead. About a very wealthy (and personable) Australian man who’d lived it up a bit much and was paying the price for it with a huge gut and autoimmune problems for which he was on permanent steroids. He decided to fly to the States and cross the country while on a 60-day juice fast, recording his experience while enlisting people along the way. When my daughters doctor also referred to it, I was more curious to watch it.

I’d contemplated joining her on her mandatory fast, though there was that niggling problem of hating veggies. It was kind of like I really want to run a marathon, but my bum knee won’t ever allow it. So I can’t control the marathon dilemma, but dammit, I could control the vegetable aversion. I think. I thought. I don’t know.

But once in on this thing (and with a vast stockpile of vegetables we have to plow through), I’m in on it for the long-haul. I just wish the long-haul could be a bit more pleasant….

In the big picture, I have to stay in it to provide moral support for my girl. That is what will force my hand, when the taste of this stuff gets me down.

A doctor on the documentary said “It’s about retraining your tastebuds.” But I’m wondering if they’ll simply become deadened to their misery. Hard to say. I’m seeking out recipes on their Reboot website, hoping I’ll hit upon something that is my jackpot juice. In the meantime, my face is really itchy. Could I be — horror of horrors — allergic to vegetables? Maybe it’s been my body’s way of avoiding them all these years, by making me hate them.

I’ll keep you posted.

 
Sleeping with Ward Cleaver

Slim to None

Anywhere But Here

Where the Heart Is

Winging It: A Memoir of Caring for a Vengeful Parrot Who’s Determined to Kill Me

Accidentally on Purpose (written as Erin Delany)

Compromising Positions (written as Erin Delany)

I’m Not the Biggest Bitch in this Relationship (I’m a contributor)

And these shorts:
Idol Worship: A Lost Week with the Weirdos and Wannabes at American Idol Auditions

The Gall of It All: And None of the Three F’s Rhymes with Duck

Naked Man On Main Street

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 find me on my website

Really, I did.

For years I would lament to my friends, family, agent, anyone who would listen to me about how annoyed I was with the vampire trend; like the subject matter of these novels, they simply would NOT die. Made me crazy that fabulous novels were being passed on by publishing houses while mountains of tripe were being published under the guise of a “literary” craze. Sure there were good vampire novels out there, but really? I’d bet the vast majority of them were mediocre drivel.

So I was meeting with my agent at a conference, bemoaning the finicky state of publishing, and jokingly mentioned an idea I had for a vampire novel, one I’d never write, because it was a ludicrous idea, so I figured it would be the thing publishing houses would go for (as opposed to the books I wanted to pitch but weren’t the ones pub houses were looking for).

“So you have this woman who is turned into a vampire by her cheating husband, who was turned into a vampire by someone he’d slept with,” I say with a laugh. “She then spends the rest of eternity trying to exact revenge on him for his betrayal. And it’ll be a funny book.”

I expected her to pat me on the knee and tell me to get back to writing a good book. But instead she said she liked the idea and thought it might have legs.

A week or so later, she tells me she had lunch with an editor who loved it and wanted to see pages. Pages of a book. One I hadn’t planned on and wasn’t planning on writing. So I got to work cranking out this non-novel of mine; I hunkered down and wrote and wrote and wrote. Got about 80 pages into it and slapped together a synopsis and sent it off to my agent, assuming that would be the last I’d heard of it.

Turns out the editor loved the partial I’d sent on, and she was taking it to ed board. Well, if you’ve been around the publishing business long enough you learn about ed board. It’s the gathering of insiders in a publishing house who either green light or kill your dream. Long gone are the days in which ed boards embraced risky books, or different books or anything but for what seems like something penned by the reality TV celebrity du jour, who doesn’t actually write the thing anyhow but goes on a huge national tour earning gobs of cash while flacking their lousy book that no one with a modicum of self respect ought to even purchase, let alone read. Okay, off my soap box.

Anyhow, after the economy tanked and the publishing industry lost its last ounce of true soul, it became damn near impossible to find consensus on a whole lot of books, particularly in women’s fiction, which at the time was a hard sell on a good day anyhow. So when my book went to ed board with an editor who loved it and really pushed for it, I still figured it had a minimal chance of getting the thumbs up. And sure enough, apparently the editor in chief or the publisher or someone all-powerful in this ed board determined that humor in these kinds of books either works or it doesn’t work and they weren’t going to chance it. Thus driving a stake in the heart of my vampire-novel-that-wouldn’t-be.

My agent shopped it around a little bit more, found another editor who apparently really liked it but then she quit the business a week later. By then the genre had finally, finally died. Just in time for me to try to break into it. (This tends to happen with me–give me a genre and I’ll kill it in a day flat; certainly worked well with chick lit).

Since then, my novel has been collecting dust in the far corners of my computer. I’ve entertained the idea of finishing it and publishing it myself, but really have just been too busy with other things to get around to it. So I figured I’d throw this up as my trunk novel and get your read on what you think of it. Should I keep this vampire hermetically sealed with garlic cloves and silver stakes in my laptop dead file that should be re-named “The Graveyard”? Or should I resurrect this monster and give it a new life on your e-reader of choice? You decide…

It all started innocently enough. Well, as innocently as these things can start, anyhow. And perhaps I wasn’t entirely guiltless, if only because I succumbed to that most human of conditions: lust.

Although it wasn’t the lust that killed my marriage. That came later. The demise of our union came courtesy of my execrable, lamentable and most deplorable husband, who decided to spring upon me an unexpected midlife crisis, in which he was overtaken by the entirely selfish urge to sow some wild oats. Or barley. Or grass seed, for all I know. For that matter I didn’t know much of anything. All I did know was that that fucker dumped me. High and dry. While I was doing a load of his whites.

“I’m not feeling fulfilled,” he’d said to me that day as I sorted the more stained clothes from the hamper into a separate pile.

“Fulfilled?” I asked, not even looking up as I un-mated yet another pair of his soggy gym socks (why he re-rolled dirty socks was always a mystery to me). I thought he was talking about a dearth of intellectual stimulation in his life. “Take a class or something.”

Jude toed the ground in front of him with his black-soled sensible accountant shoes, scuffing the freshly-polished hardwoods of my sparkling laundry room. I’ve always felt that a laundry room is a reflection of the rest of one’s life and my laundry room floor was clean enough to lick. Not that my life was particularly lickable, but you know what I mean.

I leaned over with a spray bottle of Murphy’s Oil Soap, always at the ready, and pumped two squirts at the offending marks, wiping them clean with a pair of his BVDs that were awaiting a bleaching.

“Are those my Calvin Kleins?” he asked, grabbing them from me, glaring at the brownish Murphy splotch right on the butt of the things. I suppose if that didn’t come out in the wash it could cause some embarrassment. But then again who would see them but me, anyhow?

“No worries. They’re going in the wash for a good soak, so I thought I’d just save myself having to clean a dirty rag.”

I suppose it should have been a red flag that the underwear in question was of the designer variety, and that he even knew that they were. Until a few months ago I could buy Jude’s tightie whities in bulk at Costco and he’d have only praised me for my thrift. But at age forty-five, his seeking out designer drawers should have been the first of my indicators that our relationship had gone awry.

“Look, Marina, I don’t appreciate you using my Calvin Kleins as a dishrag.”

“In case you hadn’t noticed, there are no dishes here. Besides, I didn’t use your underwear for anything more than wiping up your scuff.” I pointed to the ground for emphasis.

Jude put his hands in his pockets and looked toward the doorway, sighing, his shoulders actually slumping as if I’d tossed a hefty sack of potatoes over each one.

“I need some space. Some time away. I’m not happy.”

I stopped in mid-sort and stared at him, trying to peer into what I then realized was quite a blank face, one masked with apathy.

“Just because I used your tight whites to wipe up some dirt off the floor?”

“They’re not tight whites. They’re boxer-briefs.”

Oh, my god. Boxer briefs. Twenty years of marriage, dissolved over a semantic disagreement about a pair of undies. I began to wring my hands, stammering to find the right words to come out. But what could I say? One minute I was just attending to my household obligations and the next I was being kicked to the curb.

“Look,” he said, his usually pleasant face contorted in such a way that he appeared as if he was torn between trying to apologize for being a dick and thrilled that he’d finally come out and said it — his inner demons plying his visage like a glob of silly putty. “I’m sorry. I tried to fight it. Really I did. I just need to work some things out.”

“Things? What sort of things?” I sobbed, spritzing some Windex on the surface of the washing machine to clean up the liquid Tide that had dribbled there. “Or is it some woman named ‘Thing’?”

He shook his head back and forth. “No, there is no thing. Well, there are things. But no Thing. Does that make sense?”

“Of course it makes no sense. You’re not making sense.”

Jude buried his face in his hands. “It’s bigger than me. You simply have to believe me when I say this. It’s out of my hands.”

With that, he turned and walked away, striding through the kitchen and out the garage door as if he was late for a doctor’s appointment, with only these parting words, “I’ll make sure you’re taken care of, you know. I don’t want you to think I’m a complete asshole.”

As if.

But it goes without saying that when you’ve been married for two decades and you have gratuitous sex on a somewhat regular basis for half your life and then wham!, you aren’t having any at all, well you might just overlook your better judgment when that green-eyed horntoad comes hop-hop-hopping along. I hadn’t gotten laid in several months; a girl can only take but so much deprivation.

So how was I to know it was going to be a huge mistake? And not just shit, I wish I’d bought those fabulous shoes on sale at Nordstrom’s last week huge, but oh crap, it’s the end of the world as I know it huge. As far as mistakes go, this was of the A-bomb variety.

Jude had come by to drop off a support check. It was the least he could do after everything. Bad enough he abandoned me and our lives, but to do so and leave me with no cash to pay the bills and the mortgage, well that would be entirely unseemly and Jude was nothing if not seemly when it came to finances. What more could you expect from a CPA?

I’d already poured myself a second glass of wine (having tossed one down my gullet in anticipation of his arrival) so I didn’t exactly notice Jude’s peculiarly cold stare and peaked countenance at first, the whites of his azure eyes a stippled with red. I thought maybe he was just tired, and I was plenty satisfied to see that his footloose lifestyle might not be agreeing with him so much. Hey, I know at this point in life carousing all night is not as easy as it once was.

I invited him to have a seat and I took my place to his right, expecting him to initiate conversation. I straightened a stack of magazines in front of me on the coffee table, then fanned them out, finally settling on a neat stack while awaiting a word from his pursed lips.

“What’s the matter  — cat got your tongue?” I finally asked him after a few long minutes of awkward silence. I know it seems weird that I’d even let the man into my house, all things considered, but I am a firm believer in trying to remain on speaking terms with one’s ex. Of course I never knew I’d have to practice what I preached in that regard, but now that I must is no time to drop one’s standards.

I grabbed another Waterford goblet (the pattern we’d registered for together at Bloomingdales all those many years ago) from the china closet to pour Jude a glass. I couldn’t have the man leaving me money without being somewhat polite toward him.

“Wine?” I asked.

His eyes lit up a little bit. “What do you have?”

“Red okay?”

He loosened his necktie, looking ravenous, as if he hadn’t had anything to eat or drink in days and my offering was going to solve that problem pronto.

“I’ve been dying for something red,” he said.

Of course I didn’t even think twice about it. Sometimes I could kill for something red myself. We talked for a little bit about this and thats, nothing important. I asked if he was doing his laundry fine and he said he’d found a woman in his apartment building who had offered to do it for him. Figures. Wonder if she’s staining his Calvin Kleins.

“What’s she getting in return?” I asked as I squinted a bit, afraid I could guess at the answer. He merely raised his eyebrows, but I swear I saw a passing glimpse of pain alight on his face. But just as quickly it dissipated, and he leaned back against the sofa, stretching his arms across while crossing one leg over the other.

“You look good, Marina,” he said, nodding up and down at me. I guess he liked my new red highlights.

I half-laughed a sort of sad, hollow laugh.

“No, seriously. Good enough to eat.” He reached across and tucked a finger beneath the strap of my pink camisole Hello Kitty! pajama top. I guess I had been looking a little better lately; a marital break-up has a way of helping a girl slim down in no time.

“But not good enough to see you through your crisis of self I suppose,” I said looking down at the ground. I couldn’t help but remain conflicted about the man. Part of me hated him down to his DNA and wanted to reach into his throat and extract his internal organs and splay them in front of his face, just to exact a bit of revenge. But the other part of me couldn’t get over what we’d once had. Up until a month ago I had loved this man and no other. I’d trusted him.

“I told you, Marina, I’m just trying to get my head on straight,” he said, running the fingers of his free hand through his wavy, black hair as if whatever was on his mind was paining him. Yet he continued to twirl the strap of my top.

We sipped some wine and talked about Bittsy, our black cat, a bit. So far Jude hadn’t made a play for custody of Bittsy, which was good. Because I’d no sooner give her up than I’d die for the man.

Jude wiped his lips after finishing off his glass of wine. I took a final sip of mine and a trickle of wine missed my mouth, trailing down my chin to my neck. Just as I was about to dab it away, Jude, always the chivalrous man, came to the rescue.

“Here, let me,” he said, and I fully expected him to blot the drip with his thumb. Instead he leaned forward and dragged his tongue from the base of my neck to just beneath my chin, then licked his lips for emphasis. It sent chills up my spine. Unfortunately not bad chills, either.

There was something eerily sensual about Jude that night. Like how a male stripper can be both a turn on and a turn off at the same time. Fact is, I’d never done it with someone as seductive (or forbidden) as a male stripper before, and for some reason the notion of illicit sex (or at that point, any sex) sounded so appealing.

“What was that for?” I panted out the question as if I’d just sprinted the hundred-yard dash.

“You know you can be terribly irresistible, Marina.”

Jude licked his lips again in an almost wolfish manner. Now, throughout the course of our marriage, the sex was fine, but it was never downright erotic. There was never once a moment when I felt the kind of thrill you might get, say, if you rob a bank. Not that that would thrill me, mind you. Yet here was my ex-husband, the ink barely dry on the divorce decree, heating up my libido with the mere trace of his tongue across lips?

I was trying to figure out what to say next when Jude took matters into his own hands. He grabbed the bottle of Merlot from the coffee table, and poured a splash down the center of my neck, into my cleavage. A small part of me was mentally shrieking “Why! I never!”  — what with the guaranteed wine stain on my pajama top (and don’t even remind me of the one on my dupioni silk divan). But an ever bigger part of me was in hubba-hubba mode, because I hadn’t ever driven a man to do something like that.

Before I knew what was happening Jude was atop me, licking me like a starving schnauzer that’s been given a bone coated in peanut butter. His hands were under my top before I could even protest (and at that point how could I?) and before I could do much more but surrender both of us were clawing at each other, hurling clothes as far away as the kitchen. I should’ve demanded a condom —what if he’d been sleeping with the laundry lady?— but foolishly discounted it (we’d given up worrying about pregnancy years ago, to my dismay).

“Marina, you make me do strange things,” Jude said as he entered me with far more force than I ever recall, yet far more passion as well, grabbing, groping, pulling, and nipping as he was.

“If this is what you call strange then I’m all for making it more familiar,” I said as I searched for his mouth, which seemed to be in a frenzy trying to stake his claim all over my body.

“Oh, my God,” Jude groaned with one final thrust as his hungry mouth came down along the column of my neck.

“Oh, sweet Jesus,” I screamed as I felt as if a staple gun had just punctured my throat. “What the fuck are you doing?”

For a moment all I could hear was panting, his and mine intermingled, but mine more with fear, his more with what seemed to be repletion. As Jude finally released his grip on my neck, I reached to feel what the branding iron pain was from, and my fingers came away smeared with blood.

I pushed Jude off of me and sat up, naked, trembling. ”What the hell is wrong with you? You hurt me!”

“Oh, shit.” He wiped away a trickle of blood from his lips then rolled off of me and groaned, first quietly, but then louder and louder until he was screaming. “Oh God! How could I have done that?”

“Done what?” He was really scaring me. First with that bite that came out of nowhere and then this, as if he’d unleashed the Hounds of Hell on me and now regretted it.

I looked closely at his face and saw that his pallor seemed to have perked up. He almost glowed with good health.

“Have you done something that will get you into trouble?” I ask, rubbing my neck, which hurt like a sonofabitch.

Jude stood up and began to pace, muttering inaudibles over and over again, dragging his fingers through his hair as if raking up a leaf-strewn yard.

“Marina, you’d better sit down.”

Considering I already was sitting down  — stark naked, I might add — that was hardly sage advice. I had this feeling come over me, a really bad feeling. Like when my mother broke the news to me that my father was dying of cancer. Somehow I must have sensed that whatever Jude was about to say was going to throw my world into upheaval.

Jude was pacing like a convict awaiting the executioner, and deliberately not making eye contact with me. Naked pacing ought to be considered an obvious sign of trouble ahead.

“Now what I’m about to say you’re not going to like,” he started out. And by phrasing things that way he assured himself that I’d be unhappy with it. By then I’d grabbed a dishtowel to blot the blood from that bizarre little love bite of his. Whatever was up with that I figured I’d never know.

“You’re giving me the creeps, Jude. Just get on with it.”

Jude sat on the coffee table, facing me, then stood up again, pacing some more, his dangly bits flapping around like a semaphore warning.

“Christ, Jude, the floor’s going to catch fire if you don’t stop making so much friction on it. Okay, okay, I get the hint. You regret having slept with me. I can deal with it. To tell you the truth I only did it because I was horny anyhow—”

“You only slept with me because you were horny?”

I gave him a “no duh” look, rolling my eyes.

“But—“ 

He began to knead his face with his hands. 

“When I said I had to leave you it wasn’t because I didn’t love you, Marina,” he said. “It was because something happened. Something horrible happened.” 

I just stared at him, not sure whether I should call 9-1-1 or push him out the door.

“I met a woman. And I’ll admit, she was beautiful. Blonde, stacked. She had an amazing ass.”

“Cut to the chase. I don’t need to hear about your infidelities at this point. We’re divorced, now, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

Talk about tacky, fresh after hooking up with your ex, chatting about a booty call with another woman.

“No, but see, I didn’t want to be unfaithful. Sure, I didn’t mind looking at her. I mean she was a knockout. I’ll admit she got my blood stirring. God, that wasn’t well-phrased. Let’s take that back. So maybe she inspired some thoughts in me. But I loved — love — you, Marina.”

“Don’t talk about love with me, Jude. I’m the one who loved you and look what you did to that.”

“But that’s what I’m getting at. I had to leave you. And it’s because of this woman. I met her through work. She came in one day, without an appointment, said she wanted to meet with me. I told her to talk to DeeDee about setting up a time. She did, but in the meantime she followed me after work one day—she seemed so insistent about this. Claimed she needed an accountant for a business that had been in the family for many generations. Wanted to meet over drinks to discuss what she needed from me. I was going to tell her to just stick with her appointment but she begged me.”

“Since when did you succumb to a woman begging you?” Jude was not your average bird dog when it came to women. I can’t remember him even watching another gal in my presence.

He put his finger to his lips; I shut up and let him continue. “Finally I relented and told her we could meet for a drink. I met her at Q Bar, the one we went to for your birthday last year.”

“You took her to my birthday bar?”

“I didn’t take her — I was just meeting her there. I was a few minutes late and she was drumming her fingers on the bar, looking most impatient. Once we sat down to talk, I realized there was something about her, something eerily mesmerizing. I couldn’t keep my eyes off her, like I had no control over myself. Sure I stared at her. Who can look at a Da Vinci without an appreciative eye?”

“Are you trying to piss me off?”

“I’m just saying. But I soon realized the more I tried to look away from her, the more she fixed her gaze on mine, pinning her focus on me so precisely it was like a laser beam being used to hone in on its target. I couldn’t do a thing about it. Before I knew what was happening, we were in an alley behind Chili’s and she had her hand on my—“ 

“I told you I don’t want to hear about your dalliances, Jude.” 

“But it’s relevant information,” he said. “Now, where was I? Oh, yeah, she had her hand on my crotch and even though I knew in my heart it was wrong, I couldn’t help myself, babe.” 

“Don’t babe me.” 

“Honestly I couldn’t help it. And then I was pushing up her skirt and she was tugging down my pants and somehow deep down in my gut I felt certain I was going to be having the best sex of my life when she opened her mouth wide, wide like a snake about to eat something ten times its size, and then she clamped down on my neck and I felt this pain, like someone had—”

“Shot a staple gun in your neck,” I said, my whole body beginning to tremble.

“I didn’t know what had happened at first,” Jude continued. “I looked over at this woman and she looked as if someone had just infused her with sunshine, she practically glowed all of a sudden. And then I—”

“Reached down and felt your neck—”

“And it was warm and wet—”

“And when you took your hand away—“

 ”There. Was—”

“Blood.”

I was shaking, the sort of 7.0-on-the-Richter scale tremors that happen when you’re coming out of anesthesia following surgery. I wanted a warm hospital blanket and a soothing nurse at that very moment to calm me, to tell me I was all right. For that matter I’d have been much happier to realize I’d emerged from mere surgery with a simple organ removed, rather than my entire future excised without having even signed a consent form.

“Before I could find anything more about this woman, she was gone. The only thing I had left with the slightest hint about her was a web address she’d given me:

“I thought it was her business website, so I looked it up, but there was nothing there. Nothing. Then when I typed in the word sanguine, I hit the jackpot. Well, jackpot in a bad way. I realized then what had happened.”

By that time I’d grabbed the wedding afghan that my Aunt Bertie had crocheted for me, her twelfth niece, and wrapped myself , mummy-like, with it. I didn’t particularly like the thing, but always felt so badly that poor Aunt Bertie died a spinster and I knew someone had to appreciate her handiwork, even if it did catch fingers and toes if you tried to sleep with it. And was the color of — oh, God — dried blood. 

“I still hadn’t fully embraced what had happened. I mean, yeah, I’ve watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But that was just television. I knew there was nothing like this in real life. Surely this was just some insane woman who had a really creepy fetish.”

I was feeling especially lightheaded, the way you feel after you’ve given blood. Only no one was nearby to hand me a cookie and a glass of orange juice. Oh, wait, I had given blood. Only not of my own volition. I still hadn’t the energy to say much of anything, so I sat back and listened, staring as if in a trance. 

“I knew I’d done everything wrong. Everything. I mean, I had sex with this stranger. Even though I was married to you. And that was bad enough. But then, but then…” he trailed off and just sort of stood there, still naked, his shrunken willy looking about as forlorn as I think he was. “After I came home, I tried to research more about this. But everything I read kept coming back to the same thing. And as the days progressed, I began to feel weaker, I knew what I needed, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I mean what was I going to do, go down to the local blood bank and ask to make a withdrawal?” 

At that my stomach began to lurch, like a very flat tire trying to progress down the road. Flop, flop, flop. I could feel the wine and the Moo Goo Gai Pan I’d eaten an hour earlier (along with about four Chips Ahoys and a box of Jujubes) all vying against one another to be the first back up the chute. 

I raced to the nearest receptacle, my kitchen recycling bin, and heaved repeatedly. For the record, the Jujubes won. 

I stood up, my ugly vermillion afghan draped across me like Dracula’s cape — oh, God, no — and stared at my husband. My ex-husband.

“You mean to tell me you’ve fucking turned me into a vampire?” For a whisper of a moment, the amount of time it takes a hummingbird to flap its wings, I stood frozen in place. But then I surged forward, pounding my fists against Jude in rapid-fire motion, as fast as Phil Collins with a set of drumsticks.

“YOU FUCKING TURNED ME INTO A VAMPIRE??? You bastard!” I screamed, pounding with what felt like a bizarrely superhuman strength, as if I’d suddenly been imbued with invincibility, but realizing that it wasn’t even eliciting a flinch from the man. Beast. Whatever he was. Or I now am. “Everything!,” I shrieked. “Everything! I had everything ahead of me!” 

Well, maybe not everything, but I could have if I’d have wanted it.

“And now, just-just-just look at me—” I pointed at my chest. “Look at these!” My droopy middle-aged breasts were slumped across my torso like a broken spirit. 

“I kept meaning to make an appointment with a plastic surgeon to discuss fixing these puppies! Couldn’t you have at least waited till I’d gotten around to doing that? Now I’m stuck with sagging tits for all of eternity?” 

“I’m sorry, Marina, I tried to resist,” he said, letting out a sigh that seemed to reached to the bottom of the earth. “But when I saw you looking all sexy like that, what could I do? You know that all men think with their dicks. Why would I be an exception? Besides, I love your breasts just the way they are.” He reached over in an attempt to tweak one but I swatted him away immediately. 

“Sexy like what? I was sitting here minding my own business in my Hello Kitty! pajamas! You’ve got a hell of a lot of explaining to do.” 

Jude grabbed a throw pillow and plunked down on my burgundy leather Queen Anne (which would surely stick to his sweaty flesh. Unless vampire flesh has a Teflon quality to it I don’t know about). He at least had the decency to cover himself up with the pillow. 

“So the more I read about my dilemma—“ 

“Dilemma? Are you mad? Dilemma is trying to figure out how you’re going to get to work on time when you’re stuck in rush hour traffic—“ 

“Okay, fine, the more I read about my predicament, the more I realized it came with all sorts of, well, let’s say contraindications to our staying together.” 

“Contraindications? Now we’re cribbing from the pharmacy warning labels?” 

“Would you let me continue? This is hard enough, in case you hadn’t noticed.” 

“You just sucked blood from my neck, Jude. Like some greedy two hundred pound mosquito. You’ve apparently just made me immortal, for fuck’s sake — nothing I ever wanted, by the way. So don’t look for much sympathy from this corner of the peanut gallery.” 

He gave a subtle nod in my direction, meager acknowledgment for his transgressions if you ask me. “Anyhow. The longer I went without sustenance, the more I craved it. At first I was able to stave off the yearnings. I was eating steaks — rare — every day at lunch. But I soon discovered that steak alone wasn’t going to do the job. I had to go on the prowl.” 

“The prowl? Like some middle-aged Mr. Goodbar?” 

Jude rolled his eyes at me. “I was trying to protect you, Marina.” 

“Clearly that worked.” I glared at him. “So this is when the fancy underpants came into play?”

“They’re not underpants.”

“Whatever. So this is when you started dressing to, what, kill?”

Jude flinched at that. “I wasn’t trying to kill anyone. But I didn’t know what to do. And really, I didn’t exactly kill them. I just changed their natural state.”

“I’ll say. Like going from a state of ecstasy to the state penitentiary. Only this prison’s for all eternity.” Was it for eternity? I was trying to probe the recesses of my memory for some notion about vampire lore. I dressed as Dracula for Halloween once or twice, but I didn’t bone up on Drac’s habits for the occasion.

“So did you have extended hook-ups with women? Or did you just nab ‘em in the elevator and give ‘em the old one-two?” I made a hook and an uppercut with my arms, then looked over and saw the truth carved like wrinkles into his face. “You slept with them and you killed them?”

“I couldn’t help it, Marina,” he said. “And I didn’t kill them. I just—“ 

“I know what you just—“ 

“I was trying to preserve us. Honestly, I did this for you.”

“For me!!!” For about one more millisecond I was rendered speechless but then the tidal wave of fury beckons forth from my mouth -— that very mouth that is now going to have to find a taste for blood. With me, a vegetarian. Jesus. I’ve always been pretty good at math, but this sort of calculation doesn’t add up no matter how many ways I try to work the equation. 

“First you have sex with a strange, beautiful woman in a dark alley. Then you start cruising for new meat like some sort of, of, of cannibal, doing god knows what to get your fix, and now you’ve destroyed me, destroyed my life.” I pace the room back and forth like some nervous father-to-be awaiting a cigar and an It’s a Boy! declaration. “Jesus! My mother warned me about men! But did I listen? No. I told her you weren’t like other men. But she told me one day I’d know better. This is one time I wish my mother wasn’t right.

“It’s all making sense now,” I said, trying to feign calm while teetering on the edge of manic rage, a veritable cattle stampede of anger. “First the damned underwear. Then the steaks! You gave up red meat for me years ago. But then you started sneaking behind my back eating steak again. I thought I smelled blood in your sweat at the gym, dammit. Steaks. Now my life is going to be about steaks and stakes. Jesus, fuck. And you knew about my blood aversion. It’s why I didn’t go to med school. I can barely attend the annual Red Cross gala. And I practically faint at the sight of blood! Goddammit Jude, how could you? You know I’m not a night owl! And now I have to avoid daylight?? How the hell am I going to get a suntan? You tell me that. Christ, I should’ve known ex-sex would lead to no good. This is bad. On a bad scale with zero being a paper cut and a hundred being my dog got hit by a train, this is a bazillion on that bad scale. A bazillion, Jude, do you hear me? You’ve just sentenced me to an even worse fate than you because a) you betrayed your wife when you fucked some strange woman behind the Chili’s — and god, we don’t even eat at Chilis! — so you deserve this, and b) this is going to really put a kink in my life. How the hell do you expect a vegetarian hemophobe to survive as a vampire? You tell me that? Am I supposed to mug a blood courier? Cause I’ll never do what you just did to get by.” 

Jude grabbed another nearby blanket and wrapped it around his waist. “First off, I don’t know where you get the idea that somehow you’ll be afraid of gay people—“ 

I poked him in his forehead with my forefinger, wishing I had the power to make an actual indentation, a keepsake for him to remember what an ass he is. “I said hemophobe, not homophobe.” 

“It was a joke, Marina. Remember, we always love to joke together?”

“Joke’s on you, too, cause this is no laughing matter. Why’d you go and kill me, Jude? Did you hate me that much?”

“I didn’t kill you — I made you immortal!” 

“Whoo-hoo! I get to be immortal. With these!” I screamed, pointing again at my ta-ta’s. 

“But don’t you get it? It’s not about that stuff. It’s bigger than all of that. It’s about Us, with a big U. Us reuniting. Back together again. Maybe on some subconscious level I did this on purpose, because I wanted — I needed — to share my forever with you. Just think, now we can be together for all eternity.” 

“Me? Together with you?” I shrieked yet again. It seems that shrieking might well be a hallmark of vampirism. “For all eternity? Are you out of your fucking mind? You just killed me, and now you want me to be yours? Put it in a goddamned valentine.” 

I got up, supercharged with my newfound and roiling anger heaving like a stomach with a bad case of food poisoning. I stormed across the living room and kitchen, collecting bits of my ex-husband’s clothing, confetti that started out celebratory but now only served as a stale reminder of what wasn’t. I opened the fireplace screen, pulled the flue handle down, and piled his pants, shirt and shoes atop the andirons. I pulled the matchbox off the mantle, upon which was the last remaining picture of me and Jude together, which I grabbed and threw in with the rest, and lit the pile on fire. Jude came rushing over. 

“Marina! You can’t do that!” 

“Oh I think you broke the bank on can’t do that’s. I most certainly can, and watch me.” I blocked his body as I let the conflagration erupt, the soles of his shoes smoldering longer than the flash-fire cotton of his shirt. 

“My clothes. I need my clothes—“ 

“My life. I needed my life, and you snatched that right out from under me.”

“Honey, why don’t you just sleep on this, maybe you’ll see things clearer in the morning.”

“This isn’t like breaking up with my first boyfriend. Nothing will become clear in this picture. Now. GET OUT.” I wiped my hands against each other, as if erasing him from my existence. I grabbed a fireplace poker and skewered him in the butt, pushing him toward the front door.

“But Marina, honey, I love you.”

“Out!” I began hitting him, hoping he’d finally take the hint. As we made it to the doorway, enacting the very reverse of that newlywed tradition of the groom carrying the bride across the threshold, a flash of white caught my eye, and I reached down to spear what I saw.

“Don’t forget these,” I said, passing Jude his beloved Calvin Kleins on the spear tip of my fireplace poker. “I think you’re gonna need them.”

 ### 

Please check out my books that have been published!

Sleeping with Ward Cleaver

Slim to None

Anywhere But Here

Where the Heart Is

 

Winging It: A Memoir of Caring for a Vengeful Parrot Who’s Determined to Kill Me

Accidentally on Purpose (written as Erin Delany)

Compromising Positions (written as Erin Delany)

I’m Not the Biggest Bitch in this Relationship (I’m a contributor)

And these shorts:

Idol Worship: A Lost Week with the Weirdos and Wannabes at American Idol Auditions

The Gall of It All: And None of the Three F’s Rhymes with Duck

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find me on my website

I have a friend with a real eye for design—in another life she definitely would have been a fabulous interior decorator if not an engineer creating useful products for better functionality. Often she’ll stare hard at something, point a menacing finger toward the thing and say, “That was designed by a man.” She never means this as a compliment. Rather, she she thinks men tend to design for looks, not function. Including functional flow in houses, on boats, in products we use in our everyday lives. They may think they’re helping, but generally, it seems not (or so my friend contends; do direct your complaints her way, thank you!).

(I Googled “man made” images and this is what came up first!)

I remember years back when public bathrooms started being retrofitted for wheelchair accessibility. It was at about the same time that the salesman for the Giant Toilet Paper Roll Company clearly hit the sales jackpot, because it seemed you couldn’t stumble upon a public loo in the U.S. without a gargantuan roll of the stuff. Which from a male-designed standpoint made some sense: buy big, buy cheap, sure. Buy big, replace less often. Okay, I’m with you. But then the plans things went awry: someone (a male? One wonders…) established standards that seem to have been implemented nation-wide about where to position these mambo-rolls within the narrow confines of a bathroom stall. It had some vague connection to wheelchair accessibility, but I can promise you it had nothing to do with how those in a wheelchair would then be able to access the stuff.

I think it was all about avoiding the handle bar that is installed midway up the stall. So this rocket scientist had a choice: position the paper high, above the bar, or install the paper low. For some reason low made imminent sense (is this because they don’t use the stuff, thus don’t “get” the failed functionality test?). Thus, these mega-rolls are forever installed wayyyy downnnnn lowwwww, requiring the user to lean far to the left and back slightly or forward too much to then get her arm bent enough to be able to reach up into the roll canister to access the stubborn paper that is stuck therein. Once there, you must hard, but argh, you can’t, because some brainiac (perhaps an infrequent user of the product, like, say, a man!) decided it was going to be even cheaper (yay!) to make the paper one-ply (sometimes I think they’ve gotten it down to near zero-ply), so that if you try to pull it–and bear with me because there is physics involved in this and I fail miserably at science concepts–the weight of the 20-lb. roll of toilet paper (TP for short) precludes the ability for the ply-less paper from holding strong against the vigorous force of the pull.

(it seems Bessie the elephant has it easier in the loo than your average woman)

So the innocent bystander (or should I say sitter) in said stall is left, shall we say, holding the square. Because the paper is not going to come off but for sheet-by-miserable-sheet, while you bend over at an awkward angle (and dare I suggest that your average wheelchair-bound woman in a public restroom is likely ill-equipped to be lurching gymnastically leeward to do the TP-twist?).

To compound this dilemma, you have the auto-flush toilet (man designed? you decide…). I once was helping potty train a kid who was terrified of the auto-flush. Poor child burst into tears upon hearing the ominous rumbling of the oncoming flush, a locomotive coming down the tracks. Once, when attempted to help wipe said child, the power flush erupted after having to tilt the kid to one side, and the poor thing literally flipped into a forward roll off the toilet from fright. Leaving me—the one who always cracks up over the wrong things—to laugh till tears streamed down my face.

Okay, so how this fits in with this theme: when you are in the midst of the left-leaning swoop to try to clutch at the elusive weak-willed TP, you then move away from the omniscient laser-beam light that tells the pot it’s time to flush. So while you’re desperately grabbing for paper, that cursed thing is flushing. Again, and again, and again. Because after the first flush you instinctually sit upright to stop the thing from happening, but then darned if you don’t have to reaacchchhhh wayyyyy down to try to get that elusive paper.

Maybe the end-result of this design flaw issue is that women are less likely to use public bathrooms, an added bonus for the provider, who then saves in water usage (except when the auto-flush goes awry), paper consumption (because you can’t get to it and thus you give up even trying), and cleaning supplies (because no one is using it with the regularity of days gone by). Plus you save on all that toilet paper theft.

About that TP theft…I’m sorry! I did it! I was a stupid college student! What can I say?

Yes, I have a dirty little secret: I have to assume some of the blame in this TP quandary. I admit there were times when my college roommates and I would help ourselves to a spare roll or two from the dorm bathrooms and take them back to our apartment. On a college budget sometimes you had to choose between spending spare cash on beer or TP. I think you can guess which usually won the internal debate. I do remember being at a bar one night with three rolls tucked lumpily in my backpack. I have to concede that it would be downright impossible (not to mention awkward) to lug a 10-lb roll of that cheap paper in your backpack. Plus once you got it home, what would you do with it? You’d have to hammer a railroad stake into the wall and dangle the thing from it. (note to students: if you do so, please hang it high enough!).

I have absolutely no idea what this has to do with this blog post but it seemed like such a bizarre image I just had to include it!

Okay, so back to the design thing. I am a female. I know how to do this better. It’s actually quite logical. Put the mega-giant-gargantuan roll of toilet paper up HIGHER, people (i.e. men who have decided it should be as close to the floor tiles as humanly possible). We women will appreciate it, and I have to assume particularly those in wheelchairs will thank you as well. End of rant.

(I wish I’d made this cute cake but alas, I didn’t. found the pic on the internet)

My husband joined AARP. I told him it was a mistake, if for no other reason than a psychological one. Who wants to be lumped in the oldster crowd the minute you crest 50?

(I had to put this picture in–I googled “old man with walker” to pull up a picture of an old man with a walker and THIS is what it shows me?! So I’ll say this is me defying the old man with walker mentality

Now we get brochures in the mail for nursing homes, which is premature, for one thing. Plus, with this lame economy, don’t they know we’ll be sleeping on park benches by the time we actually need a nursing home? Although by then I envision gulag-style developments where all the broke, aged baby boomers who lost their retirement savings in the real estate bubble will be relegated to wither away during their twilight years, tooling around in half-broken wheelchairs over cracked failing pavement. How’s that for golden years?! If we’re lucky we’ll be housed in all of the default-loan houses that can’t sell because no one can afford to buy them because no one can get jobs because corporations are too busy stockpiling record earnings for the top 1% of their staff to bother hiring anyone else and creating jobs so people can afford to, um, live. Sorry, I got a little off-topic. Back to early aging (although I call dibs on a house in Miami if it comes to my prediction).
My girlfriend, now in her early 50′s, joined the senior’s tennis league because she can happily whip the butts of the much older gals. She thrilled to win and win handily this way, and she’s got a valid point there. So maybe acceding to age isn’t always a mistake–it can be gratifying.

(my friend would not appreciate this picture and what it suggests about older tennis players losing their, um, charms)

I enjoyed a brief phase as a tennis player (not a good one, just serviceable). I’d always wanted to flit about in a cute tennis skirt and the only way you can really get away with that is if you play the sport. So I did, until I kept getting injured and had to stop. So I had to give up my cute skirts. Now they have exercise skirts which I’d so love to don but as a keen observer of what does and does not work in gym wear, I recognize that a) you have to have a rockin’ body to wear exercise skirts and b) you can’t be my age and get away with wearing them unless you’ve run at least ten marathons in the past five years–it’s like a golden ticket pass.
Wise to the cuteness factor of tennis skirts, for years I tried to encourage my girls to play tennis but they would have nothing to do with it. “Think of the cute outfits!” I told them, but it fell on deaf ears. And then my youngest finally got her chance for adorable sportswear last year when she was recruited to pinch-hit for her varsity field hockey team when they needed a goalie. A long-time soccer goalie, she’d never played field hockey before, and I’d never seen a match before, so I naively thought, “At last, she’s going to have a cute uniform, those adorable little plaid skirts! Lucky her!” Imagine my surprise when I showed up at the game to see my daughter in goal looking like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, garbed as she was in boxy padding that essentially hid every hint of her existence. I was happy for her from a safety standpoint, but felt badly she got the short end of the uniform stick.

I saw an exercise skirt today that I really want (but will not succumb to, knowing that it’s the female equivalent of the very large guy on the show Modern Family wearing tight bicycle shorts–a big no no for all involved. My girls forever warn me not to look like that at the gym and I generally take heed. But this girl had on a skirt with back pleats that swished when she walked and darn it, I want to swish when I walk but then I realized I’m not a swisher, never have been, and nearing 50, it’s past the point at which I’m even allowed to swish. You have to recognize your limitations, I always say. But it also doesn’t mean I have to yield to my age and join the AARP, which I won’t, thank you. At least not till I can reap the benefits of the senior citizen discounts, maybe.
Last week my husband got a special gift from AARP. A leather-look vinyl man-purse. Just the thing he needed to complete the loser picture he signed up for. As if it’s not bad enough, it’s emblazoned with the AARP logo, just to seal the deal. I suppose at least it wasn’t a man-skirt.

I dunno, maybe I’m being unfair with this whole AARP thing. Perhaps it’s useful to get the inside scoop on the latest in retirement villages. Even if it is cruel, dangling fancy retirement homes in front of him, considering at this rate we’ll never even be able to sell our house, let alone retire. We might even have to turn it into a retirement apartment or something, at the rate the economy is going.
Jenny Gardiner is the author of the award-winning novel Sleeping with Ward Cleaver, as well as the novels Slim to None and Over the Falls, the novel House of Cards, and the humorous memoir Winging It: A Memoir of Caring for a Vengeful Parrot Who’s Determined to Kill Me. She also has a story in Wade Rouse’s upcoming humorous dog anthology I’m Not the Biggest Bitch in This Relationship (NAL/Sept ’11), a fundraiser for the Humane Society of the US and selected animal charities.

Plenty of you have found yourselves lately having to seek employment again. It’s a grim reflection of the times. And nothing’s quite so demoralizing as looking for work when there’s not much work to be found.

Over the past several months of job-searching I’ve run the gamut of disses: disgusted, discouraged, dismayed and disenfranchised. Frustrated that despite valuable skills built over a lifetime, I’m left undervalued in the marketplace.

But the more I delve into this job search thing, the more I realize that I’ve been viewing it all wrong. Rather than it being an experience to drag one down, it can be an adventure. Almost like a vacation (because who can afford one anyhow?), without leaving home. Consider it employing your vivid imagination to open yourself up to new (albeit perhaps unwanted) possibilities of who you can be.

Take my experience with Monster.com. After spending too much time filling out forms on the website in order for Monster’s algorithms to find the perfect career opportunity for me, I sat back and waited, trusting that their professional expertise would be put to good use. The next morning an email from Monster awaited me, with my future potential dream job listed on my screen: assistant manager at Spencer’s Gifts.

Now, for those who haven’t spent time lurking in dark corners of shopping malls, Spencer’s is the place you go to for puerile titillation, if you need, say, boob cubes (breast-shaped ice cube molds), or fake dog doo to fool your friends and neighbors. They traffic in schlock. A dream job for your average 14-year old boy, maybe. For me? Not so much.

Now at first, I was insulted by this career pitch, wondering who the jokester was sending me lowbrow job opportunities. Not that there’s anything wrong with the job, mind you, but it’s not exactly the place I imagined my skills would be put to best use. Plus there’s something unseemly about a middle-aged mom ringing up perverted products and re-stocking pop-up pecker lighters and blow-up love dolls.

Although I must admit I thought about trying to land the job, and then pitching a memoir to my literary agent about my year as a purveyor of raunch. Sadly it’s the kind of book that sells nowadays

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The next day, I got my trusty email from Monster, and realized their insult was nothing personal. Rather Monster hasn’t a clue. Because they suggested yet another job for which I was ill-suited: architect. I’m pretty sure it takes a bit of schooling to become an architect. Plus my mother used to always say to me (with the best of intentions), “Pity the person who has to drive over a bridge you built,” knowing as she did that a career as one who must build things safely was not meant to be in my future.

That suggestion was followed up by one that I apply for a lineman job. And curse them, because Glen Campbell crooning The Wichita Lineman has been stuck on an endless loop in my brain since I saw that listing. The thing is, I have no idea what a lineman is, other than the person who would climb up telephone poles to fix live wires, and with a morbid fear of heights—not to mention electrocution–no go there for moi.

Today Monster suggested I can be an occupational therapist, and once I figure out what that is, I’m pretty sure I’ll learn I needed to have studied something occupation-like in college to qualify. Although perhaps I need an occupational therapist to find work.

I gave up on Monster when they urged me to apply for a position as a senior in vitro neuroscientist/cellular electro physiologist. In Shanghai, no less.

Woe to the singles world if Monster was a dating service.

Craiglist lists a few vague jobs guaranteeing six-figure salaries, yet posts no information about the business. I think you have to meet them on a dark street corner at 3 a.m. to talk more about what they want. Another great career, killed before it began. I applied for a position in which I was then asked to send my credit record and bank information to complete strangers. I might be under-employed, but I’m not stupid.

I’ ve definitely been held back in my ability to exceed our imagination, job-wise, by living in a small town. I can’t fathom the fun job prospects available to shoot down if I lived in a major metropolitan area—maybe working a jackhammer atop a skyscraper, or being a nanny to Donald Trump’s daughter’s impending baby. In the meantime, closer to home, I’ll just have to pretend I can be a forensics fingerprint analyst, an airport ramp operator, a dog groomer, a postdoctoral research fellow, or a mattress deputy (don’t ask). Or the latest well-contemplated recommendation from Monster: driver of a Porta-John truck. I’m not kidding

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Granted, none of these rates high on the list of things I could or should do in my life, but hey, for a minute it’s fun to think I can truly do whatever I want. And actually get paid for it. Now there’s an idea whose time has come.

(just thought I’d add this: I found out about a job for which I was ideally qualified, and only then did I find out it was posted on Monster, but Monster failed to let me know….Go figure)

The thing is, I don’t not clean my house. I just rarely undertake the rigorous all-day effort required to have the whole place clean all at once. Maybe it’s because it only builds up smoldering resentment in me when everyone then comes home and ravages our home in a matter of minutes; or perhaps my psyche can take it better one meager clean-then-trashed room at a time. Or I OCD clean, which takes ten times as long (no hired housecleaner will devote hours to baseboard cleaning, and if I do that, by the time I work my way up days will have passed!).
We do sometimes have folks come to clean, when things get desperate. I’d love to have a regular housecleaner, but I think I might be too populist to have someone doing my dirty work for me all the time, like I feel as if I need to pitch in. I’d be fixing meals for the maid, donning my own pair of rubber gloves when done with that to help scrub things.

Don’t get me wrong, I adore having a sparkling home, but it’s a moot point, as it’s not in the budget for the next, oh, say, rest of my life, anyhow. So I’ve resigned myself to picking up the broom, and yes, even the toilet brush, all in the interest of avoiding COPD or whatever other breathing disorders my family might succumb to if I don’t clean the place.
In honor of my birthday a few days before Christmas, we had cleaners come in. More because we had 18 people coming for Christmas Eve dinner and there was no way I’d have time to cook and clean for that lot. In truth it wasn’t for my birthday, but ended up being an unexpected bonus. See, I cleverly tried to get them to come clean on my birthday as a self-gift, but they refused, saying they were too busy. I had to settle instead for two days earlier (meaning I’d have to re-clean again before company came, because my family would have dismantled the cleanliness by then). But then they forgot to come on their appointed day. Which is problematic, when you spend hours preparing for the cleaners.

See, preparing for the cleaners is almost as hard as cleaning the place yourself. You have to pick up a houseful of stray mess, discard the piles of trash the kids have left lying around, clean up the clumps of dog hair in the corners (too embarrassing for them to witness), wash every dish, put away any hint of your slovenly self. For me, that takes about, oh, ten hours (I’ve been known to dump the motherload of extraneous mess into laundry baskets and hidden it in the garage; out of sight, out of mind).

So to my chagrin, the cleaners forgot me (which isn’t as bad as the time a surgeon forgot to release me and left me stranded in the recovery unit till he was tracked down by a nurse while mingling at a cocktail party that evening). But the upside was I got them as a booby prize for my birthday! Hurray! Which meant a completely clean home, which was indeed a lovely birthday gift.

Occasionally I’ve hired cleaners expecting to smell the heartwarming aroma of the freshly-cleaned, only to be accosted by the most offensive odors imaginable. Once, it was the unsavory fragrance of cat excrement permeating my entire home. The cleaner vacuumed our unfinished basement, the one piled high with boxes and only occupied by the cats, and sucked up the kitty goodies our antique feline failed to leave in the nearby litter box. This in turn clogged my new vacuum cleaner, and for some odd reason they continued to sweep the entire house despite the ghastly smell. Thank goodness I didn’t have to clean the house, because I then had to spend about four hours trying to de-cat poo the vacuum. It was not a pretty sight. Or scent, for that matter.

I blame powerful cleaning agents for them not smelling the stench. See, another time we went out of budget for a cleaners treat. These occasions usually occur before unexpected houseguests, so that we can delude these friends that we are not slobs. I left the cleaners to do their thing, then returned home to the noxious scent of a cheap hooker. One in dire need of an olfactory system transplant. Seems the cleaner had used a product called Fabuloso, something that is apparently very popular amongst Latinas who clean, but the aroma of which had me running for the gas masks, if only I’d stockpiled them post-911 and the anthrax-in-your-mailbox-scare. This confirmed my suspicions that cleaning a lot of houses with powerful toxins has rendered the noses of many cleaners basically dead zones. Because the smell of Fabuloso is so not fabuloso; rather it is so vile, toxic and lung-searing, that I had to fumigate my house when they left, re-cleaning with something more mainstream.

Back in the 80’s, when a flood of Salvadoran refugees fled to America, many of these immigrant women became housecleaners. We occasionally hired a cleaning company managed by a country gal from West Virginia who was under the impression that if you added enough vowels, very loudly, her Spanish-speaking Salvadoran workers would understand her implicitly. Her commands of “Moppo el flooro” usually fell on uncomprehending ears. And their use of a Chlorox-infused cleaner on my teak dining room table cemented the notion that I should’ve just done it myself.

I suppose I could turn this clean-house resolution on its head by suggesting the one around here most desirous of the spic and span mode perhaps pony up as well. After all, we need a lot of painting on our aging house, and I’m way too short to reach all those high places. Plus, last time we had housepainters, you should’ve seen what those folks destroyed. It’s either that, or fire the maid, and I’m pretty sure I can’t fire myself.

I’ve become a gym rat, which is a good thing. I say gym rat, not bunny, because there is a serious distinction between the two, and sadly, I’ve aged out of the gym bunny phase. Not that I ever was one, mind you. Somewhere along the line I missed that stage, darn it. Gym bunnies are those gorgeous, svelte young women who turn heads at the gym even when they haven’t showered and are drenched in sweat. The only head I turn these days at the gym is my own, in an attempt to get my nose far, far away from the smell that is the very byproduct of gym-going. But that’s okay, I’ve resigned myself to my rat status. It’s better than not being a gym creature of any sort (i.e. sofa sloth), a status I had adopted by neglect for a good while there. So it feels good to be back at the gym, even with the assignation of some disease-bearing rodent.

Although being middle-aged at the gym does present its levels of shame, no doubt about it. Take for instance the day I was in an abs class. The gym bunny instructor was blasting music while we strengthened our core (or attempted to, in my case) and I recognized the song from long, long ago (back when I should have been able to enjoy the benefits of being a gym bunny, only gyms weren’t so common back then, even though I still wasn’t bunny material, regardless).

“Now most of you are too young to recognize this,” I said, a hint of joviality to my voice. “But this is the intro music to the Jane Fonda Workout Record.”

Yes, I did say record in that sentence. As in record album, circa two thousand years ago. (As an aside, my son has found it to be very hip-retro to have purchased a record player and now stockpiles cheesy old LPs just because he can occasionally find them at antique stores. Argh, who ever thought one day articles from my era would be considered antiques?! I feel like Martha Washington.)

I looked around the gym, hoping to see a face of solidarity (the kind with telltale crow’s feet). Someone, but someone, who would a) know who Jane Fonda is, and b) fondly recall Jane in her soothing post-Vietnam protest voice reminding us to “feel the burn” while the Jackson Family crooned “Can you feel it?”

Instead, here’s what I heard in a squeal from the instructor: “Oh, I think my mother had that album!”

Shoot me now. But at least she didn’t say her grandma had it. Thank heavens for tender mercies.

The gym offers up so much delusional potential. It hooks you on the fantasy of the you-that-will-likely-never-be. Shy of a hollow-leg budget allowing for endless personal trainers, maybe (and one rife with plastic surgery and liposuction to boot). It’s sort of like Hollywood, luring us in with the fake reality of it all. But we buy into it, hook, line and sinker. Yes, I can look like a gym bunny, if only I try, we tell ourselves. If only I go to every class and succumb to the unspoken peer pressure that is a given, like it or not.

Take for instance Nia. Now, if you take away all of the encumbrances of pride and self-respect, Nia is a really fun class. You flail about in a la-la state, getting a surprisingly good workout, all things considered. The instructor is all flow and grace and wears funky clothes that look amazing on her and you project yourself onto her image, foolishly thinking you too look as sleek flitting about the ballet floor. Until you catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror and realize that in fact you look like the dancing hippos from Fantasia, and that oversized t-shirt ain’t doing you any favors in the style department. What we sacrifice in dignity for a good workout. But trust me, Nia and it’s contemporary cousin, the hip-happenin’ Zumba, these classes are for gym bunnies, not the rhythm- and physique-impaired like moi.

The peer-pressure factor is hard to resist at gyms. It is subtle, and usually self-imposed. It comes in a few forms: the “I’m not too old to do this” form—always a killer. Or the “if she can do it so can I” method. Natch. What happens with the self-imposed peer-pressure is you kill your gym fantasy with a career-ending injury, like, say, a torn meniscus, that makes it nigh impossible to work out without public tears, something you should never, ever reveal at the gym. Crying betrays your wimp factor and even if you’re near-dying, even if you have to take the elevator after your workout, your knee hurts so badly, you cannot cry.

The moral to the story (at least for me) is you leave the class when the kickboxing music is speeded up to high-on-crystal-meth level, so fast that injuries are inevitable. And when you see the yoga class is called Flying Dragon, you turn the other direction and fly away from it. So what that technically you can do it? Doing it and surviving it are two different things altogether. Repeat after me: anything with the words “flying” and “dragon” in it involving exercise are not for the faint of heart (or failing of physique).

Yeah, I’ll remember that for next time I find myself jonesing to be a gym rat. And remind myself that I’ll never be a gym bunny, so don’t even think I can act like one. Can you feel it?

Kim Stagliano and I go wayyyyy back. We were cutting our teeth in this business at about the same time. Back then she was trying to have a novel published, but the more I learned about Kim and her extraordinary story and her even more compelling wit, the more I knew her efforts would be best directed at writing the memoir about her life. And she did it! Her story is about, as she puts it, “How one woman raises three daughters with autism, loses one at Disney World, stays married, has sex, bakes gluten-free, goes broke, and keeps her sense of humor. ‘Dr. Spock? Check. Penelope Ann Leach (remember her?)? Check. What to Expect When You’re Expecting? Check. I had a seven hundred dollar Bellini crib for God’s sake!’”

…and so begins Kim Stagliano’s electrifying and hilarious memoir All I Can Handle: I’m No Mother Theresa: A Life Raising Three Daughters with Autism, about her family’s journey raising three daughters with autism. In these stories, Stagliano has joined the ranks of David Sedaris and Augusten Burroughs with her amazing ability to lay everything on the table—from family, friends, and enemies to basement floods to birthdays to (possible) heroin addictions—eviscerating and celebrating the absurd. From her love of Howard Stern to her increasing activism in the autism community and exhaustive search for treatments that will help her daughters, she covers it all. Always outspoken, often touching, and sometimes heartbreaking, Kim Stagliano is a powerful new voice in comedic writing—her “Kimoir” (as she calls it) will be a must-read within the autism community and the literary world at large.

Here’s a little bit more about Kim:

Hi, I’m Kim Stagliano, wife, Mom, writer, tired. My husband and I have three gorgeous girls – who have autism. Kind of impossible, considering autism affects boys 4:1 over girls. Mark and I have learned that impossible is often inescapable though. My book is a humorous look at a life that has been anything but ordinary or easy – and yet is full of laughter, joy and love. I promise, you won’t need a Prozac to read it.

I’m available for Skype bookclub appearances and would love to learn about your story. Email me at kimstagliano@gmail.com. I’ll be happy to send you a free signed bookplate to pop into your copy if you’ll email me your receipt. Check out my website at Kim Stagliano for more info. I encourage you to support your local independent bookseller. Thanks!

And I really do urge you to pick up Kim’s book. She’s hilarious, to begin with. And her family’s story is unbelievable, really it is. And on top of it all, Kim busted up a crime ring! Seriously. Check it out here!