Confessions of a One-Track Mind

Still doing medical billing...working there had its moments. Every Friday morning, there was an office meeting. And if you came in for it, you could take an hour lunch instead of a half-hour, so I missed very few office meetings. It was especially nice on alternate Fridays---payday!---because we were a short drive from a WalMart, where I could do some speed spending, as I called it.

There was an office Christmas party every year...I was on the planning committee one time, and it was trickier than you'd think. For starters, the place would have to be big enough for 30-35 people, AND it had to serve alcohol AND not be too far off the beaten track. I personally would've been fine without the booze, but a bunch of those gals, the way they whined at the thought, you'd think they were being deprived of air.

There was the usual Secret Santa nonsense, and decorating the office---although not to the extent that they did for Halloween. (One of the supervisors, upon viewing the cobwebs, jack o'lanterns and skeletons one year pronounced that "It looks like Hallowween threw up in here.")

I mentioned the costume contest---there was also a decorating contest, in which the building was divided into sections, and each section did their own mini "haunted house" schtick. There were dungeons, insane asylums, weird zoos, and my own personal favorite---the Mothership. One of the gals got an alien mask and voice synthesizer, there were star charts and alien lifeform specimens---doll parts in mason jars covers with green shampoo (thriftily reused by the gal who brought it in). I was the trailer park abductee, and I had a little set piece about how "I thought I heard raccoons out by the garbage pails, and I ran out, and there it was! Just a-hoverin' and a-spinnin'! And then they beamed me up, and they probed me!* And I had lunch with Elvis---fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches!" I was in a nightgown and fuzzy leopard print slippers and had my hair up---I had the part down to a tee, it was a blast.

While the social part was fun, not everyone was suited for the rest of it. We had people who'd start, leave for lunch and not come back. Or not come back for Day Two. I wish I had a dollar for every broad that didn't last out the first 90 days, I'd have enough money to fill my gas tank and then some.

The location was good: It was near enough that on more than one occasion, I woke up with less than a half-hour before I had to be to work, slithered into my clothes and had time to hit S'leven on the way in. (It helped that you weren't officially late unless it was more than 15 minutes past your start time. I wish everywhere was that civilized.) It was also a short block from a nice used bookstore (since closed), several cafes, and a full-service gas station---THAT was awesome, but the guy who ran it retired some months before my termination.

Personal life...church, basically. A little visiting with friends on weekends. I was still phobic about driving in bad weather, after dark, too far from home---it helped when I got new glasses---my old prescription was "off" enough that between that and my less than stellar night vision (no pun intended), it added to my anxieties.

Big shockeroo---one morning, Mb informed me that HWSNBN had gotten married. Small, private affair, a few close friends...what bugged the crap out of me (aside from the fact that of course he wasn't supposed to bounce back, he was supposed to pine for me and realize what a shithead he'd been), was the fact that I ended up hearing about this marriage from like, six or eight mutual friends before he deigned to tell me. And in fact, he and she showed up on my doorstep one Saturday morning, no warning at all, and I gave him shit about that. (She was all, "You didn't tell her? What do you mean, you didn't tell her?", which shows that she's got some class, regardless of who she's married to.) What the hell, better her than me.

Stay tuned.

==============================

* Which was why I about doubled up and peed myself at the frat boy's tale in "Tall Tales". (SPN, Season 2.)

.

HWSNBN had a cyber-sex habit. He renewed acquaintences with some dame he used to know who'd lived in Melbourne and now lived in Ocala. He wanted to visit her and asked me to go with him. Nothing to hide, right? We met her at a local restaurant---so far, so good. After lunch, she wanted to show us where she lived, so we followed her out to the middle of nowhere. Looked around, okay, ready to go?

No. One of her pitbulls had bitten a hole in one of the tires. Good luck trying to find a tire in Ocala after 5 on a Sunday afternoon. We had to stay the night. That's when he started fooling around with her. Oh, but it was my own fault---*I* hadn't negotiated monogamy when we started our relationship! He couldn't understand WHY I was upset.

We got another tire in the morning, went back to the place and put it on, only to discover that another tire was flat. And HWSNBN was out of money, according to him, so the slut's daughter's boyfriend produced a tire from somewhere. This time, we got out of there.

There was a lot of fallout from that visit. For one thing, he kept making solo trips up there for carnal purposes. It upset me, and he knew it upset me, but he did it anyway.

There was also a Near Death Experience, namely, when the mystery tire blew on I-95 while I was doing 70 on the way to Vero Beach to visit his dad for Father's Day. (His dad is/was a very nice guy---much nicer than HWSNBN)---and I liked going down there. Anyway, it was like going over a grenade---my overriding thought was, Don't cross the center line!. Pull over onto the shoulder.

The only trouble was, I was turbo-charged with adrenelin---my hands were shaking for the next two hours---and I didn't slow down enough before I hit the grass.

The car spun out. I had a moment of "We're going to flip, I'm going to die!" as the car kept spinning around.

We wound up on the shoulder, all right, having done a complete 180 and now facing oncoming traffic.

There was the blown tire, another tire had popped off the rim, and it turned out several weeks later that the belts in it had snapped, but it wasn't immediately apparent. The next couple of hours were stressful, and of course, it was Kat I called from a convenience store to come and rescue us.

We did eventually make it to Vero, but the damage was done. Not only had HWSNBN violated my trust by fucking around, that liason had damn near gotten me killed. I developed a dandy little case of post-traumatic stress---to this day, I'm not comfortable driving on I-95---to the point where I wouldn't drive after dark, drive in the rain, and I had a comfort zone that had shrunk to a few square miles.

That summer, GK en famile moved to Massechusetts, because her hub wasn't feeling fulfilled at his local job. That killed me a little. 20+ years and separated because Mr Sensative New Age Guy wasn't happy. Grrr.

When, a few months later, HWSNBN broke one promise too many, I asked him to leave. I was a wreck; I was 393 pounds, everything made me cry, not a day went by that I didn't think of suicide. I would miss being half of a couple, of having access to backrubs and cuddles, of being part of a two-paycheck household. But I realized the truth of the saying, it's better to be alone and wish you had someone than to be with someone and wish to be alone.


.

By now, I was starting to get more than a little disenchanted with the Camarilla, or at least our local chapter. For one thing, we kept getting out of town visitors who tended to monopolize the game. The one away game I ever went to, five of us drove up to Jacksonville (2+ hours each way), and before we could start LARPing, we had to get our characters vetted by the GM there...except he was busy moderating some fucking thing, which took an hour, at which time, he declared game over. On learning he had visitors, he graciously went "Game on!" for all of a half-hour. I didn't get a chance to do anything at all, and I gave up on the kindred venue completely. I doggedly hung in with garou play, no pun intended, but that had its pitfalls, too. Meh, it's not like it matters NOW.

HWSNBN was working loading truck for a local bakery. It was more or less third shift---he left around 10 PM and got in, depending on the workload, any time between 4 AM and 6:30. And he's fucking lucky I didn't KILL him, because in the winter, I'd be all warm and sleeping and he'd come in and shove his hands against my back to warm them up.

Seriously, I mentioned passive-aggressive? If I had a button, that fucker would press it just to stir things up. Wake me up like that, tickle me, which I made it clear that I hated, and worst yet, pull my hair. He wanted me to grow it out, and disapproved mightily of the fact that it kept getting shorter and shorter. Well, duh. I damn near had a crewcut by the end.

That Christmas, since we were both working and had ample money coming in to cover the bills, we got annual passes to Univeral Studios in Orlando. Christmas fell on a Wednesday that year. The 24th was my company's Christmas party, so it was only a half-day. He worked his usual schedule, getting home a little before 5:30. We went over to Orlando and got a motel room on I-Drive, so we could go right over to the park first thing in the morning.

There were hardly any crowds at all; at times, we were the only guests in sight. We visited Islands of Adventure---my first time---and had a lovely time. Somewhere, I have the best picture I ever took of HWSNBN, sitting on a polka-dotted egg in Seussville.

When I got back to work the next day, I was invigorated; Islands of Adventure had been a grand day out, and HWSNBN had been good company. Most of my co-workers were snarly about having to come in: They'd had crappy Christmases, or they were missing the after Christmas sales, and it was one chick's birthday, and they hadn't let her take it off. I felt like I'd dodged a bullet.

After that, romping over to the park for a day became fairly commonplace. There's a big multiplex there in addition to the theme parks, so we'd go jaunt around the park until I/we got tired, go take in a movie, then continue a while longer. My endurance wasn't great; I'm a stress eater, and I was under stress. I was edging cloer and closer to my all-time high.


.

There was a guy I'd met through the LARP---come to think of it, he was running the tabletop game where HWSNBN and I met---who first told me about a weekly discussion group that met at the local UU church. They were pagan-friendly, he said, and I'd given them a try. That was in early '99---I remember, because that year they had a Beltane event that I went to, and HWSNBN went with me, although he's not pagan. He claims to be Catholic, but although he may have gone there as a kid, honestly, if he's anything, I'd say agnostic---but that's neither here nor there.

What matters is, I'd started going to services there, and had gotten a key and permission for the Camarilla to use the main building on Saturday evenings. And one Saturday evening, who should show up but Mb and her hub. I hadn't seen her since their departure from my spare room, which we didn't mention. Instead, she told me about the medical billing service she was working for, and that they were hiring. I went down there, and so began the chapter of my life entitiled, "You people!" (As in, "You people sent me this bill in the mail. Why didn't you people send this to my insurance? You people don't know what you're doing, my insurance said you people coded it wrong or they would have paid it, they pay everything!"---and so on.)

I'd been there less than a month when 9/11 happened. One of the girls had a radio on in her cubicle, and she said, "A plane hit the World Trade Center!" Well, I know that the Empire State Building was once struck by a plane, so I wasn't completely freaked out. Then a little while later, she said another plane had crashed into the other tower, and I was sure that it was some morning DJ's warped take on "The War of the World" broadcast. It didn't really sink in, especially when the next plane hit the Pentagon and another one went down---it seemed so over the top, like a big budget James Cameron thriller. I kept waiting for a punchline.

I realized the phones had gone silent. No one was calling to bitch about their bill, which suggested that maybe it was because everyone was huddled around their TV watching the breaking news. Someone who lived nearby ran out and brought in her portable TV, and there was the undeniable footage of tragedy.

Being a native New Yorker, albeit transplanted to Southern soil and thriving, I was more than a little in shock. Peter had worked in the Towers before his early retirement. I'd called him there often, talked to his coworkers while they paged him to the phone, knew that he shared my letters with them---and I wonder what happened to those good people. And I'll never know.

For weeks, I felt guilty about enjoying myself. HWSNBN and I went to see "The Musketeer", which would have been an exciting movie, if I hadn't had the feeling that I was doing something wrong for enjoying myself. We went and saw---I don't recall the title, but it was the current Schwarzenegger flick---and for once, car chases and explosions made me cringe instead of cheer.

When Halloween rolled around, I didn't play fair when it came to the company costume contest. With all the flag-waving that was going on at the time, how could I *not* win as Lady Liberty? Green shift, crown, torch, book...I got a WalMart gift card out of it, and invested the proceeds in an opulent velvet vest. (Pun not resistable.) And as proof of my pack-rattery, I still have the crown lurking around somewhere....

Also that fall, some friends of ours got married. I needed something to wear to the wedding, and because I was somewhere in the neighborhood of 375, off-the-rack formalwear wasn't a viable option. GK to the rescue! She found some material on eBay, I bought a pattern (which she modified), and we collaborated on a full-length, 3/4 sleeve red dress...maybe not the best shade of red for me, but it fit well.

Mb and I went hunting for something for her to wear, which we found at a plus-size consignment store down around Indian Harbor Beach. It was a snazzy black and silver number that needed a few stickes to mend...a seam or strap or something, I forget. But she took my word for it that it was an easy fix and got it, and it was an easy fix---I may not be quite up there with GK as far as tailoring goes, but basic things like seams and buttons, yeah, no problem.

As usual, I got completely fraught about the wedding. Maybe it's because the first wedding I encounted was Peter's and since it was a family event and my mother stressed about it, I thought that was what everybody did, but anyway---I'd like a wedding of my own someday. I don't necessarily want to get married, I just want a wedding.

But NOT to HWSNBN.


.

I was in and out of temp jobs: taking floral orders around Valentine's Day and doing a few arrangements, working at Dysfunction Junction (Family owned, and the family in question, an older couple and their adult sons, could not speak three sentences to each other without it turning into a screaming row. Insanity.) I was there for five months, and I've never been so happy to be fired, despite the fact that Mrs Dysfunction called me up at 9 AM on a Sunday morning to let me go.

That summer, HWSNBN moved in with me---his parents kind of asked him to leave because they wanted to move his grandmother in and needed the room. This wasn't a completely terrible thing; for one thing, HWSNBN is VERY responsible about money, and we divided things equitably. The phone and cable were in his name---he paid those, while I took care of electric, water and insurance.

He also got me a new hot water heater as an early Christmas present---I'd been either taking cold showers during the summer, visiting his folks a couple times a week, or going up to the ladies locker room at the college and using the facilities there. Honestly, the first time I took a nice hot shower in my own snug little bathroom, I was in there for twenty minutes or so, singing like Julie Andrews. Romantic, no, much appreciated, yes!

When I finally did get a full-time job, we both set aside $100 from each check and saved until we could replace my drainfield. That was huge, and without him to poke, prod and nag me, it wouldn't have gotten done.

So there were advantages to having him around. He wasn't always easy to live with---the bastard could sulk for a week, which was rather wearing to be around---but it wasn't all bad. His family was nice to me---his mom was a yard sale queen on a scale I couldn't hope to aspire to, and she presented me with things like a matched set of bedding, a whole closetful of clothes, and her cash Christmas present was enough for me to get a sorely needed new pair of glasses.

If nothing else, my standard of living improved while we were together.


.

You may have noticed the lack of...shall we say, relationships? That's because, aside from my unrequited Thing for Dr Bizarre, there weren't any. There were a few incidents of being groped at various concerts, but nothing that lasted after the lights came up.

Virgo was NOT just my astrological sign. And here I was, coming up fast on 40, and I was convinced it had all passed me by. I completely gave up on the possibility of even a one-night stand after Mb's attempt to set me up with one of her housemates fell through. I figured I might as well be a nun.

And then, one afternoon at a tabletop game, this guy showed up. I'd been turned down enough times that I didn't credit it; "Are you making a pass at me?" I asked him straight out after something he said.

"Do you want me to make a pass at you?" was his response, and I should have realized that passive-aggressive was going to be the tenor of our relationship.

Mb assured me that He Who Shall Not Be Named was safe enough---at least in the sense of not being a drunk, a druggie, an ex-con or a psycho. Yes, HWSNBN had a few kinks, but that was okay---after thirty years of intense curiousity about Lots of Things, I was pleased to know I might actually get a chance to find out more than the basics.

And find out I did; there is a reason my online persona is VANILLAfluffy.

1999 was a really intense year: VC, Kat's husband, passed away in February, which wasn't unexpected since he had a heart condition and cirrosis of the liver. Mb and her guy got married, also in March, and ended up moving out unexpectedly in...I think it was August. I *do* remember it was after I was fired from directory assistance.

Directory assistance had a policy where they gave you a certain amount of vacation time per year, but you had to take five days of it in a solid block. I scheduled mine for the last week in June. On the first day of my week, there was a knock on the door at 9AM. Because I didn't have a phone at the time, it was a sheriff's deputy coming to notify me that Peter was dead.

I hurried around the corner to Kat's so I could call Sirocco and find out what was going on. (Although they'd divorced after less than 10 years, they'd lived together on and off ever since.) He'd had congestive heart failure, and he'd simply gone to sleep and not wakened.

My friends rallied round---they got me up to New York to see to arrangements for him---that put me in contact with cousins I hadn't talked to since Dad was alive---and because of the holiday weekend, I ended up staying for a solid week.

My job paid me for bereavement leave, but they weren't too happy when I took additional time off for medical reasons. They let me go. (Of course, they could come up with creative reasons for it.)

I did some temping, spent most of my time with HWSNBN, including most of a week at his folks during Hurricane Hugo, which for a while looked like it was going to hit us. It didn't, and we spent our interlude frolic in the a/c.

December---Christo, this year, does it ever end?! First, there was the incident at the movie theater. He took me to see "Bicentennial Man", which I thought was safe enough---Robin Williams, funny guy, right? Oh hell no. Two hours of having everyone his character loved die reduced me to a sobbing, sniveling mess by the end. To make matters more fraught, S, T and J happened to be at the same show, saw me, and were convinced he was responsible. (Well, yes, but only because the damn movie was his idea.)

And then...oh hell, I'm not going to go into the whole thing, but about a week later, he and S got into a huge screaming fight. She didn't care for him to begin with, and---never mind. Let's just say that, although I've had plenty of times when certain of my friends didn't get along with other friends, this was by far the most dramatic. The breach was never repaired; he was no longer welcome there, and I didn't get over there much myself for the next few years.

And two days before Christmas, GK produced Thing Two. My hair was long enough to French braid at the time, and I remember visiting her in the hospital with jingle bells on bobby pins tucked into my braid.

Party like it was 1999? Not much. Although I had purchased a long black velvet dress with New Year's Eve in mind, we stayed home. In bed. Happy fucking New Year....


.