Get your ow
n diary at DiaryLand.com! contact me older entries newest entry

12:11 p.m. - 2005-05-16
Long Necked Woman Rant
First of all, Diaryland has easily replaced Disneyland (and certainly Neverland, what with recent scandals and all) as the "happiest kingdom on earth". It has also, at warp speed, managed to upstage my real life (now known as 'all the time I bide before I am able to return to my real life as lived in diary form'). Obsessional? Perhaps a skosh. You see, what a diary has that real life painfully lacks is editing. It is starting fresh daily, leaving all that should never have happened neatly on the cutting room floor. "What happens in diary stays in diary". A confessional in which the hearer is, conveniently, not omniscient. This makes for not only a softer pennance, but contibutes significantly to the overwhelming "You like me ... you really like me" that I feel every time I read a 'note'. So, given that disclaimer, I return gratefully to the land of my dreams. Won't you be ... won't you be ... won't you be my neighbor?

So, picture this. A blonde dressing table (you know the kind - think film noir) with a big round mirror (yes, bevelled of course). Flamingos on every square inch of wallspace, not to mention all the lamp bases. And don't forget the lecherous old landlord, George, who had the nasty habit of rubbing his spine up and down the door jamb while telling you that your porch light was keeping him awake at night ... stuff like that (which seemed like transparent excuses to pop in on the new bride, even to the new bride - who, as you know, was beyond naive). Yes, this was our 'blue Heaven', or, as I think of it now 'the scene of the crime' (the crime being our illfated marriage). Fred was decidedly 'old school'. He believed that a woman working reflected poorly on her husband's ability to support the family (and no, he was not Amish). So, my day (eighteen & barely out of high school) was structured suddenly with things like simmering Cream of Wheat (which I had never had the misfortune of encountering) to the consistency of glue, packing his lunch (bologna sandwich, a Twinkee & a cute little note) and either cooking dinner or locating a really good excuse not to (like forgetting to defrost, which I stumbled upon rather quickly). See, I had never cooked anything anywhere ever before and did not take to it naturally. I was always sporting scars from dropping frozen hash browns into boiling oil from about a foot above or limping from the 2 lb. rump roast that sought its revenge by diving on my bare foot. The first turkey I attempted to cook sent me to bed crying. Who knew that the little waxed paper bag inside contained unspeakable things)? I was sheltered. Of all the things I was most not (ballerina, artist, writer), I was not a housewife. Fred began to notice that I was less than inspired by my 'wifely duties'. I did attempt to discuss it, but there was always a game to watch (he had taken not only to watching Monday night football, but also Tuesday evening golf, Thursday evening crochet ... well, you get the idea). So a chasm developed over time. Over some eight years, to be exact (but I am getting ahead of myself). Of a truth, it is just not that easy to fill all that time between meals. I tried painting. I must have been experiencing a serious identity crisis, because I would sign each painting with a different name. I seemed always to paint haunted looking women with elongated necks. Go figure. Thinking back (with my psychological specs firmly in place), I must have been trying to peer over the edges of my life to see if perhaps there was something unpredictable on the horizon. Hope against hope. Something beyond the pervasive drone of Chick Hearn, the soundtrack of my marriage. I desperately wanted a child. Something to love that may actually love me back. Oh, I would ask Fred daily that phrase that melts the hearts of all men, "Do you love me? No, really. Do you". And if they are hapless enough to say "Yes", the next question must always be, "Why?". Fred's answer was always, "Of course I love you. Look around. I provide for you, don't I?". And yes, indeed he did. Did I mention that we moved out of that first little duplex into our own home, Toluca Lake adjacent (and on a G.I. loan). My parents were characteristically supportive. My father called after seeing the house to tell me that my mother cried all the way home and that I was the cause. He also said the house would, no doubt, be repossessed. What IS that? Anyway, back to the baby (or lack thereof). It seemed, I just simply did not get pregnant (even after actual sex). Every month, I would think I was pregnant. And sometimes (the mind is powerful), my period (which my friend & I called "Dearly Beloved" or DB) wouldn't come for several days. During that time, I barely moved (for fear of unloosing the child I was sure was sprouting within). But, alas, no baby seemed to find me a hospitable place to call home). I would watch "I Love Lucy" (you know, the one where she keeps trying to tell Ricky but he won't listen and finally she shows up at the Tropicana and he is singing congratulations to a new dad and suddenly reslizes it's him and they are both crying and dancing to "We're having a baby, my baby and me ...") and cry and cry and cry. And wonder why. My friends had all gotten knocked up and felt saddled with babies. Babies were turning up in trashcans (even back in the day). I felt slapped. Betrayed. A profound insecurity envoloped me (a cocoon I sometimes visit still). I began to check his pockets for clues of infidelity. Fred, for whom one woman (at least this one) was clearly enough? I couldn't understand why he would want me, flawed as I was. I had given him a little white baby bib with a ducky on it that first Father's Day, with a note that said "By next year ...". And here, I couldn't deliver. My best friend Barbara's mother told her to stop spending time with me because I didn't have a baby and it would make her feel tied down (gratefully, she didn't listen and we are best friends still). Nineteen years old (when I found out for sure that I was infertile - and they could never really tell me why - scar tissue on the tubes, perhaps - from what? I was a virgin - hello?). Watching General Hospital. Feeling abandoned by God. Ashamed, humiliated, desperately lonely, bored. I retreated somewhere deep inside. But then my neck began to stretch ...

previous - next

about me - read my profile! read other Diar
yLand diaries! recommend my diary to a friend! Get
 your own fun + free diary at DiaryLand.com!