heritage

My younger son, Tom, is very demanding. When he is upset about something, and you fix it, he continues to cry/whine waaaay longer than necessary, just to let everyone know how terrible we are to him.

The other day, he did this again, and it suddenly struck me that he totally got this from me! He can’t let go either!

This is proof that I have no control over this. It’s written in my genomes. It’s just the way that I am.

Man….Tom and I are going to have some pretty major fights, I can tell that already.

maturity

I’m kind of a control freak. When I was in elementary school, my best friend Victoria and I always had to play what I wanted to play. If she somehow managed to assert herself and we played something different, I would pout and sulk until I got my way. She moved away in the 5th grade and when I look back, I wonder if she was relieved to get away from me.

I remember another incident during college when VK (college boyfriend) and I and a few others were deciding on where to eat dinner. I wanted to go to a particular restaurant, but the others overrode my wishes and we went somewhere that I hated. I pouted and sulked the entire time to let everyone know how much they sucked. (Wow, how did I even have friends?!)

Then a couple of years into my consulting career, my friend Deb and I went to hang out with a couple of good guy friends. The 4 of us discussed which bar to go to, and we ended up going to one I didn’t like. I was really pissed that I didn’t get my way, and just sat there silently glaring at everyone, answering everyone’s questions with one- or two-word sentences. At some point the guys left to get us some drinks, and Deb said to me, “Look, I know you didn’t want to come here. But we’re here now so you need to just make the best of it.”

It was SUCH the kick in the rear that I needed. No one had ever talked to me so directly like that before. My friends in the past would just ignore it. And she was right. I was being a pain in the ass. For some reason, Deb’s words booted me out of my sulk and I ended up enjoying myself the rest of the night. It was probably the best piece of advice anyone had given me.

I’m not going to say it happened overnight, but I gradually changed into someone much more pleasant to be around. In other words, I matured. I can’t remember the last time I went into a sulk with my friends. With AJ, that’s a whole other story.

lost in translation

My friend, J, works with people in Japan a lot. She recently received the following email:

Hi all,

George and I questioned Gabe’s assistant’s woman about Howard’s order on the final day when it held the meeting in SF.

We heard that the answer depended in order input.

Therefore, I did not ask any specific requirements to you. I am also worry about whether it is acceptable of this issue.

We should find the solution though this is very regrettable lack of consensus between us. I also participate with the conference call.

Regards,

Tanaka

Apparently “Gabe’s assistant’s woman” is referring to J. She said that she is not offended by that so much as the fact that she wasn’t actually the one who imparted the erroneous information. Oh, and I am SO using “this is very regrettable lack of consensus between us” in my next email.

baffling moment of the day

(From an email regarding an automated report. This is a straight cut and paste.)

Business user: “What is the trigger for the report to be automatically run on the 15th and the 30th of each month?”

anger management, part deux

I get my anger from my mother. Much like my mother focuses her anger on my dad, I focus most of my anger on AJ. My kids can do no wrong, my friends are fine, but if AJ makes one little transgression, I am all over him. We’ve been trying to work on this. He tells me that it really stresses him out when I act like he can’t do anything right. But if I am in a bad mood, that’s exactly how I feel. What’s more, my anger feels perfectly justified. It’s only after I get over it that I can (sorta) be objective and say that perhaps my anger was a bit unreasonable, or maybe a bit over the top.

The main problem is that I can’t let it go. Even if AJ admits that he was wrong and apologizes, I just can’t let go of the anger. I keep at him until he’s at his wits’ end. “What else do you want from me?!” he’ll say. “I’ve already apologized!” I really don’t know what I want. I don’t get this mad at anyone else.

Yesterday, I called home and both my parents picked up on separate phones. We were discussing the dates of their visit next month, which my mother had emailed everyone about. At some point, my dad said something that contradicted her email, and she just blew up. “Didn’t you read my email?!” she screamed. “You never pay attention to anything I say!”

Now, I don’t know what else had been going on that day. Maybe things had been building up and that was the last straw. My mother is retired and my dad works from home part of the week – there are many hours in the day for them to irritate the hell out of each other. To an outsider, though, her sudden fit may seem totally unreasonable. To us, it’s just how it’s always been. Having a bad temper was just part of her personality. 70% of the time, it’s directed at my dad, the other 30% at my maternal grandmother, who lives with them. When we were younger and lived at home, I would get it sometimes too. Now that I don’t live with them, I can’t remember the last time she got mad at me. As far as she is concerned, I’ve become perfect.

But yesterday something different happened. After my mom screamed at my dad, she said, “You two figure it out. I have to make dinner.” And hung up the phone. My dad started telling me that he didn’t know what to do, that nothing he does is right, and that she’s been getting mad at him for everything lately and it’s really stressing him out. He’s never said this to me before. I didn’t know how to handle it. Now, my dad is pretty boneheaded and absent minded, and I can see why it is irritating to my mother. But since he is my dad, and I’m a daddy’s girl, it’s just lovable to me. Normally he just takes it from my mom, on occasion he may snap back at her, but on the whole he just avoids her. I can see that she never gets any closure. I’m pretty sure they never talk it over afterwards like AJ and I do. They just go from angry at each other, to pretending nothing happened, and move on until the next time. So it’s never really resolved. It’s like a scab that keeps getting re-opened.

In any case, he sounded so fed up that I was alarmed. Especially the getting stressed part, since he just had a stroke and the doctor said to avoid stress as much as possible. I had sudden visions of him saying, “I don’t need this anymore” and leaving her. It totally goes against Chinese tradition, but that’s how done he sounded. I told him I would talk to my mother and we hung up.

But the thing is, I HAVE tried to talk to her about it. When I do, she starts going down her list of grievances and I have to admit those things would piss me off too if AJ did it. I can’t exactly say “just let it go” when I can’t do it myself.

One time we rented a vacation beach house with my parents, and one night after the boys went to bed, AJ and I went down to the beach and took a long walk. It was very romantic. When we got back, we told them how beautiful it was, and my dad said, “OK, wife, it’s our turn, let’s go!” And my mom said, “No, I don’t want to.” I asked why not, and she said she just didn’t feel like it. I said, “But it’s so romantic.” And my mother responded, “All the romance is gone from my life. Your father has killed it all.” Then we all just sorta sat there awkwardly. My dad didn’t say anything. I felt so bad that she has become so bitter. Was she always like that? It seems so, but I do have memories of them being loving with each other. When did it end? She’s always saying how unromantic my dad is, but what could be more romantic than him wanting to walk along the beach with her? How could she just slap his offer back like that? Years ago, he used to put his hand on her thigh as he was driving and she’d slap his hand away. I told a friend once, and she said, “Oh how sad, she’s not attracted to him anymore.” Is that it? I really don’t know. And then she’d complain to me about how he is never affectionate and never holds her hand. I don’t know what she wants, and I don’t think she knows either.

I have no solution. I thought I’d start to blog about it and something would present itself, but no. But I need to talk to her this weekend. If anything, I want her to lay off my dad because of his health. I really think she could use therapy, but there is no way I would be able to talk her into going. I think I could use therapy, myself.

(The other anger management post here.)

opportunities

Growing up, I was kind of shy and self-conscious, and thus held myself back a lot from doing things. It could be anything from making a new friend to playing a team sport. I preferred to do solitary things to prevent making a fool of myself, such as reading or playing computer games.

After college, my friend P and I went to Hawaii. At some point during the trip, I decided to go to a ukulele store to buy one for my brother, who is a musician. The young man in the store was super cute and kept flirting with me. After we left, his eyes followed me out the store and down the street (I only know this because P told me). She kept trying to convince me we needed to go back to the store and ask him about the nightlife (with the hope that he would invite us to go party with him and his friends). But I was too chicken, so I didn’t.

A couple of days later, we were in a tour bus taking in the sights, and P struck up a conversation with an elderly couple next to us. At one point she mentioned that we went to a luau, and they asked to see the tourist photo from the luau. (If you’ve been to Hawaii, you know what I am talking about. Before seating you at the luau, they pose you with two scantily clad dreamboats – one man, one woman. Then you have the option to buy the photo afterward. P and I both came out nice in the photo, so we decided to buy it.) So P took out our photo to show the elderly couple. The husband took one look at the photo, turned to me, and said, “I guess you are someone who doesn’t take advantage of all your opportunities.” I looked at the photo and realized what he was referring to. Most female tourists at the luau were all over the muscular and hunky young man while taking the photo. I, on the other hand, was standing a good foot away from him.

During the rest of our trip, I reflected on that comment. Although he was joking and only referring to the photo, I realized that yes, I was a person who did not take advantage of my opportunities. I only tried for things if I knew I would succeed. Everything I had, up until that point, had been handed to me. Even my job as a consultant, which was an amazing opportunity, was practically handed to me on a platter. It was during the days of the dot-com boom when consulting companies were snatching up college graduates left and right, and I happened to know a guy who was good friends with a manager at one of the best companies. It was practically a slam dunk.

So I made up my mind that I would try to take more risks. Since meeting AJ, it’s gotten easier, because we take the risks together, and we’ll still be together if we fall. Almost three years ago, we took a risk and moved up to the Bay area for a job opportunity for AJ that we didn’t know would succeed or not. It did, and now a new opportunity has come up, and we’re on the brink of taking another huge risk. I’m not trying to be coy, but I can’t talk too much about it right now. Suffice to say that it will happen within a year. Then I’ll let it all out.

I leave you now with a couple of great quotes about taking risks:

The only person who never makes mistakes is the person who never does anything. — Denis Waitley

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. — Mark Twain

my mother-in-law

I’ve been wanting to write about my MIL for some time now, but since we haven’t seen her in a while, I can’t seem to generate the required anger and frustration to churn out a really good post about her. I also had to get permission from AJ to write about her on a public blog.

We only see MIL once every 2 years (she lives in Colombia), mainly because AJ can’t stand her. That works for me, because I can’t either. But then around the 2 year time frame, he starts to feel guilty for being a bad son, and buys her a ticket to come visit us. He buys the return ticket for 5 days later, because that’s the longest he can stand to be around her. So any post I write would have to encompass the whole 5 days and there’s a lot of shit that happens in 5 days with this lady. I just went back and reread the venting email I wrote to my friends after she left the last time, and there’s some good stuff in there, but it’s freaking LONG.

In general, though, every single one of her trips has followed this timeline:

Days 1 and 2: Everything is great. She’s in a great mood, happy to be with her son, happy to see me, happy to not be in Colombia. Her biggest desire is to move to the US so she spends the first 2 days on her best behavior: cooking, cleaning, organizing… as if to say, “Look how wonderful your life would be if I came to live with you.” On day 2, though, the subtle guilt trips start to come out: how poor she is, how she can’t afford simple things because we don’t give her enough money (AJ and his sister pay her a monthly allowance which covers all her bills. She can’t hold a job and has always relied on handouts from friends and family. This is why we can’t afford to bring her to the US because it would take a lot more money to maintain her – at least, that’s what we tell her. If she were normal we’d totally bring her here. Well if she were normal, she’d have a job and be able to come here on her own).

Day 3: Due to the increasingly aggressive guilt-trip comments, AJ starts to get snappish with her. Then, when we’re in a public place (usually in a restaurant), something he says will set her over the edge and she’ll exclaim, “How you can say something like that to me!” Then she’ll start bawling (very loudly) and pawing exaggeratedly through her purse yelling, “I need a tissue! I need a tissue!” and asking waiters and strangers if they have a tissue. It is too bad I am not telling this to you in person, because I do a great impression of her. It’s all very dramatic.

Day 4: AJ and MIL stop speaking to each other. I have to listen to how that son-of-a-bitch (AJ’s father) cheated on her (not true) and left her struggling to raise two children by herself with no money from him (also not true – he supported them during all the years that AJ and his sister lived with her, but she never told AJ and he didn’t know that his dad supported them until much later). And how she worked so hard (according to AJ, she did nothing but watch TV all day) and she made him who he is today (she physically and emotionally abused him, and it left deep scars). She’ll also throw in that AJ’s sister sucks as well and they’re both ungrateful and make her live in poverty and she always has to beg to be able to come see them. She’ll say all righteously that she can’t blame her kids for preferring their father, after all he is rich, not like her (he’s also NORMAL, not like her), but she wishes they would feel just a tiny bit of appreciation for everything she sacrificed for them (AJ left her at age 14 because he couldn’t take it anymore and went to live with the man his mother always referred to as “the asshole” – that’s how bad it was, he would rather live with an asshole than with his mother). And so on and so forth. I usually just nod a lot on day 4 and try not to slash my wrists.

Day 5: AJ starts to feel guilty for having made her cry – despite all her histrionics, she’s really good at what she does (manipulation and getting things out of people). He usually spends day 5 taking her shopping and buying everything she wants. Day 5 is not good for our bank account. Then after we drop her off at the airport, AJ will say to me, “I am NEVER inviting her to stay with us again.”

I once stumbled upon an article about narcissistic personality disorder, and it described AJ’s mother to a tee. She really does not seem to have the capacity to love, and uses her children for personal gain. The article said that those with narcissistic personality disorder use love as way to manipulate others, and when the other person is no longer willing or no longer able to give them what they want, they accuse the other person of not loving them anymore. AJ’s mother totally does this to him, to his sister, to other family members, to friends. To her, “showing love” is “buying whatever the fuck she wants” but it’s never enough. She seems unable to comprehend “but I can’t afford it.” I strongly suspect this is why AJ’s father divorced her. She is never be happy, never satisfied.

She often tries to cause friction between AJ and his sister, bad mouthing one of them to the other. Once she got AJ’s sister so upset at AJ that they didn’t talk for 6 months. All based on lies. She is unable to hold onto friends as well. Because she is so charming and so personable, she makes friends very easily (AJ got that from her)… but then loses them just as quickly once they realize how manipulative and grasping she is. She is unable to hold onto a job because everywhere she works, “for some reason” her coworkers always end up “turning” on her, they all hate her and they’re all out to get her. She has some serious issues and sadly, she is too old to get help for it – and anyways, she doesn’t recognize that she has issues. Everyone else has issues, not her.

Luckily for me, AJ is always on my side. He does not allow her to be anything but nice to me, and he has indicated to her that in any choice between her or me, he would choose me every time. This makes her visits a bit more bearable for me, because he is pretty good about shielding her from me. AJ’s BIL is not so lucky. AJ’s sister is not as strong and she cannot defend herself as well. So her husband defends her, and then he and MIL go at it. Then AJ’s sister and her husband fight because she stands up for her mother. Once, MIL went to visit them – it was supposed to be only for 2 weeks but she ended up staying for 2 months because AJ’s sister did not have the nerve to make her leave. She later told me that they almost got a divorce that time. I can’t say I blame BIL. I can’t imagine not having AJ on my side when MIL visits.

When I first became a mother, many wonderful childhood memories came flooding back to me. People with kids know what I mean. I had a great childhood, and I had fun remembering all the good times my brothers and I had as kids. Everything I did for my kids would remind me of how my mother or father used to do it for me and my brothers. I remembered things I hadn’t thought of in years, and it would make me smile and feel loved. It made me really appreciate my parents so much more.

It was different for AJ. Yes, many childhood memories came back to him, but they were bad memories, things he had suppressed for a long time. He had shared with me a lot of awful things MIL did, but after having kids, he remembered even more. Since becoming a father, and knowing he would give his life for our children, it is unfathomable to AJ how a parent could treat her children the way that MIL did/does. He went through a phase of extreme anger at his mother for the things she did to them.

The last time MIL came to visit was the first time AJ had seen her since we had children. Because of all the anger he’d been feeling towards her, the day 5 shopping spree did not happen. In fact, he was so disgusted with her that after she left, he told me he really was done with her. She probably realized something changed, because after she went back to Colombia, she wrote him a long letter about forgiveness and how it can take the weight off your heart if you just forgive the past. Something like that. He forwarded it to me with no comment and I had to plug it into the Spanish-English translator (which is really inaccurate). But I got the gist. He never replied to that email, or any of the subsequent emails she sent.

So that was about a year ago. Usually AJ starts to feel the guilt of “not being a good son” around 2 years after a visit, so we have another year to go. It was really different last time, though, so I don’t know what will happen next year. He’s changed his attitude toward his mother a lot since becoming a dad (way more negative and not as susceptible to guilt trips).

It’s sad because his mother really is a very charming, very intelligent woman, but she uses it to manipulate people. When you meet her for the first time, you’re just so entranced by her. She is attractive, friendly, funny, worldly, and interesting. Sometimes we wonder what she could have made of herself if only she’d been normal. What a waste of a life! Well, not a complete waste, since AJ would not exist without her.

The biggest annoyance is that no one gets how awful she is, because people only meet her once or twice when she is at her most charming. AJ’s stepmother is always talking about how being a single mom is really hard and that he should “just let it go”. But I don’t think AJ’s dad and stepmom know about the abuse and it’s not my place to tell them (I once asked AJ how could his dad leave his kids with their mother if he knew what she was like, and AJ said that his dad probably did not think she could hurt her own children). AJ hears it from his friends as well. People who just don’t get what it is like to have an abusive parent. He used to hear it from me in the early days of our relationship, but then I talked to a friend who had an abusive childhood and she told me it is very, very difficult to forgive and move past it, so I am a lot more understanding now. Even my dad finds the idea of an abusive mother so impossible that he DOES NOT BELIEVE that it actually happened, that maybe AJ “misunderstood” things she said or is exaggerating about the beatings or something. These days the abuse is only verbal and comes in the form of guilt trips, manipulation, putting him down, etc. Some of the things she has said to him in front of me are so awful I can’t believe a mother would say them to her child. So yeah, I fully support him if he decides to remove her from his life.

Anyways, with that intro, I’ll probably post more little tidbits about her later on as I remember them.

boys to men

A few years ago, I worked with a girl named J who ended up becoming a close friend. We think alike – there are many things I can only share with her because she’s the only one who would get it. Also, we worked together at two different companies in the last few years, and we have jokes about a bunch of our ex-coworkers that we can only share with each other. We have similar quirks, and we even kind of look alike – people have asked if we are sisters, and once someone asked if we were twins. This is super flattering for me because she’s really cute, but probably not so much for her.

J is married now, but back when she was single, I lived vicariously through her as she navigated the dating world. I was envious, though, because it seemed like every boy she set out to woo, she would get. I mean I was happy for her, but jealous for myself, because I rarely had that.

The problem that I had was twofold: cluelessness and insecurity. Here’s a perfect example. There was one boy in high school who was cute and so sweet. Eric was one of those independent types who didn’t care what people thought. People liked him. He usually just said whatever popped into his head and that made him funny. I had English with him, which was the high point of my day. He sat next to me and his unfiltered comments would just keep me laughing the whole hour. One day as our teacher was passing out exams, she said, “If you know you’re going to be tempted to look at your neighbor’s paper, you should change seats.” Eric looked at me and said, “Aw, I’m always tempted to look at June.” I’m not going to tell you how many times I replayed that moment in my head. After school, Eric would call me a lot and we had awkward, stilted conversations. Looking back I realize he probably liked me, but he was too shy to make the next move and I was too clueless. When I look back at my high school and college days, I realize there were a lot of those.

OK, now that I am thinking about it, what is it with these Asian boys? Every one I am listing in my head right now where I realize the boy must’ve liked me but never did anything about it are Asian, including Eric. They would call a lot, all random, have nothing to say, and we’d just sit on the phone feeling awkward. Why did they never take the next step and ask me out? I was too clueless to help them out, but I totally would have gone out with most of them. Especially Eric. Damn him!

But now that I am thinking about it, in the years between breaking up with VK (college boyfriend) and meeting AJ (husband), I realize that I pretty much got all the boys I set out to get. Keeping them was a whole other matter.

There was Michael, who had a girlfriend and we had an emotional affair for 3 months. There was Adrian, a Scottish dude I met in Siebel training (I just love that accent). There was Bryan, who I think liked me, but E met him first and she really liked him, so I couldn’t do anything. There was Matt, who I had great physical chemistry with, but we had nothing in common. There was Jason (who I dumped Matt for), who dumped me because we worked together and he felt weird about it. There was Mike, who dumped me for this girl he’d been in love with forever but who only saw him as a friend, then realized her true feelings once he and I got together.

All of these are guys I went after and dated (except for Bryan), but couldn’t, or wouldn’t, keep. But after Mike, there was a good 2 years where I had no action. Part of it was that I really, really liked Jason and after he dumped me, Mike was my rebound guy, and then HE dumped me too, and I think I lost my confidence or something.

After that I sort of sunk into depression, except I didn’t know at the time that I was depressed – I am just diagnosing myself after the fact. I bought a townhouse and lived in it alone, where I did nothing but eat and play Sims. Friends would ask me to go clubbing and I said no every time. I would explain that I was not feeling social. But I went on “not feeling social” for two years, and they stopped asking.

In early 2003, I realized I was really unhappy. And that it was stupid for me to be that way. And that I needed to make changes. So, I did. I stopped playing Sims so much. I got a personal trainer. I joined dating sites. And I started going out again. I had a few single girl friends and we would go together to singles’ events. Then one fateful night, E and I went to a speed dating event and I met AJ.

AJ was my first date that night. I liked him a lot and was instantly attracted to him. After him, no one else that night could compare. I kept telling myself that I needed to keep an open mind, that it was only because he was the first guy I met. But in the end he was my favorite. When the event was over, he immediately came over to me and asked if I wanted to get something to eat. Within a week it was like we’d known each other forever. I felt soo comfortable with him. I used to think that you could only have a relationship that was only based on passion or on camaraderie. AJ is the first where I’ve had both combined, and I feel very lucky to have found it.

one from the party days

Ah, the glory days. The days when everyone was throwing tons of money at management consulting companies, which enabled people like me, who were just out of college and entering the real world, to live the high life. All-expense-paid dinners where the bill came to $200 or more per person was standard. But we also worked damn hard. 16- to 20-hour days were not uncommon, and of course after all that intensity, we had to unwind somehow. Lots and lots of alcohol was consumed for sanity’s sake. Behold, one of the many, many drunk stories I have in my repertoire.

One of my favorite projects was at a telecommunications company in San Francisco. It was a huge implementation with a project team of over 100 people, and we all sat in this big dungeon-like warehouse where they seated us at rows of cafeteria tables with computers on top (consultants and contractors are always treated like second-class citizens). It was the year after Yahoo IM was launched, when Napster was born, and cell phones were just starting to become common. I was 24, one of the three Siebel development team leads, just coming into my own in terms of my career, the year when I realized I was smart after years of thinking I wasn’t, when I realized I was good at something, and it was something I enjoyed. I was ambitious, I was motivated, the world was at my feet! I’d wake up at 7am, work all day, come home at 11pm, and I loved it. But not only was I working like a dog, I was also eating expensive meals and hanging out with smart and fun and good-looking young consultants. And we were getting paid really well, so well that we thought nothing of blowing our hard-earned money at every bar and club in the city.

So sometime during the project, some of the girls on my team decided we needed to do an LA party weekend – nothing different than what we usually did, but in LA. One of the girls lived in Santa Monica with 2 other girls, and they invited us all to stay at their place. LA weekend ended up being 8 single girls in skimpy clothes going bar hopping. On Saturday night, we ended up at Miyagi’s in Hollywood, which was a happening place at that time (I have no idea if it still is). It was a sushi restaurant by day and a club by night. I loved it because of the culturally diverse crowd and the good dancing music.

Two of the girls volunteered to be designated drivers, but the rest of us got totally and completely smashed. I lost count of how many drinks we had. We kept ordering different types of shots, and every time the guy brought them to us, we’d all pile on him and kiss him on the cheek, which I think is why the last several rounds were free. I wish I could tell you more about that night, but I really can’t remember. It was the only time in my life where I drank so much that I suffered from memory loss.

When I go clubbing, I tend to get bored with the people I arrived with, so I’d leave them every so often and walk around the club and talk to random people (i.e., cute guys). But I can only do this when I’m drunk off my ass because I’m normally kind of shy. So that night as I was making one of my rounds, I ran into my old college friends, Katie and George (from my last post) and some other people, and stayed to dance with them a bit. (Or was that the same night? I don’t know…I spent a lot of nights at Miyagi’s and they all kind of blend together.) Apparently at some point George and I started making out. I have a very very vague recollection of it and the only reason I know it happened is because my friends told me about it later. For the next few weeks George called and left a dozen messages, which I didn’t return. I really regret that Katie witnessed that, ugh, how embarrassing. I mean, this is the dude that she turned down. Gahhhh.

Anyways, so yeah. LA weekend. Six drunk single girls (and 2 designated drivers). I woke up Sunday morning at the girls’ apartment we were staying at, with absolutely no memory of how we even got there. I remember partying at the club… and then nothing. I literally have no memory of getting back into the van and going back to the apartment. I just suddenly woke up and I was there, wearing clothes that weren’t mine, and my face hurt. I didn’t feel like waiting around for the others to wake up, and all I wanted was to go home and get in my own bed. So I left and drove back to my parents’ house where I was living at the time. I slept for several more hours, then when I woke up, still hungover, I found out why my face hurt: I had a huge-ass bruise on my face and a big cut on my upper lip that had dried blood all over it. I had no idea how the heck that happened. My dad took one look at me and dragged me to the ER to see if my lip needed stitches.

It was totally surreal. The doctor and nurses thought my dad beat me up, so they separated us and asked me all kinds of questions in hushed voices, saying they could help if I just told them the truth. I kept saying that I didn’t remember how it happened, but I guess that sounded kinda fishy. Finally realizing I wasn’t going to tell them anything, the doctor looked at my cut and said that yes, I should’ve gotten stitches when it first happened, but since it had stopped bleeding, there was no point. He also said that because I didn’t come in right away and get it stitched up nice, it was going to leave a raised scar. Which it did. But it’s not overly obvious.

So back to the night in question. According to the girls who didn’t drink, D and R, this is what happened:

After the club closed, the six of us were completely wasted. We stood waiting outside the club while D and R went to get the van, and it was at that point that I tripped and fell on my face on the cement outside the club. Talk about the LAMEST WAY EVER to get injured. On the way home, some of us threw up in the van (which they had to clean out later, and were pissed that I left and didn’t help out). Oh, but I did recover one lovely memory: when we arrived, we were so nauseous from the ride that at least 4 of us knelt on the grass in front of the apartment and threw up. Some frat boy types were walking by and they laughed and whistled when they saw the row of girls throwing up. Especially since one of the girls was wearing a tube top and it had rolled down to her waist.

Poor D and R said that their apartment was like an infirmary. They had their hands full with 6 drunk girls throwing up all over the place. It seemed like every time they turned around, there was another fire to put out. One of the girls threw up on the carpet, another threw up in her bed, and apparently I climbed into the shower not once, but twice, with all my clothes on and turned on the water, so they had to change me twice – which is why I was wearing R’s clothes. I SO don’t remember doing that at all. But I do like getting into the shower when I’m drunk – makes it easier to wash off all the vomit as it, um, appears (I know, lovely image).

Not only was it the only time I suffered memory loss from drinking, but it was also the only time I had a hangover that lasted 48 hours. I think I took Monday off. When I got back to work on Tuesday, I had to make up all sorts of stories about why my face looked like someone beat the crap out of me. (“You should see the other girl!” Har, har.) It was all pretty embarrassing.

So yeah. I think D and R shoulda gotten a gold medal or something for putting up with us. I swore to myself (as I do after every drunken night) that I wouldn’t get so drunk again, only to break it the next time we partied. But at least I never got THAT drunk again.

the age of experimentation

So one of my friends read my love and friendship post and said that when she read the part where I first noticed E, she thought I was trying to say I was gay (not that there’s anything wrong with that). WTF? First of all, this is someone that knew me in my boy crazy days. Secondly, a girl can say another girl is hot, can’t she? So now I have to write about something that will really make my friend question my sexuality.

During my 4th year of college, I rented a 2-bedroom apartment with 3 other girls, two girls per room. I shared my room with another Asian girl, let’s call her Katie. She was a friend of a friend, and was introduced to us when we needed a 4th roommate. Katie and I hit it off and we stayed up late many nights talking about everything. She was cute and smart, but seemed to always get into relationships where the guy just used her for booty calls (AJ would probably say that she had daddy issues).

At that time, I had a boyfriend. VK and I had met my first year in the dorms, and we got together at the beginning of my 3rd year. It was a good relationship but was based more on camaraderie than passion. We both acknowledged that we wanted to date around more before settling down, but ended up being together for almost 3 years.

Anyways, the first few months of living with Katie were great. We shared our boy stories with each other. We talked about sex a lot, as girls will do. Finally, we revealed to each other that we’d always been curious about having sex with another girl. (It wasn’t just us, though, right? Everyone gets curious at that age, right?) After that, we would talk about it every so often, and there was always an unspoken “well gee, why don’t WE do it?” I always thought she was cute, but I definitely started to feel attracted to her after that, and I was pretty certain that she was attracted to me.

So there is actually a whole side story here involving a friend of VK named Dave, but that would make this post way too long. Suffice to say that both Katie and I were attracted to Dave, and Dave was attracted to both Katie and me, and Katie and I were attracted to each other. And although no one explicitly said anything, none of that was really a secret between the 3 of us. It was a very confusing time in my life where I questioned myself a lot on whether I really wanted to be in a monogamous relationship. And whether I was bi.

One night, we decided to have a girls’ night out with a few other girl friends, which involved dinner first and then dancing. Katie and I got ready together in our room. Her hair was really cute, she had the Rachel haircut, and she said that she could do the same style on me if I wanted. I agreed and she had me sit down in front of the mirror while she worked on my hair.

DAMN. Maybe it was everything that had been building up between the two of us, or maybe I was ovulating or something, but I was SO freaking turned on the entire time. Is the head/hair an erogenous area or something? I could barely sit still while her hands were in my hair. Also, she was wearing this really sexy dress and she looked fantastic in it. I could tell she was pretty turned on as well. The sexual tension was so thick I can’t believe nothing happened. Maybe if we had been drinking…

Later when we were at the restaurant, a bunch of our guy friends suddenly showed up, including Dave. It turned out that one of our girl friends had told them where we’d be, not realizing they’d try to crash girls’ night. Thankfully, VK was not with them. I was still free for the night! One of the guys, George, who always had a thing for Katie, literally moaned when he saw her. (I only say this to illustrate how hot she looked.) I heard Dave tell Katie that my hair looked really nice. She fondled my head proprietarily and said, “I did that, doesn’t it look good?” Then she added, “And it was a HUGE turn-on, too.” Oh my God, did she really say that out loud? I kept my head turned away and tried to pretend I didn’t hear it, but from the corner of my eye I could see Dave’s eyes nearly pop out of his skull. He kept trying to exchange glances with me (since he knew how I felt about her), but I avoided looking at him.

Sadly, there is not much more to report from that night. We went to the club, we danced, we got drunk, Katie and I were all over each other, Dave and I were all over each other, and Dave and Katie were probably all over each other as well. Damn, why did I have to have a boyfriend?! A couple hours later, we migrated from the club to someone’s apartment. Things were just starting to get interesting when for some reason I decided to call VK and tell him where I was. He yelled at me and kept asking why didn’t I call him earlier to join us, since it was no longer “girls’ night”. I sobered up in a flash, had a “what the fuck am I doing?” moment, told everyone I had to leave, and slinked back to VK’s apartment.

Nothing ever happened between me and Katie or me and Dave. Katie and Dave did get together briefly, but he basically just used her for booty calls and said shit about her behind her back (asshole). I stopped talking to him after that. Katie and I had a falling out towards the end of the year and no longer talk either.

I don’t know what would have happened that night if I wasn’t dating VK. But who knows…even if I wasn’t, I might have been too chicken in the end.

One last note to add here is a message to my girl friends reading this: never fear (and no offense), you are all beautiful women, but I am not harboring any secret fantasies about any of you. I’m secure in my sexuality, happily married, and besides, I’m way past the age of experimentation.

This was actually a really difficult post for me to publish. I sat on it for a few days before doing so, because I knew this would probably completely change the image that people who know me IRL have of me. I rationalized it by saying to myself that I am not unique, that many people go through a phase of experimentation, and most likely got WAY further than I did.

Also, I told my friend (from the first paragraph) that I was posting this, and she wants everyone to know that she REALLY didn’t think I was gay (not that there’s anything wrong with that), and that she is cute (she is).