….when it’s a back massager.
I’ve been writing (often badly) about love and sex for years, which, Imma be straight with you, Pranksters, Carrie Bradshaw makes seem much more glamorous than it truly is. I mean, I’ve never actually made enough to outfit my closet in anything besides Target Sale Stuffs, not Manolo Blahnik’s, and I’m okay with that. Shoes for $400 bucks would make me nervous and twitchy the same way owning a Ferrari in New York would: while sometimes pretty, it’s not worth the anxiety it would cause. I mean, if I ruin a $20 pair of shoes, I’m annoyed with myself. I can’t imagine how I’d feel if I broke $400 worth of footwear.
Alas, I digress.
Because I happen to own a blog that ends with “blog,” I’m often hit up by PR companies to send me such items as “a coupon for a frozen dinner” that the PR company is just CERTAIN I’ll want to wax poetic about to my awesome Pranksters, not understanding that I rarely eat, and when I do, it’s not the cause for a blog post. I’m no cooking blogger, y’all, and I normally want to hork anytime anyone posts pictures of food. It just doesn’t translate well without a $5,000 camera and professional lighting set-up, which, Pranksters, I neither have nor want. Who wants to look at their pores under those lights? (answer: not me)
Once in awhile, though, I’ll receive an offer for a sex toy, which, duh, of course I take it. Doesn’t mean I need to write a soft-core porn post, although that might be humorously disgusting, but still – who doesn’t like sex toys? (answer: people who hate fluffy kittens)(no, not SWEATER kittens).
Well before I moved, Lelo (link PROLLY not appropriate for work), who happens to be one of the best sex toy makers out there, somehow stumbled here and read about the pain in my neck and how I “give good spasm,” (neck spasms, Pranksters) and offered to send me one of their neck massagers. Which, after I’ve already done PT, weird drugs, seen a chiropractor, and bought a tens machine, all to no avail, I was more than willing to give a proverbial shot.
When it arrived, I’d already forgotten that Lelo had sent me something, so I was shocked to open the package and find this:
I goggled at it for awhile, certain that this couldn’t possibly be a sex toy. I mean, it LOOKS like a sex toy, but frankly, I couldn’t POSSIBLY begin to imagine using that on anything other than my neck. The two men in my house disagreed.
Dave: “WOAH, why is there a huge penis charging on the kitchen counter?”
Me: “It’s not a penis, it’s a neck massager.”
Dave: “Bwahahahaha. No it’s not.”
Me: “I did pop three babies out of my vagina, but damns, that thing isn’t gonna fit there.”
Dave: “Bwahahahaha.”
—————–
(two hours later)
The Guy (Formerly) On My Couch: “Wow, Becks, nice dildo.”
Me (through clenched teeth): “It’s NOT a dildo.”
The Guy (Formerly) On My Couch: “Oh yes it is.”
—————–
So that was that. Two out of two men assumed that the neck massager I’d been using to work that knot from my neck, the one that had been there for three years was actually intended for the vagina. I had no way to make them understand that this neck massager was, in fact, a massager and not an extremely large dlido.
Finally, I approached the two of them, who were sitting on the couch together eating dinner and watching incredibly crappy television, neck massager in my hand.
“If this were a dildo,” I began. “Why on EARTH would a well-known sex toy company send me it under the guise of it being a “neck massager?”
They both stared at me, slack-jawed before nodding a bit.
“Gotta admit,” Dave began. “You have a point there,” finished The Guy (Formerly) On My Couch.
“Good,” I replied. “Glad we had this little talk.”
As I turned to walk out of the room, Dave leaned over and semi-whispered to The Guy (Formerly) On My Couch. “It’s totally a dildo.”
“Yep,” The Guy (Formerly) On My Couch replied. “It sure is.”
(my living room, four days before moving)
Me: “Hey J, come check out this costume! It’s a SHARK! You could be the Land Shark for Halloween!”
(sidebar: I’ve been trying unsuccessfully for 11 years to get one of my children to be the Land Shark for Halloween. 11. Years)
Alex (uninterested): “Nah.”
Me: “HEY MIMI, YOU could be the Land Shark this year for Halloween!”
Mimi (similarly uninterested): “Nah.”
Me (gearing up to spend some quality time perusing the wares at one of my fav Halloween stores): “Well, what do you want to be for Halloween this year?”
Alex: “Batman.”
Mimi: “Batman.”
Me: (goggles)
Me: “Are you SURE?”
Alex + Mimi: “YES.”
Me (tries not to look TOO unhappy about the prospect of not perusing costumes for the kids): “Ooookay.”
(time passes as I sulk. Mimi tries unsuccessfully to wrastle the iPad away from me.)
Alex: “Hey, Mama? What are YOU going to be for Halloween?”
Me: “Hrms. The Twitter Fail Whale?”
Alex (genuinely puzzled): “What?”
Me: “Nothing. I don’t know – maybe “Your Mom” or something?”
Mimi: “You should be Catwoman.”
Me: (thinks to self – no longer in my early twenties = not dressing slutty for Halloween) “Um…”
Alex: “Or Poison Ivy. You love plants.”
Me: “Ummmm….”
Alex: “Dad can be the Penguin.”
Dave, from the other room: “HEY!”
Alex (confidently and not deterred by Dave’s dismay) “And Big Ben can be The Riddler.”
Me (three remaining brain cells spell out one phrase “buy cat ears and DO NOT LOOK SLUTTY”): “Okay, kiddo. You got it.”
(Alex and Mimi scamper off.)
————-
I took to The Twitter to ask for advice on buying capes for the tiniest of crusaders, figuring having new capes at my house could help with the transition a bit, and this is where it’s awesome to have Pranksters. My girl Jessica came through for me. Again.
(note: the boxes are, thankfully, now gone)
(the awesome hat, however, remains)
(just looking at the boxes gives me hives)
And now? They’re ready to fight crime. Just like the recycling lady.
And no, for the record, I never did go to the office and pick up the sheet about recycling. Seemed… like a waste of space.
—————
When I was in the hospital, having just popped a small creature who looked shockingly like a garden gnome out of my delicate girl bits, I held him for a spell in the quiet, darkened room as the doctor finished delivering the placenta and doing whatever it is that doctor’s do to your crotchal region after a baby is born. I held my second son to my breast and looked up at his father, stars in my eyes (okay, it was painkillers, but who’s counting?) and said, “I won’t ever have to give this one back.” He nodded, a smile twitching the corners of his mouth, his labor-long headache long since dissipated.
“No,” he replied, “we won’t.”
We were referring to, of course, the weekenders our eldest son had occasionally with the other OTHER side of his family. While we both knew that these were not only necessary, but important for our firstborn, it was heartbreaking to watch him leave each Friday and return overstimulated and exhausted on Sunday. Those days in which he was gone, it felt as though part of our hearts had gone with him – probably because they had.
When the divorce card got played, the first thing my mind jumped to was not “I’m going to have to find a real job,” nor was it, “will anyone ever love me again?” No. It was “what about the kids? I can’t leave my kids again – some days, they’re all that keeps me going forward.”
I knew that moving out; being unable to pay the mortgage, these had implications that were far-reaching – I’d have to, as previously stated, get a real job and learn to be alone after spending my entire life with another person around. I’d have to scrimp and save and cut coupons and figure out one makes “Ramen Bake,” I’d have to spend nights in an apartment so quiet that the on-switch on the heater would make me jump half-out of my skin. But most importantly – I’d have to leave my kids some of the time.
Now it’s not like I planned to be all thwap-thwap-thwap INCOMING helicopter parent once my second son popped out. I’d briefly considered attending college with him, but that’s mostly because I figured he’d never properly become potty trained, and frankly, someone had to teach the kid how to do keg stands, and his father, well, he was a Normal Rockwell painting, while I sat in the very back of the classroom, playing games on my phone, figuring out how many days, exactly, I could ditch before my grades dropped.
But I never really thought about the possibility of being separated from my children before it was the right time. I mean, I wouldn’t go to prom with the kid (PROBABLY), but I did expect that I’d see them most (read: all) days until they hit THAT point.
I was, of course, as I am so often, wrong.
I can accept that my nine year union dissolved – we both deserve our happy, neither of us is “at fault” because, well, as my therapist says, “divorce requires two people, just like marriage,” and Dave and I are more than amicable – we’re friends. We owe that to our children.
This weekend marked the end of the dreaded first week, the week that found me sobbing like a whiny baby on the couch as I watched and re-watched episodes of trashy television, which, Pranksters, I’m going to tell you, should be a prescription for all that ails you. And shit, it’s better trashy television than my wedding video, of which, I have to say, I don’t own, because I refused to spring for a video no one would ever choose to watch willingly. I didn’t want to be that newlywed that showed every single person who came to my home the wedding video, pointing out “the good” parts. Because hello, boring.
Amelia, thrilled out of her wee mind, came by on Friday, forgoing her normal McDonald’s dinner with her brothers, and spent the night. Alex came over on Saturday, proclaiming that this would be “the best day ever,” because he got to *gasp* sleep at Mama’s house. And as the children predicted, those were the two very best days I’ve had in a long time.
Yesterday, they returned to Dad’s house, and I was left, sitting alone with my trashy television, the silence of my empty apartment thumping in my ears.
I looked around, tears in my eyes, at all of the things in my big girl apartment. The bed and the couches. The end table and lamps. The zombie gnomes in the bathroom, sandwiched between a mushroom nightlight.
And I realized, for the millionth time that week, that my house, my house without children, it is not a home – it’s just the place where I live.
And that sort of sadness, it’s nearly impossible to shake.
