Tag Archives: lonely

You Want a Social Life, With Friends. (And an apology.)

29 Nov

Hi. Hello. I am here, and I am going to write something.

Before I do, I thought it right for me to apologize for an issue that has been needling me for quite some time now. No, I’m not going to apologize for my six month absence. I might kind of try to explain it though, so hold your horses.

My apology has to do with some things that I’ve written in past posts about fat bodies. In one post, about that terrible wedding I was in, I implied that the kind of awful bride was unattractive because she is fat. I later went on to snidely describe her second husband as “probably weighing 600 lbs”., which again, was my attempt at negating the fact that she found love and marriage for a second time. “Yeah, another person wanted to marry her, but just look at him.” I was saying that without saying it. Probably because I was/am a coward.

In another post, the name and content of which I can’t recall and am both too jittery and lazy to search for, I claimed that proof of my self-love was the fact that I don’t weigh 300 lbs.

I am sorry for writing those things. They are examples of the hatred of fat bodies – including my own – that I’ve internalized from a variety  of sources. I am working at ridding myself of that hate. Tumblr has been a priceless resource in my learning that fat bodies have value, are deserving of love, are beautiful, and can tell us nothing about a person’s health, abilities, or self-esteem.

Surprisingly, no one called me out on the things that I wrote. But maybe someone read my hateful words and was hurt. I couldn’t let that possibility stand without acknowledging how sorry I am, how much I am trying and want to change, and that I am asking for forgiveness. Please forgive me.

I’m leaving those posts up as they are (considering I can’t even find one of them, ugh) and hope that my future pieces will demonstrate my growth and sensitivity since writing them.

Thank you for sticking around as I grow.

 

You Want a Social Life, With Friends

You want a social life, with friends.

A passionate love life and as well

To work hard every day. What’s true

Is of these three you may have two

And two can pay you dividends

But never may have three.

 

There isn’t time enough, my friends-

Though dawn begins, yet midnight ends-

To find the time to have love, work, and friends.

Michelangelo had feeling

For Vittoria and the Ceiling

But did he go to parties at day’s end?

Homer nightly went to banquets

Wrote all day but had no lockets

Bright with pictures of his Girl.

 

I know one who loves and parties

And has done so since his thirties

But writes hardly anything at all.

-by Kenneth Koch

 

I never thought I’d be the type of person to have a favorite poem. I just didn’t think poetry was for me, wasn’t sure that I liked it all that much, the work of Langston Hughes and Shel Silverstein being notable exceptions. And then a few years ago I read Amy Krouse Rosenthal’s 2005 memoir Encyclopedia of An Ordinary Life.

In it she mentions that Kenneth Koch’s You Want a Social life, With Friends is her favorite poem and told a funny story about meeting its author. I read it over and over again, and the next time I was at work, I made a too-dark photocopy and hung it on my fridge.

You Want a Social Life, With Friends resonated with me. I was someone who was chronically lonely, felt confused and like a failure when it came to her career. I was absolutely convinced that “everybody else” had managed to master having fulfilling work, romantic love, and meaningful friendships. I did take solace in Koch’s assertion that “What’s true is of these three you may have two and two can pay you dividends but never may have three.” So, all I had to do – like the Disney villain I am deep in my cold, dark heart – was sit back and wait for my friends and acquaintances to suffer some loss, of a lover, of a job, of friends, because no one can have it all; look, I have proof!

I didn’t really want anyone I knew and liked to lose anything. But I desperately wanted all three for myself, and the poem was a reminder that life is full of sacrifice and compromise and comes without guarantee. Of anything. I remember feeling a chill of foreboding each time I read it after first finding it. I’d find some way to have all three, dammit! I’d beat the odds!

Now, here I am, 35 years old, feeling as lonely as ever; feeling as unfulfilled at work as I hoped to never be.

Part of me believes that there is still hope. That if I can maybe put myself on a writing schedule, something will come of my questionable talent. My current job may even allow me to pursue a second bachelor’s degree in professional writing for cheap or free. The work piece could potentially, someday come together. Maybe.

As far as love and friends? My hope meter is running on empty. Over the summer I did things that made me think “This. This is the moment when the pendulum swung to the other side with such force that I don’t think I’ll be able to move it back.” I let people borrow money, I stopped wearing contacts, and I went on a solo vacation. These events signaled to me that I was barreling towards spinsterhood at a frightening speed.

The money thing was a mistake. I should have known better. I’ve watched enough “Judge Judy” to know that owed money will destroy relationships despite one’s best efforts. Not only have I stopped asking for the money, I’ve stopped communicating with the people who benefited from my foolishness. I don’t think that they’ve noticed. And to be fair, I was – I am – seething under the surface, trying to hide my resentment, my disappointment, how used I feel. I didn’t tell them about my feelings. I didn’t hound them for the cash.

“It’s not fair,” I thought. “They have families and lovers and close friendships and now my money.” I was in communication with them until September, when the people in question suddenly stopped their correspondence. I hoped that I’d hear from them on or around my birthday; they owed me at least that much. I heard nothing. The idea of initiating contact with them makes my heart pound, my gut churn, my hands tremble. The realization that I lent the money with so many invisible strings attached makes me feel ashamed.

How is this a sign of my spinsterhood? I’m like the rich old aunt that never married, who eats store-brand canned soup and has to make it home in time to watch “Jeopardy!”. No one comes around until holiday time, because they know Auntie gives the best gifts, the poor sucker. “I mean, she’s got nobody, hardly any expenses. What does she need all that money for anyway? I’ll send her a card.” The card never comes. I open another can of chicken and rice and set up the TV tray in the living room. Alex Trebek always was a handsome man.

So that’s two friends I’ll never hear from again, or am doomed to have awkward, sporadic contact with when they feel like paying Auntie a pity visit.

The contacts thing and the vacation thing happened simultaneously. I planned a last minute, somewhat haphazardly planned vacation to St. Lucia. I’d never been out of the country alone before and I knew that if I waited until someone could go with me, I’d never travel. I spent five lonely days at a luxury spa. The island was beautiful, the weather lovely, the people damn nice. My tour guide hit on me; it was really uncomfortable, especially considering he did it after telling me that Tyler Perry movies send necessary messages of ‘warning’ to those wacky black women that want to be independent and self-sufficient and in charge.

I met two nice English ladies old enough to be my mother, one also named Ambrosia. We chatted a bit and shared one night of cocktails and a meal together, then spent the rest of the time awkwardly waving to each other across the resort. I was seated at the communal table for other solo travelers on some other night and had an Asian-fusion four course meal with a lady elementary school principal from Canada. It was both better and worse than it sounds.

There was a young, fat, attractive American girl I hoped to befriend. She was alone, was wearing a fatkini, kept her nose in a book. The fact that she made bold fashion choices and liked to read had me sold. She never noticed my smiles, which in all the sunlight and happiness surrounding me may have made it look like I had a bad case of indigestion. I was too chicken to go over and say hello.

On my second day there, I realized that I’d left my contact lens case somewhere in America. I’d recently purchased new, large, bold frames, but have always felt ugly in glasses. I can’t see without either contacts or glasses, so I had no choice. I had to feel ugly for four days in paradise.

I never bothered to renew my lens prescription. I’ve been wearing my trendy glasses full-time since August. On one had, with my nose ring and natural hair, I’m at times convinced that I look okay. Like maybe I know people that live in Brooklyn or smoke weed out of decorative glass pipes or am vegan.

But then other times I’ll catch my reflection in some shiny surface when I’m off guard or try to take a selfie and the person I see looking back at me is a sexless nerd, who read in her hotel room in a foreign, tropical country; who got suckered into lending substantial amounts of money in the hopes that somebody would love her best; who sat and watched other people dance on the last night of her vacation, wearing her ill-fitting glasses while a stray cat took pity on her and kept her company.

I don’t really like that person so much.

She reeks of desperation. Her bug-eyed stare screams “I want a social life, with friends! A passionate love life, and to work hard every day!” I wonder which one of us screams the loudest.

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The Ambrosia Project.

7 May
Image

I blame you. Source

*August 13, 2017: (very brief) AUTHOR’S NOTE AT THE END*

Hey.

So, I’m back.

I’m not going to talk about where I’ve been. Mostly because it involves TMI about my uterus and the fact that I write an awful lot of fan fiction.

What I do want to talk about is the fact that last night, the season two finale of “The Mindy Project” aired. It was wonderful. I laughed. Out loud. I also cried. Quite a bit. There was screaming. The good kind. I love the show and wish very much that my life mimicked it somehow.

I mean, I wish that about a lot of media. I’m an intelligent only child; like, 75% of my life has been spent daydreaming and inserting myself into television, film, and book plots. And half the time, I’m not even the star. I’m the wacky, foul-mouthed side-kick with a heart of gold. That’s usually because in these dreams of mine I’m too busy with a successful pop/soul/R&B career to commit to being the star and head writer of a hit sitcom.

It has recently dawned on me that in my elaborate fantasies, I am Justin Timberlake. Well, I have Justin Timberlake’s career. Unlike him, I’ve embraced my curls and I can’t see myself settling for Jessica Biel.

Anyway, with all the daydreaming and fantasizing that I do, you’d think that I’d realize that sitcoms and movies and novels are just that: someone else’s daydreams and fantasies brought to life. In other words, these aren’t stories to measure one’s life against. They aren’t even real.

So why do I feel so horrible to have made it to almost 35 years of age without ever having been told “I love you” in a romantic context?

If all that stuff is fake; if it’s just a bunch of made up stories, it shouldn’t really bother me so much that I haven’t had that particular experience. I mean, I love the “Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit” franchise. I don’t curl up in my recliner and weep inconsolably after the midnight viewings because a gang of dwarfs still hasn’t shown up unannounced at my door to recruit me to be their robber so they can take back their mountain kingdom from an evil dragon. That’s just as made up as a sitcom about a chubby, almost 35 year-old, dark-skinned, Indian-American OBGYN living and searching for love in NYC.

The answer is obvious; one is based on some version of a totally plausible reality, and the other is the stuff of legend and religious allegory and maybe a metaphor for World War II (I don’t know; I haven’t read the books yet, okay?).

No one is expecting me to go off on an adventure with Gandalf and Thorin Oakenshield (He’s been mentioned twice on a single black woman’s blog. That’s got to be a record or something. And that was probably racist? Eh.). But people do wonder why I don’t date. And by people I mean me. I’m even wondering if I could at this point. It’s been almost fifteen years since I’ve been in what I thought was any sort of committed relationship or had sex. At this point, I’d be less surprised if Bilbo Baggins invited me over for Elevenses than if I was involved in a sexual relationship with a man.

And that’s not normal.

I don’t know what to do to change this. I’m in therapy. I’ve been in and out (but mostly in) therapy for the last fifteen years. I’ve gone on dates with two men, the last time around the summer of 2011? 2012? And they were both terrible. Pretty sure they felt the same way about me, but we all thought “Well, he/she went to college, and is a sentient being, and I don’t know. This is what people do, right?” That’s it.

There’s nothing normal about any of that.

From what I’ve gleaned from my mass consumption of media involving interpersonal relationships, one either dates around unsuccessfully until finding the one that was always there all along or finds the one at just the right moment or some shit; or is tragically knocked up or widowed and walls their heart off to protect against any future heartbreak, but they’ve got the tragic story or the dumb kid, so there’s that. Or there are the lucky ones, who find someone and it works out and they go along on the suggested path of mortgages and wedding registries and baby showers and date nights and blah blah blah.

There are no stories about weird freaks who got maybe a little bit raped in college and then got fat and then woke up and realized they were 34 and infertile and crying hysterically because Mindy Kaling and Chris Messina just have so much chemistry and overhear some girl – hardly even 21, for fuck’s sake – refer to 35 as being “kinda way up there” and said that a different 35 year-old woman needed to “hurry up and get on the boy thing” while you think to yourself “I wouldn’t even know how and every time I’ve tried the guys have literally run away in the other direction” and you wonder what the hell is wrong with you if every form of media featuring people your age shows them either married with kids or in some weird friend-group-living situation or dating all the time and you don’t have anything, nothing and you can’t even have a one-night-stand because you don’t know how and even if you did what about AIDS and sexual assault and your gross body?

But you’ll always have your – hopefully quirky? – knack for stream-of-consciousness run on sentences on your semi-abandoned blog, right?

I don’t even know what the hell I’m trying to say anymore. It’s almost 5:00am. I’m almost 35. There is something terribly, terribly wrong with me. Please don’t tell me that there isn’t. The number one wrong thing is that I am not Mindy Kaling, for starters.

I mean, look, I’m at the point where I’m thisclose to consulting an astrologist? Astrologer? I don’t fucking know. And this sort of wacky, desperate bullshit would make for wonderful prime-time sitcom television, but the depression and self-loathing and blackness and fatness and fact that men find me absolutely disgusting makes it super hard to pitch my “story”.

Shit, I don’t even want to watch it and I’m the showrunner.

*Aug. 13, 2017: For Very Important Reasons, I stopped watching the show, and being a fan of Mindy’s, about two years ago. I was going to take this post down, but re-reading it provides me with a sense of bittersweet nostalgia which almost drowns out the embarrassment.

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Triage.

12 Aug

My needs have not been met.

I feel like a jerk for dwelling so much on the fact that a big part of the life that I dreamed about may not come true, which is weird, since I haven’t even had two weeks to process it. I suppose I feel this way because I’ve been under the impression that I’m to just suck it up and move on when it comes to the little tragedies and heartaches I’ve faced.

It has started to dawn on me that I’ve been trying to function for years and basically failing and beating myself up about it. I just couldn’t understand why I couldn’t simply be normal and thin and do laundry and put on makeup and make my bed and pack a lunch and be on time and take showers and not scream at my parents and stop fantasizing about killing myself until I finally realized that I’ve been wandering around throughout life for the last decade plus three years with a gaping, festering wound that hasn’t been properly dealt with while adding other wounds around it that don’t fully heal and it truly is a wonder that I’m anywhere at all.

I’ve tried to make people understand the screaming void I feel inside, going without any sort of physical intimacy or love for more than a decade. And it isn’t just about the lack of sex. I see single people who’ve gone without sex for a very long time but have children, and perhaps I’m making a huge and incorrect assumption, but I don’t believe that they suffer in the same way because they can hold their child and kiss their child and feel that incomparable parent/child love and know that they are needed and wanted. I imagine that this is not the case for everyone, but it is still something that I do not and possibly will never have.

To never have been held out of romantic love, to go without feeling someone’s lips against mine, a hand in my own; to not feel the pleasure that another’s body can bring mine and to not know if my body can do the same, to continue to go on without these common human experiences year after year after year and to be expected to feel okay and to function normally? I’m starting to figure that that may have been an expectation too great for me to meet.

Perhaps it would be different if we were talking about three years instead of thirteen. Maybe if there had been a kind and gentle lover or two for me to look back on and fondly remember instead of one man-child whose pleasure was derived from the pain he caused me.

How do I make anyone understand what it does to my feelings of self-worth to admit that the only man to see my naked body mocked it? The only words he uttered were meant to criticize and deliver his displeasure? “Find your beauty from within!” everyone screams! “No one is going to love you if you don’t love yourself!” “There is more to life than sex and relationships! By the way, did I tell you all about the fabulous sex I’m having in my feminist, kink-positive, poly-amorous relationship?”

I would just like someone, for once in all this time, to acknowledge my wounds. I don’t want to be handed anymore band-aids or children’s Tylenol in the form of “Well, let’s redo your Match.com profile!” or “What you need to do is organize your closets.” I need wound care. I need stitches and sutures and cauterization. I need major treatment.

I don’t want to hear that no one knew what was going on; that they couldn’t have helped me because I didn’t say anything. The Ambrosia most people knew died 13 years ago and a zombie has been walking around in her place. I don’t know if there’s anything that can bring her back. She’s probably a long lost cause. But I’m here. Try with me.

When I was around, I don’t know, 22, 23 years old, and the wounds were far more fresh, before the gangrene had started to set in, I went to a counselor on my college campus. A black woman. She’d understand me. She’d see the blood, the tears in my flesh, how the wound wasn’t clotting even after two or three years. I don’t know how far how I got with my story. I was telling her about Christmas, about the gifts he’d demanded, and how I’d nervously driven all over the state to make sure I found each thing on the list, worried about what psychological trauma he’d inflict on me if I failed. I might have even told her about my visit to the emergency room in the middle of the night that he wouldn’t take me to. “If you’re gonna go, you’re going alone” he’d growled. She’d rolled her eyes and thrown her hands up in the air. “He was a 19 year-old boy” she interrupted. “That’s how 19 year-old boys are. I mean, really, what did you expect?” That I years later dated and was rejected by her son only added insult to injury.

Though I don’t want the focus to be all on him, I do want it to be understood how hard it is to feel normal and unbroken when the last relationship you’ve had and the only physical intimacy you’ve known is with someone who was so cruel to you, no matter their age. I can’t believe it took me this long to figure out that this has been the black cloud I’ve been under for so long. And every time someone said that boyfriends and sex were overrated and that I didn’t want one anyway and did I really want children and that I had to focus on loving myself and that I wasn’t trying hard enough to meet people and maybe it was because I went natural or put on weight or didn’t smile enough or lived in the wrong city, they dug their dirty finger deep into my wound when they should have wrapped their arms around me and said “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. It’s not your fault. You need to heal. You need to rest. ”

In the meantime, does it mean that while I heal, I must still go without physical, emotional, and sexual intimacy? Do I have to continue to starve? When you starve a thing it dies and I’m afraid that my ability to give and express love and intimacy is in fact dying.

In the meantime, while I heal, can I be brought back to life?

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Gee, has it really been that long?

2 Aug

My last blog post up in this piece was in May. Damn. Sorry, anybody still reading. Well, I’m back. I decided to accept the #31WriteNow blog challenge, which I then promptly forgot about, so of course I’m starting a day late. Story of my life. I have a valid excuse, as I had surgery on July 31st, so there. Feel sorry for me!

A lot has happened in my absence. The Condo of Doom is actually becoming a lovely place. My hair is now blonde. I went to Toronto. I had a spinal tap. I had to go to the emergency room. I had to have something called a blood patch. I had all sorts of procedures involving my hoo-ha. I learned that I probably won’t be able to have children. And I sort of became slightly tumblr famous by writing fan fiction about. . . um. . . ahem. . . Drake.

Yeah, I glossed over lots of ugly bits there in the middle, but I don’t really want to talk about any of that. I’ve had to talk about all that stuff at the one place where I shouldn’t have to utter a single word about my personal life: work. Getting time off requires that we perform a lyrical dance and recite free-form poetry that describes when we need time off and why.

Anyhoodle, you can expect the tales of woe and mirth about my life as an unsexed, lonely, anonymous spinster to return for at the least the next 30 days.

I know you can’t wait.

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What’s so ‘no’ about no?

13 Dec

See? ‘No’ is so easy to say that a group of middle-aged men got together and wrote a song about it and then had pretty teenaged black girls sing it. Source

I fear that when I return to my currently godforsaken place of employment in 14 hours and 22 minutes that I will have the living shit embarrassed out of me. Yes, more than usual. Here’s why:

Over the summer, a handsome man began to appear fairly regularly at the old jobby-job. In my line of work (and no, I’m not going to come out and tell you what it is) I deal with a lot of students so I just assumed he was one. All the women save for one sensible and fabulous young lady lost their minds whenever he came in. They went crazy for good reason. Picture Jason Statham’s younger, taller, balder, hotter, vaguely Puerto Rican looking brother and you’ve got this guy. I tried my best to keep my cool because I hate attractive people that KNOW they’re attractive and try to capitalize on said attractiveness and I judge attractive people with a harshness that sometimes frightens me. But not for long.

See, I figure if you look that good, something has got to be hella wrong with you. I won’t put the fault(s) I ultimately find on blast. Usually. They’re more for my own peace of mind. Since I didn’t find any right away in Jason 2.0, I figured he had to be stupid or a dick or a stupid dick and he’d show his true self eventually. Because most men and especially conventionally attractive men look past, beyond, and/or through me, Jason 2.0 didn’t phase me at first. The giggling, panting, trembling mess that I used to call my staff and coworkers wanted to know his name, so I said “Hey, what’s your name?” complete with the thug’s chin tilt and everything. They wanted to know what he did so I says to him, I says “And whattya do?” He told me while The Mess looked on like a bunch of baby deer. And that was that. Jason 2.0 was just another human male type person with a nice face. And body. Not that I was looking. Ahem.

Then his visits became more and more frequent. He was always smiling and so personable, even with me. He remembered my name. He was friendly. And I could feel my cold, dead heart start to thaw. Based on his line of work he couldn’t be THAT stupid. He had proven to be kind, even when I was a total bitch and wouldn’t give him the 20 binder clips he asked for, afraid that he was trying to pull one over on me with his handsomeness. I gave him 12 and made a big deal about it. He smiled and was polite through the whole thing.

Even though Jason 2.0 was shaving his head to disguise male pattern baldness and appeared to be wearing at least some obviously fake or heavily repaired teeth, he was still beautiful, relatively smart, and kind. I felt like a troll in his presence and made myself scarce when he came around, answering in one syllable grunts when forced into conversation with him. He had proven to be a damn near flawless attractive person which made me feel all the more ugly by comparison.

Eventually, the tide started to turn when I noticed an ever present goofiness about his personality. I’ve always been drawn to men who are basically floppy puppies in human form and he seemed to be a very eager Golden Retriever, with his big smile and enthusiasm and loud, excited talking. And maybe did I notice him looking at me, like he actually saw me as a woman and not some angry blob keeping him from the binder clips? I started to come out of my shell and actually smile at Jason 2.0 and stay in the room when he entered it. I started to think that maybe he was a safe person to like who might possibly like me back.

So I did what any girl would do to show interest in a potentially special person: I eavesdropped and I lied. While busy with other tasks I listened as he shared his Thanksgiving plans with a coworker, noting his ever present excitement over his favorite team playing on the holiday. I was unwilling to watch the actual game but made sure to find out if they won. They did, and the next time I saw him made a point of grunt-whispering (my specialty!) “Hey, your team won.”

The look on his face was so. . . bright, I guess, that you’d have thought I’d handed him season tickets. “You remembered!” he gasped. I turned red and farted out a “Yeah.” And you wonder why I’m single.

He then asked me sports-type questions and I felt my eyes start to glaze over. I initially told the truth, sort of, saying that I hadn’t watched the game as I didn’t like either team. He asked me who I did like and I lied and told him who my dad likes, as taste in sports teams seems to be genetically inherited and/or geographically based. He “reminded” me about an upcoming game between his team and “mine” and rattled off facts and figures I tried to listen to. I then shouted out names that I hoped had something to do with the sport and we had a friendly rivalry going. I had something to talk to Jason 2.0 about.

I felt particularly brave after all the fibbing I did about being a sports fan, so I sent him an email telling him how excited I was that my team was going to destroy his and thanked him for the chat. He wrote back the next day, writing that he’d be watching the game with friends who liked my team and like to “talk junk” and could see that junk-talking was right up my alley. He ended his message by stating it was always a pleasure chatting with me.

For a minute I thought that maybe I could become a sports fan. I looked up stats and read about the rivalry between the teams. It didn’t take, but I tried. His team beat “mine” by one point. I couldn’t wait for him to stop in so we could resume our good-natured teasing.

He didn’t and I was a bit disappointed, but it’s a busy time of year in our line of work so I thought I’d be brave and reply to his message. I told him I expected him to come in and brag about his team’s win, but figured he hadn’t since a one point win wasn’t anything to brag about. I then wrote the unthinkable: “Hey, would you like to get a coffee or a drink or something with me?”

And here’s where the title of this post comes in. He hasn’t written back. I haven’t seen him either. He came in looking for me on Monday, telling a coworker he had to talk to me about something and for a chunk of time much larger than I’d like to admit I was excited and hopeful. He was looking for me? He has to talk to me about something? I was ready to pick out flatware until it dawned on me: if his answer was yes, he would have written back something along the lines of “Sure. Where and when?” He’s looking for me to tell me no.

I don’t know what it is that makes ‘no’ such a no for men. Maybe it is for women too but I don’t care about them (In this context. There, is that better?). All of my unanswered messages sent on Match.com. The guy a friend tried to set me up with who wouldn’t write back to my message of “Hello! You sound great! Hope to meet ya?” The dork who took me on six dates and spent hours of valuable phone and email time that he could have spent masturbating to his Star Wars action figure collection. Why couldn’t ANY of them just say ‘no’?

Now this ding dong is gonna come all up in my job tomorrow to tell me how he’s flattered, but oh, he just couldn’t. Hey mastermind; you could have saved us both a heap of trouble and sent this to me in a got dang email three to six days ago. Did it never occur to this nincompoop that I might be getting my hopes along with my BMI up? Why would you wait to dash a bitch’s dreams of caressing your bald head? And why would you do it in person?

I guess I should be touched that he’s doing it at all considering my track record. But I’m not because up until about seven hours ago I was delusional enough to think that he was coming in tomorrow to tell me ‘yes’ until I realized how dumb that would be, waiting a week to deliver good news. There’s a reason motherfuckers never fire workers on Monday. Those sadistic bastards get their rocks off from the wait and the week’s worth of labor. The “nice” ones are simply trying to avoid the inevitable.

I am going to get fired by a handsome-ass man tomorrow. I don’t think he’s going to offer me a severance package.

“But Ambrosia, couldn’t you be wrong? What if he did want to wait and say yes and make plans in person?” you ask. Dear reader, don’t be ridiculous. What in my history would make you think that? Remember, my last surprise was some douchenozzle I called a friend decked out in blackface. Jason 2.0 showing up to my job slathered in shoe polish is more likely than him coming to say ‘yes’ to my coffee or whatever date.

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It’s now the tomorrow I was so fearful of above. There’s an hour left till I go wait in line to see The Hobbit by myself  am finished with work and there has been no sign of Jason 2.0. Actually, I can’t say that with complete certainty as I made sure to busy myself in a remote area far from my desk during the time that he usually arrives. Yes, I am a chicken.

That still doesn’t change my frustration. I’ve mentioned before ’round these parts how hurtful being ignored is. To not even deem me worthy of a response is maybe the shittiest thing ever, second only to the explosive diarrhea caused by a BK Veggie Burger. Or so says a friend of mine.

The worst part is that based on his profession he is supposed to be at least a little bit skilled in the art of interpersonal interaction. Did I miss the study that found that people respond more favorably to being ignored and possibly avoided than to be simply told “No thanks. I’m not interested/dating someone/married/involved in a plot to castrate Justin Bieber and can’t really focus on dating anyone right now.”?

I don’t know. I don’t have anything else to say that I haven’t already said before. Dating while me SUCKS.

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Weird science.

12 Nov

What I wanted was a picture of a drag queen done up like a mad scientist, but I’ll settle for this. Source

I’m gonna conduct me some experiments.

Ain’t nothing going the way I want it to, so I’m gonna go ahead and change ALL the things around. To the best of my abilities. Before something else distracts me. Like another weekend marathon of Rupaul’s Drag Race Allstars. Ahem.

My first experiment involved my logging on to that godforsaken Match.com and once I did, shit got real. I put up pictures that I took, like, yesterday, that showcase my fat ass and Bruno Mars butch queen hair cut and took down the ones from thinner, longer haired days gone by. Went ahead and changed my body type descriptor to “Full-Figured” (I would have preferred to use “Heavy-Set”, but it just sounds so masculine.). I changed the essay portion of my profile to one that accurately showcases my sparkling personality. Now it’s time to sit back and wait. For what, I don’t know.

I’ve got three more months to comply with Match.com’s rigamarole surrounding their six-month guarantee before I can get my $100-and-something-dollars back. If I can show that I’ve done all the crap that they say will get me a date but don’t actually get a date after six months, they’ll refund my money. Okay, Match. We’re on. I’ve sent something like 25+ emails to men that caught my eye and received one reply. Well, two, if you count the guy that wrote back to tell me that I had reinforced his decision to never date black women. SUCCESS!

Since I am required to contact five men during each 30-day cycle as part of the six-month guarantee, I did a search to find the next recipient of one of my unanswered emails. I like to use Match.com’s “Reverse Match” option, which is described as “These matches are looking for someone like you based on what you told us about yourself in your profile.” No one is actually looking for a 30-35-year-old, never married, fat, black, average-to-ugly looking woman; it’s just a bunch of guys who have “No preference” listed under height, weight, ethnicity, etc. We simply end up with each other in the list of results when we go searching for someone to pin our hopes and dreams on.

Curious as to who has their sights not really set on a girl like Ambrosia? Here’s one of my favorite candidates:

I love to make aehc ather so happy most to time I lessons the others and I do going out for eating any restaurants and I do love going to en

I do love cooking outside mostly the times I go to park’s a lats and I do go fishing and I go to Parks for the feeds birds and the docs and I love to cooking outside very Mach

AND I LOVE GO TO BY THE BEACH

In case you were wondering, the first part is in bold because that incomprehensible phrase is what this 48-year-old gem used as his headline, you know, that first thing that I or some other lucky girl would see that would draw us into his web of seduction and romance and outside cooking.

I laughed so hard when I read his profile! I laughed and laughed and laughed until I burst into inconsolable tears when it dawned on me that even this man probably wouldn’t respond to an email that I sent to him. I wept bitterly at the thought that unless my super real profile experiment and/or the other I’ve got cooking works, I too will be 48-years-old and still on Match.com and I don’t like feeding birds or lessons the others so what will I write about in my profile?

Speaking of my other experiment: I want to utilize the dying art of the personal ad.

I’d clearly like to have the opportunity to feel like a normal, adult human being that other normal, adult human beings with wieners see as desirable and not as just a sexless lump of too much undigested cookie dough, but clearly the online, picture-prominent dating site isn’t working for me. Set-ups don’t work either, especially ones that are dependent on the introduction being made via picture exchange. I’m just not attractive enough for that sort of thing to work. I don’t have any redeeming physical qualities that a man under the age of 72 would be interested in. But I express myself sort of well through the written word. I mean, I hope I do. The five to nine daily visitors of this blog seem to think so!

The kind of guy that is checking personal ads, which are typically picture-less, is 1.) a serial killer, 2.) desperate, or 3.) that rare breed of man who is looking for someone that he first connects with intellectually and/or emotionally. He’ll worry about connecting with the writer’s vagina later. I need to attract the last two types of men. Though I have always wanted to turn in a serial killer to the authorities. It just stinks that you run the risk of being murdered, probably quite viciously and in a prolonged manner. Anyway.

I’d start my ad by highlighting my physical flaws in the hopes that once we exchange pictures, dudes are saying “Oh, she’s not that bad” after they’ve clicked on the emailed photo attachment. I’d get all the quirky, nerdy things about me out in the open. I could be specific in who I’m looking for, if I ever figure that out. I could be my best and worst self, all in a few hundred words. And I wouldn’t be dismissed right away because I’m too black or fat or old or not fat enough or ugly! They’d HAVE to get to know me first; they’d HAVE to take a gamble on me sight unseen! I NEED the personal ad in my life!

I answered one once and lived to tell the tale. Some Indian man was looking for a full-figured black woman to date. At the time, I was really into Indian men, I thought. To be perfectly honest, I like the idea of interracial dating for myself mostly because as someone who has been bombarded for the last 28 years or so with the message that nobody wants a black women, including/especially black men, it’s pretty dope to have some guy that doesn’t look like me think I’m hot and awesome, maybe even if it’s just because I’m black. Being fetishized does get old quick though. Catch-22, man.

Anyway, I answered that ad and gave the guy a chance for a bit. He turned out to be – or at least looked – far older and hairier than the picture he sent me indicated. He was a braggart and rather materialistic. And I had a sneaking suspicion that he was married. But I lived through the experience. He seemed to like me as much as an obnoxious, arrogant person can like another. It was a short lived confidence boost, too, even if I was the only woman dumb enough to answer his ad.

As the dreaded Holiday Season quickly approaches, I am even more compelled to test out my hypothesis that a not conventionally attractive person like myself may have better luck using personal ads without pictures. I can’t bear the thought of going to yet another holiday party solo. This is why I am thinking about expanding my personal ad experiment and creating one in search of a BFF along with one advertising my need for a lovah.

Now, if you’re reading this, it’s very likely that you’re a friend of mine in real life. You may be insulted by my proposing to advertise my need for a best friend. But here’s the thing: you’re great, probably. I most likely enjoy your company and chances are I think you’re a decent conversationalist. However, you have a spouse/partner/lover and/or children and/or pets and I can’t compete with those people and animals. I need a friend who is as “free” as I am. I need a friend with benefits.

Not those kind of benefits. I’m talking about the benefit of having a friend who has a “lifestyle”, if you can even call it that, similar to mine. I know I don’t rate very highly on anyone’s totem pole seeing as how I don’t give the people in my life sex or macaroni necklaces or poop on the rug.  I know that, apparently, pushing out babies and/or sharing a bed with someone you kind of like makes one much more likely to use the word “exhausted” pretty exclusively. I need someone who wants to go out on weekends and isn’t encumbered and drained by responsibilities to others. I need a plus one for weddings and parties so I can stop being the goddamn third or fifth wheel ALL of the time. I need a stylish fat girlfriend to go shopping with and a gay boyfriend to sit with at the movies.

I sort of have those things already, but there’s always a catch. My gay boyfriends live crazy far away. My stylish fat friends don’t have disposable income for shopping because their kids need stuff. If I’m going to be single, sexless, petless, and childless, then I need a partner in crime. I need someone to whom I am very important. And I’ll say again, I don’t want to compete with the uncompeteable for their loyalty and attention.

I think I’ve provided an excellent basis for my need to conduct these pseudo-scientific experiments. The biggest hitch in my diabolical plan is that damn Craig’s List. I dread and resent having to use that service, the only and creepiest game in town, in an attempt to make my dreams come true while orange-skinned, pushing-40, Chola-brow having HOES don’t have to do ANYTHING but cheat on their second husbands to get what they want (Weirdly specific example, I know, but it’s one that ABSOLUTELY ENRAGES me. Maybe someday I’ll tell the story behind it.).

Years ago, there was a pre-op transsexual advertising her services on Craig’s List to be the live-in companion to a “real” girl, as she put it. She wanted to provide maid services and in exchange, hoped her employer would allow her to do perfectly reasonable things like watch her sleep, paint her toenails, brush her hair, and give her back massages, all while she wore a classic french maid’s costume with fishnets and heels. Change the brush to a wide-tooth seamless comb, and how could I say no?

I still regret not answering her ad. Man, I could have killed ALL the birds with one stone if I had, even if she turned out to be the Bird with One Stone Killer.

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Same boat.

14 Aug

Yeah. . . I wouldn’t want to be in that boat either. Source

Dictionary.com, one of my favorite websites (seriously), defines the idiom “in the same boat” as “in the same circumstances; faced with the same problems: The new recruits were all in the same boat.”

It’s a common phrase that those of us with some mastery of the English language probably throw around a lot. I’ve used it countless times I’m sure, but lately I’ve found its use towards me to be disturbing rather than offering the comfort that I think was intended by the speaker. If I am in the same boat with certain people, somebody pass me a life preserver and I’ll take my chances out at sea.

The first time I had to stop myself from audibly screaming out “You ain’t trapping me in a sinking ship with you!” was several hours after a family gathering. A relative was sharing the news of another’s engagement as we drove her home, and as I do with so many things, I made the conversation about me. I was happy for my family member, but felt like I was being once again left in the dust when it came to the milestones indicating a normal, healthy adulthood. The relative who shared the news with me has never been married. When I expressed my bittersweet feelings on the subject, rather than offering me the usual empty encouragements that a very single girl over 30 is bound to hear, my relative said the following: “You want to get married? I never married. Do I regret it? Well, yes, I suppose, when it comes to things like having to carry heavy packages or eating meals alone, but we’re smart, educated women. You and I are in the same boat. It may never happen for you, but so what? You’ll be just fine.”

I think I gagged a little when she said that. I didn’t want to be in the same boat with her. Her boat was leaky and lonely. She only had one broke-down oar to paddle with. The sails wouldn’t. . . sail (If you haven’t noticed, I know nothing about boats, ships, and/or sailing.).  I wanted her to tell me that I was on a jet ski racing off to the Island of Eligible Bachelors, not that I’d be “just fine” when and if I ended up like her. I’m pretty sure I cried after receiving my relative’s declaration. Those tears must have tasted particularly bitter because so far, my life is most like hers than anyone else in the family. The possibility of my being over 60 and still alone is creeping near; my relative is holding out her hand to me while I stand unsure and scared on the dock, ready to help me sail off into a lonely sunset.

Most recently, an old friend repeatedly mentioned that she and I were in the same boat. My old friend does not date and makes no effort to. In fact, she is contemplating swearing off any attempts at or offers of romantic relationships for the foreseeable future. My old friend isn’t one to talk about s-e-x, but I assume that if she did, she’d mention that she’d be just fine with never having it again. Ever. With anyone. Ever again. Forever. Yikes.

When she told me that she and I were in the same boat, at first I chuckled. Yeah, poor us. So unlucky in love. She’s the only person I know that is my age and knows what it’s like to go more than a decade without knowing the gentle touch of a man. It’s been years since she’s even been on a date. I yukked it up with her. Hell yeah we’re in the same boat! But the more she said it, the less funny it became. Did I really want to be in the same boat with someone who has given up on love? My old friend has plenty of justifiable reasons for her decision to swear off the opposite sex, but still. To not even try? And wait a minute. I’ve been trying. I’ve done online dating, I’ve gone speed dating, I’ve tolerated mediocre dates with men I wish I could forget. I’ve embarrassed myself by asking for sex because TV and well-meaning friends tricked me into thinking I’d get a ‘yes’ if I did. I can’t show my face in my local YMCA because I’ve tried (It’s not what you think, I swear!) so hard!

It’s not fair to be shoved into a boat where the captain (Skipper? Admiral? I don’t know.) has given up. The boat hasn’t even capsized, it’s just aimlessly meandering around and around, like a bathtub toy circling the drain. I understand that my old friend doesn’t want to halfheartedly row her ass to nowhere by herself, but that’s like telling a kid who studied for a test and failed that he’s just like the kid that didn’t even crack open the book. “I don’t know that shit. And you did just as bad as me.”

Maybe to some people I deserve my place in that boat next to my friend. I found myself having yet another bitch fest about my loneliness and frustration with Dick and Jane over dinner and I couldn’t shake the feeling that Dick was annoyed or bored or disgusted with me and what he perceives as my lack of effort. When I told them that a dating guide I’d stumbled across online read that women ought not rule out the bar scene after all, Dick asked me when I was going bar hopping. I stumbled and stuttered as I told him that I was afraid to go alone; I’ve seen way too many episodes of “Law and Order: SVU” to be okay with that. He rolled his eyes and muttered something about my making excuses. He found my outrage at being an unwilling passenger on the SS Pusty Dussy humorous, maybe because to him it’s exactly where I belong.

I like the water, but I’ve always been wary of boat rides, probably because that first one ended so well. I don’t want this post to seem as though I am claiming to be better than my never-married relative or my old friend who has (Temporarily, please let it be temporarily!) given up on love. I’m not. I know that I’m not. But what I do know is that I want to keep trying to swim to shore on my own. I’m not resigned to either fate; neither boat can take me where it is I so badly want to go. I’m going to keep floating alongside lots of different boats, waving at the people on board while I try to keep my goggles from fogging up. Could I try to swim harder? Of course I can. And I probably will.

But be patient with me. Just by being in the water at all I’m bucking a stereotype.

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Fame.

14 Jul

It’s only a matter of time before I end up on “Hoarders”.

I was really hoping that my network television debut would be a feature on “Intervention”, but I can barely get a group of people together to go to Red Lobster on my birthday, so I think it’s pretty unlikely that anyone I know would be willing to sit in a hotel ballroom for a week on my behalf, even if it meant that all of their complaints concerns about me would be recorded, analyzed by professionals, and then aired to millions. Not to mention, I’m sure when the A&E producers got in touch with my parents they’d say something along the lines of “Intervention? Didn’t we already do that for her?” I’d love to be a fly on the wall in my parents’ house for that telephone conversation; my mom and dad holding the cordless phone between them as they shout into the mouthpiece, because that’s how you use the speaker phone feature: for optimum connectivity, one must be over the age of 60 and scream as loudly as possible.

When I tearfully told my parents about the incident that gave this blog its name and me my justification for holding a(nother) passive-aggressive grudge, my dad said “Well honey, now you know what people think of you and what changes you need to make.” Wait, what? “Dad. It was my BIRTHDAY. It wasn’t even my fault that I was late!” I cried. “Think of it as a wake up call, Ambrosia. It’s like when loved ones gather around a troubled person and tell them about themselves in an effort to help them,” he said. “You mean like an intervention?” I grumbled. “Exactly! Except this one was accidental!”

Since I have already been there and done that when it comes to being intervened (that’s right, right?), I figure my big break will come from my inability to use a closet or a washing machine or a shelving system or a garbage can. I used to say that I was too busy being smart and important to clean, but I’ve never been very good at lying. I now realize that I just don’t care. I’m not particularly bothered by the fact that I can’t use my stove because for some reason I’ve decided it’s a great place to store my plastic ware. I don’t mind climbing over mountains of laundry to get in and out of my bedroom. I haven’t batted an eyelash at the half-empty bag of hot dog buns that has been inexplicably sitting in my living room for weeks.

This may mean that I may not make a very good subject for “Hoarders”. Those nut jobs typically care about the fact that their home is overrun with rabbits and copies of Time magazine. They want someone to help them shovel their way out from under their classic Pez dispenser collection. They think they might have had a cat at some point; won’t someone help them find Mittens? And the ones that don’t care are so toothless and/or insane and/or irrecoverably damaged by horrific trauma that they will make for great television because they will scream at the intervenors (that I made up) and the cleaning crew; they will get into fist fights with concerned family members who attempt to throw away their jars of rancid mayonnaise; they will cry hysterically when the room full of headless Barbie dolls is finally emptied. “I was SAVING those! I NEED them!”

Now don’t get me wrong, I can make an argument for holding on to some crap. I’m pretty sure that’s an unfortunate genetic predisposition. But my main problem is simply one of maturity and motivation and good decision making skills. If it’s clean my apartment or write a blog post at 5:07am, you better believe I’m writing a blog post at dawn with my contacts fused to my corneas. If it’s fold/hang the clean laundry and put it away or just shove it into an already full hamper and hide it in the dining room, I’m a shovin’ and a hidin’. I will always take the easy way out. And being a slob is one more step towards doing whatever I can to keep people away even though I am desperately, frighteningly lonely. Let’s all pretend we didn’t read that last part.

I am probably making a better case for my being on “Hoarders” than I anticipated, but that’s okay! It was kind of the point! Being featured on that program kills two birds with one stone: get my apartment cleaned and some much deserved airtime. On a television show about lunatics who live in their own filth. Okay, I may need to rethink this.

Well, since that plan has been derailed, I need a new course of action for gaining celebrity while exuding the least amount of effort. I am a clear candidate for the “Basketball Wives” franchise, as I am a woman of color who has never been married to a basketball player, but that show’s not really my speed, mostly because it involves spending a great deal of time with horrible people. Since I like to think of myself as an intellectual, I think I’m best suited for those CNN specials with titles like “Black People Are Doomed, I Tell Ya, DOOMED!” and hosted by Soledad O’Brien, the ultimate undercover Negress. I’m everything they’re looking for: a black woman without kids, a shining example that there are 30% of us not having children out-of-wedlock; a black woman with multiple degrees, so they can place the blame directly on my bourgeoisie when they talk about the many ways that black women alienate black men; a black woman who is overweight and with natural hair, so they can analyze why we won’t exercise and why we’re not scared of diabetes and why on Earth we’d decide to do that to our hair, ’cause you know it’s just another way that we’re purposefully pushing away the brothers; a black woman with a daddy, ’cause remember, we’re just as rare as a white man’s steak; and finally, my favorite and theirs, a black woman who is unmarried with no prospects.

CNN loves to remind my mother that 45% of black women have never been married, compared to 23% of white women. My being featured on their next “You Will Die Alone, But At Least Your Hair Will Look Good” special will give her such hope. Maybe the segment producer will convince me to take out my nose ring! Maybe Don Lemon will ask me out on a date (I don’t think my mother has any idea)! Maybe the CNN hair stylists will convince me to press my hair! She will ring her hands as she watches me on TV, biting her lower lip and hoping that the camera doesn’t really add 10 pounds. She will have an elaborate fantasy involving the very handsome, brown-skinned yet ethnically ambiguous Comcast repair man who came to fix the cable that one time. He will be watching, make the connection that I am her daughter, and call her up to ask for my phone number. He will be a born-again Christian, and he will like me, and I will relax my hair, and have a church wedding, and give her cinnamon-colored grandchildren, and she will finally be able to forgive CNN for not talking Larry King into staying on the air.

However, there is a critical flaw in any of these methods for gaining free cleaning and organization of my things, or attention, or a husband who works for Comcast, or an opportunity to hear Don Lemon say “Gurl, please!” over cocktails. The flaw being that a camera would be involved and personal questions asked and people interviewed. It wouldn’t be just me revealing my failures and idiosyncrasies in what I hope is a charming and quirky way in a blog. My candy apple head and hound dog eyes would be broadcast into homes across the country. My Hilary Banks-esque voice would be heard in kitchens and living rooms from here to Duluth. It wouldn’t be just me telling self-depreciating yet comical mostly true tales about my life behind the safety of a computer screen. I would be vulnerable. I don’t do vulnerable. Unless it’s completely within my control and of my own making.

My greatest fear is obtaining any sort of success that would make me known outside of my immediate circle. There are those that I’d rather not remind of my existence. The last thing I need is He Who Shall Not Be Named being reminded that he dated me and attempting to look me up for old time’s sake. I already regret that The Person That I Used To Know is aware of this version of me, and he’s someone who I kind of like. Imagine the former teachers, people who went to my elementary school, kids I used to babysit crawling out of the woodwork to offer their unsolicited tales of how they knew me when. I find the whole thing distasteful and terrifying. Even more scary is if nobody cared enough to say a thing, even if it was just to offer their surprise or lack thereof at how chubby I’d become over the years. “She always did like to eat!”

Anyway, flaws and all, I think my “Hoarders” idea is one to hang on to, even if it’s just so I can get someone to come and load the dishwasher. Since I can’t “nominate” myself, here’s the casting link. Hang on to that and be ready to use it if you hear that I’ve been showering at the YMCA. According to the many episodes I’ve seen, that’s one of the warning signs. Pictures are required as part of the application package, so I ask that you just give me ample warning before you come by to take them.

It’ll give me a chance to clean up a little around here.

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