Sometimes I Think Having A Boyfriend Is Stupid

Which it is. There are days I wish I didn't have to hate other women (I will cut a bitch!), and have to shave, and get seriously coke-head IRRITABLE when I don't talk to him all day. It would be nice to be unattached and invincible again. And therefore we, overall, think boyfriends are a stupid thing to have.

But it's YOUR boyfriend. It's YOUR pain in the ass. Who else would go fetch your car from a friend's house for you, because you kinked your neck and can't drive, and return it with a full tank of gas? Who else explains to you that you make him happy, but is more of a pilot than a wordsmith, so expands on his statement by putting his hand in the air in front of his face and very solemly, slowly creating an imaginary air-chart illustrating (literally) your effect on him, "because you make my mood do this":

And that makes perfect sense to him. And to me, actually. Sometimes I want to bust out of the yoke of commitment, this soon after a divorce, because it's so much more independent sounding, so much more Aniston, to be single for awhile. I picture myself, one leg tucked under my butt, on Oprah's couch, toasting with her because I'm so independent and fabulous. And the daydream is interruped as I drive up to his house to meet and run errands together and maybe pick up some Jimmy John's, and he's doing yard work in wakeboard shorts and a Castro hat. I mean, whatever. What the hell am I supposed to do?

It doesn't help when his trucker friends recall the first time they heard about you. Which was last July, (when Reboyfriend was just Ex-boyfriend, and I was very much married and hadn't spoken to Exboyfriend in years). And they were asking him why he wasn't married, and his answer was that he had a chance once, years ago, but he blew it, so the girl got away, and married someone else, but that he still loved her. And the "her" was you, and then 10 months later, they told you the whole thing. 

So I'm serious. What the hell are you supposed to do?

I guess just some errands or something. Oprah can wait.

This was my experiment in a not-long post. So that people don't exit site before the end. How did I do? I realize that on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being seriously so blessed, I'm coming in at about 17. But still. Just be glad it's under 11,000 words. K Bye.

Just how good.

A group of enthusiastic young college gals rang my doorbell today, eager to walk through my house. I had no idea they were coming, so it was nice and trashed for them. It didn't matter, because they proceeded to wig out with home-hunting glee (what's that like?) and beg me not to let anyone else walk through it until they gave a deposit to our landlord. 

So I started packing. It made it real.

I went through a drawer in my room and started packing up my loose, random to-do lists, shopping lists, pros/cons lists about my marriage, and eventually unburied a therapeutic (unsent) letter I'd written to my starter husband last year. By the third page (single spaced, too, although it was written by me, so it's not such a feat), I was crying. 

It was like watching your little sister or your own small, confused child in sheer agony and not being able to do anything about it, but loving her more for having witnessed her survive it. Trying to earnestly and dutifully to right a situation that would later do itself in, trying to write her way out of absolute devastation, where the pain is a jungle and writing is the only vehicle out. 

And just like if it were my own little girl or little sister, I sat and cried, because I so wanted to go back nine months and give my old self a hug. To tell her that if she had any idea how good it was going to get, oh my breaking heart, that she would never believe me. But if she only knew, she'd have been OK. She'd have never gotten in the bathtub fully dressed and sobbed in the running water.

I'd love to go back and tell me that cheeseburgers and Pride & Prejudice and reruns of Friends would carry me through the first few weeks he was gone. How I would survive--nay, thrive--with the help of good music, great food, and the kind of friends I didn't believe existed before then. Of course, if I knew that back then, I would not have been able to taste that kind of cruelty, or wake up with  my first coherent thought being "Dear God, I am in hell," and gain the perspective I have now.

I folded the pain-chronicles in half and stashed them in the pages of a journal. I don't ever want to forget that I felt like that.

On the farm

Reboyfriend + the Navion + adoring children, meaning picture time for moi. With the sun setting, the telephoto lens on, and that mullet dismantled from our lives, it made for picture perfection. So there's that.

In other news, my boyfriend has a total mullet.

Yes, this happened to me.

This was after a shower, so you can't really see the spikes (!!!) the girl put in. Which is a cryin shame.

He had some long hair, and decided it was time to cut it. I was cool with this. He is darling with buzzed or cropped hair. But first, he decided, he needed to cut a mullet into it. You know, for a day. To make Kirsten smile. He asked me to do it, but I could not accept the challenge. He needed to appeal this to Brynn, the girl that normally cuts it.

She was a good sport, although I'm not sure she was thrilled to have him leave her salon with hair like that. I was rock climbing when he was having it cut. We decided to meet up for his roommate's birthday - and the bday boy wanted to go to Bliss (a club). I've never been there. I'm not the clubbing type. I go be-boppin in, all by myself. That was mistake number one.

I wandered around what could only be described as a big bar full of horny drunk people, for about 15 minutes, with no sign of Reboyf or the lost boys. There were men who saw my alone-ness as an opportunity, wanting to know what I drank, etc, telling me they knew my boyfriend wasn't a black man, and that my boyfriend didn't care about me, and that they'd tell me why, etc. (Answer: A black man wouldn't let his girlfriend walk around a club alone, and if my boyfriend cared about me, he would never make me MEET him at the club). (Yes, the person who offered up this enlightenment was a black man, and a big motherf****r too, and I'm so damn white and unsmooth, I was completely dumbfounded by all the crap he was saying). A hooch came up to throw herself at him and I made a run for it, ending up plopping down on a leopard print couch, a little pissed. Don't make me MEET you at the STUPID CLUB which I'm not slutty enough for, and then expect me to just navigate through social situations I'm not bred for, and then NOT SHOW UP. Some creep sitting across the room was staring at me, and I swore he had a camaro cut, so I avoided eye contact with him to the best of my ability until I could feel his smile boring into my skull. It was ReBF and His Mullet. Clubbin together, just the two of them. The Black Man (and others) undoubtedly saw me with Reboyfriend and The Mullet. I'm sure they were impressed.

We left early and hit Sconecutter, and had French dip (with cheddar, which is not so French, and also secretly yum), and Sprite in a white trash picnic on my bed while talking about real estate.

He had to go to the final SuperX race in Vegas the next day. He was running many errands, and didn't get around to removing the Offender-Coiffe. He had to rock it the entire weekend.

And it's Tuesday. And, you guys, for some ungodly reason, he's been busy, and it's still there.

It was his birthday yesterday. He pretty much endured a full 24 hours of perfectly orchestrated hell. Among several other ordeals, this day included him running over his blackberry with a semi, me misinterpreting (and going ape shit about) another legitimate, harmless joke, which he had to patiently explain to me. And I then felt instantly stupid (if you recall, this was not the first time this happened).

It was cute. He called (from a borrowed phone) all excited to be talking to me, and I proceeded to wig out on him through indignant sniffles without being able to spit out what he did wrong. He couldn't understand me, had no idea why I was mad this time, and kept saying "Kir, I can't understand you. Please don't hang up. Why are you mad? Don't hang up. I'm sorry, please tell me why you're mad, I promise I can't think of anything I did. Don't hang up."

He had a rough day. He had to take a load to Southern Utah on his birthday. Ugh. So instead of going out for dessert and having foot rubs and gifts, we ended up pulled over on a dirt road on the outskirts of Lehi with a bag of Wendy's, leaving his loaded truck on an on-ramp. After hours of getting lost and missing each other all over town, with no phone contact and only telepathy to rely on. 

We had about an hour before he had to drive through the night to unload in Blanding, so we had to make it quick. This is how I got to give him his birthday gifts, under the unflattering dome light of my car's interior. But he loved them, and he completely forgot that it had been his worst birthday ever. 

Which brings me to today's Quote Board.

ReBF: [burying his head in my neck across the console of my car, clutching his presents in his lap] I don't know what the rest of our lives, um, not contain...

Me: Hold?

RB: ...hold. 

Me: Ok.

RB: But I am willing to find out. 

Me: [silence] [but in my head, meltage]

RB: It's going to take some patience on both of our parts. Like, there are going to be times when you're going to have to put up with me always losing my phone, and times when I'm going to have to say "Don't hang up."

 

It made the mullet kind of cute.