Godammit, I’m Mad!

Remember The Nose War?

Well, now it’s a fork.

There’s a fork on the bookcase by the front door, and it’s been there for at least a week. Maybe two weeks. My teenager asked me about it, without implying that he might be willing to take it back to the kitchen. I told him that I didn’t know what it was doing on the bookcase, but I wasn’t going to move it, either. He understood.

Now it has taken the place of The Nose. My husband has obviously seen the fork, since nothing escapes his eagle eye (especially things that are kitchen-related.)

We’ll see what happens.

Do any of you play these childish games with your partner? If not, you’re really missing out on the true essence of marriage.

Godammit, I told you so!.

I can’t stand Arnold and I have never figured out why people believe he is anything other than a big stupid moron. The myth that Arnold is “actually very smart” is just preposterous! Fuck!

Way back in another lifetime, I lifted weights in the gym where Arnold worked out every morning. He was a loudmouthed bully who had a coterie of middle aged halfwits that followed him around and laughed at his stupid jokes. Arnold was an arrogant cunt who bothered women with comments like “I’d like to see you with your panties off!”

He’s what my mom would call a “lowlife.” We’ll never know why Maria Shriver married him and thus gave him a legitimacy that led to his political career, which in turn has left California in fiscal shambles.

Maybe the Kennedy women have a deep-seated need to be humiliated by powerful men. Whatever. I feel bad for Maria and her children, but WHAT THE FUCK WAS SHE THINKING?!?

Thoughts, rants, crap about how “personal lives are nobody’s business?”

Last night, the sons were both out for the evening and we had the house to ourselves.

My husband turned on the Jimmy Fallon Show, which was showing clips from the forthcoming documentary about the making of Exile on Main Street.  We are both card-carrying lifelong fans of the Rolling Stones, and children of the 60s, so it was a real treat for us.

As we watched grainy images of their ramshackle mansion in the south of France, where the Stones fled to escape taxes in the UK, I was reminded of Gram Parsons. In a documentary about Gram Parsons, his time with Keith Richards in  France is recounted at length by a narrator who notes that in the end, the Stones got tired of Gram and sent him packing when they decided to go on tour. For a time though, Keith and Gram were musical soulmates and spent all their time together, singing and playing guitar.

I said aloud: “Poor Gram, the Stones chewed him up and  spit him out.”

Mr. SW took issue with this and said: “Listen, you can’t blame the Stones for what happened to Gram Parsons.”

Me: “Yeah but I’m just saying, when Keith got through picking his brain they booted him out.”

(Now, I realize that no one gives a shit about any of this. But bear with me.)

Mr. SW started acting like the Stones’ defense attorney. I in turn became Gram’s attorney. We traded increasingly tense arguments on our clients’ behalf. At some point I exclaimed, “Hey, I love the Stones, I love Keith, he’s my fucking style icon, I’m just saying that it probably hurt to be treated that way! I’m not saying that it made him go kill himself in Joshua Tree for god-sake!”

The show ended and Mr. SW invited me to follow him to the bedroom.

We lay on the new Sears Deluxe Firm Pillowtop bed and the argument continued.

Mr. SW:  “Oh poor little Gram, trust fund kid….”

Me:  “Oh god, why bring his trust fund into it! That’s not his fault! Look at Mick Jagger, he was upper middle class…”

Mr. SW:  “No he wasn’t, his father was a gym teacher!”

Me:  “FINE, he was middle class, firmly middle class!”

Mr. SW:  “Then don’t say upper middle.”

Me:  “Well, you don’t have to get nasty. You said trust fund in a nasty way. It hurt my feelings.”

Mr. SW : “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I’m just saying that you can’t blame the Stones, Gram was big boy, he knew what he was doing.”

Finally, I started to cry.

Me:  “I love Gram Parsons and now he’s dead and so don’t be mean to him!”

Mr. SW:  “I’m not being mean to him, I’m just saying the Stones didn’t kill him.”
~

The evening ended harmoniously. I  hope the subject never comes up again. But Mr. SW has pre-ordered the reissued Exile on Main Street.  Maybe we should renew our marriage vows before it arrives.

Two weeks after I turned fourteen, I hit the road with my boyfriend. A day or two earlier, my mom had issued an ultimatum: Either I stop seeing him, or she would call the police. I had brought him home to meet her, and the sight of a scruffy bearded 26 year old man, assuring her that he was serious about me, must have been horrifying.

I was filled with excitement when he suggested that we run away together. He was a Pied Piper figure on the Sunset Strip, with plenty of followers eager to help in our getaway. In no time, we had fake IDs and a guy to drive us to San Fransisco. Our birth certificates belonged to an 18 year old girl named Debbie and some guy named Warren. For the next few weeks, we had to call each other Warren and Debbie, names I still hate to this day.

I stopped at a phone booth to call my sister. I told her I was leaving, and I’d be back in four years. She was furious and threatened to tell our mother. When I said she could have my over-the-knee boots, she backed down, clearly surprised by her good fortune.

For some reason, I wasn’t wearing my contact lenses. It was annoying but I guess I resigned myself to being blind. It was already after midnight and our first stop was Tijuana, to get married. He must have wanted to make an honest woman of me. I remember waking up some guy in a shack who didn’t speak much English. My bridal attire was one of my every day outfits: an awful brown satin dress that looked like a civil war costume, and bare feet.

From Mexico we went to San Francisco, our driver’s original destination. He let us off near a Goodwill thrift store, where I bought a black velvet opera coat for fifty cents. The plan was to dress like a “straight” person, but I had to rebel. It was a reflex or an instinct; it was all I ever did. My husband went to a barber who cut his long hair and shaved off his beard. I was stunned by how unattractive he looked without the hair and beard, but it was too late. I was stuck with him.

I was reading some crap about Michelle Obama’s style vs Carla Bruni’s, when I was stopped short by this photo. The woman in green makes Carla Bruni look like a PTA lady, doesn’t she?

Shiekha Moza is married to the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, one of the wealthiest royals in the Middle East. She is the mother of seven children, and has worked to reform the status of woman in her country. A UNESCO special envoy for education, she has made public education a priority and given Academics a new role in crafting Qatar’s new democracy.

She is often dressed in custom Dior, and no matter how many pictures you look at, she is always impeccably groomed and absolutely stunning. The only problem is, she is married to this guy:

I’m thinking, Tom and Katie, multiplied by a thousand.

Could you do it, ladies? Or put another way, which deal would be easier to turn down, Katie’s or Her Highness Sheikha Mozah Bint Nasser Al Missned’s?

When you’ve been in a relationship for years and years, you need to make an effort to have fun.

Here’s a game I just made up, called The Nose War:

There’s a little rubber nose on my kitchen floor, just to the left of the fridge. It’s been there for around 10 days. I don’t know how it got there, I only know that I bought it in a little packet of rubber body-parts from Borders, at least a year ago. They were creepy but cute, and cost around two bucks.

(I put a quarter next to the nose for size comparison.)

Anyway, the nose is in plain sight, but NO ONE WILL PICK IT UP!

It occurred to me that it would be fun to see how long it stays there. In other words, I’ve decided to leave it there as a test for my husband, who normally hastens to tell me what’s wrong in the kitchen. Then, it occurred to me that my husband must be leaving it there on purpose, too, to test ME! He’s probably thinking, I’ll see how long that slob leaves that nose on the floor, and eventually I’ll draw her attention to it and say “Look what a lazy slob you are, this has been on the floor for — days, bla bla bla!”

I’ve pointed out the nose to my kid, who said “I was wondering why that was there,” and I told him I was conducting a test. But I like how he had no intention of picking it up, either. The apple doesn’t  fall far from the tree, eh?

God, marriage is fun.