Thanks, Beanie!

I am trying to do little updates even if that is all I can do.

I went to visit Pandora at the beginning of July. It was good to be with her and the kids. The bad part was listening to her fight with her husband. I realize that she has a tendency to escalate anger very quickly, in a dramatic way. I notice that her oldest daughter (age 9) does the same thing. Rather than just saying she is angry, Pandora has the tendency to throw a lot of energy in someone's direction. It makes me double-think living there for any amount of time (even though I was invited to).

While I was there, I got a text from Michael (of Michael and Petra). It said, "Oh Alphie is here and we are talking about the old days- what was that nickname you had for him? Love you, Michael" and then he attached a picture of Alphie and himself smiling... uh.... WHAT? I was kind of flabbergasted and didn't even respond. Michael is the one who took my PRIVATE conversation with Petra and TWISTED what I said to go and tell Alphie that I was badmouthing him... thus causing a lot of drama and inspiring Alphie to pass along all the lies to Ben and Marie so now everyone thinks I am an asshole... when I told Gail about this she said that intuitively she gets that Michael and Alphie get that they fucked up but rather than admit it, they are trying this, "maybe if we are nice to Duck and write her a cute message, she will forget all about it." Fuck you. Amazing that Petra felt the need to apologize (for speaking of our conversation with her partner Michael in the first place) but I never heard a peep of apology (or anything) from Michael until now. He and Alphie are both on my shit list, big time. Alphie's last email to me was such a divine, manipulative piece of work expertly blending blame, guilt and smugness that it turns my stomach just to read it. So I am truly done.

Since then I have spoken to Petra- whenever she brings up Alphie, I change the subject- I refuse to speak his name. I also don't ask too much about Michael either. I have no intention of going to visit unless Michael is out of the house. I think the alternative is just meeting Petra in another city.

I also spoke to Russell ( a long time mutual friend of Alphie and I). Russell and I have a history of complaining to each other about Alphie (since Alphie has always taken advantage of Russell in one form or another, but Russell is very tolerant) but in this conversation we talked for over an hour. At the end Russell asked how long we had been talking and I told him, and he said, "Wow, look at us, we didn't talk about Alphie at all!" And I just said mmm-mmm... as I said, these people will not hear me mention his name again.

You, Diary, will still be a place for me to vent, just my secret place to tell you about this manipulative, false hypocrite. But I will never give him the satisfaction of speaking about him ever again. Motherfucker.

Oh, Duck, tell us how you really feel!!

I had lunch with Ramel and his wife the other day. Ramel is a guy I went to college with. He got married very young and his marriage was breaking up just as I was breaking up with a boyfriend (and having a hard time of it as I always do). We became very close, and even fooled around a bit though we never had sexual intercourse. In a way it was very sweet, we even wrote letters to each other during the summer when school was out of session, even though we lived an hour and a half apart and would still drive to see each other. After college Ramel asked me to move to the city with him, but I was too afraid to move, to leave... even though I definitely had feelings for him, I was too afraid. So he left and I stayed... he got involved with other women, I got involved in an abusive relationship. By the time I was brave enough to try living in the city, Ramel had found the woman he was going to marry. She drove everybody else crazy- one of our friends described her as "aggressively needy". She never let Ramel out of her sight, was constantly interrupting when he would try to talk with his friends, and was basically a pain in the ass. Well I put on one of my winning dresses (the one that I have been asked out in so many times) and met up with them- they look a little older and grayer- I don't know why but I have two or three silver hairs on my head and they are not very prominent. Right away Ramel's wife started talking about how she gained twenty pounds and blah, blah blah she was off and running and didn't shut up the whole time. She was her usual self and interrupted a lot and (somehow) knows what everybody is up to, though it made me wonder how does she know all this stuff about people when all she does is constantly interrupt? Literally, she said, "So what have you been up to?" And then just kept talking and didn't even let me finish the question.

I am a very nostalgic person in general and I always get a little twinge of something when I see Ramel- he is still very handsome and fit. I don't understand his wife that much though. For one, she is half Japanese and has blue eyes, which is actually really beautiful, but she wears these awful tinted glasses that totally hide the color of her eyes- you can barely see them. And she doesn't seem to brush her hair or attend to the hair on her upper lip. I may be very vain, or just have better fashion sense, but it just seems to me like she and Ramel have DECIDED to get old and stop taking care of themselves in certain ways. Kind of like, oh well, you know how old age is, now that we are 40.... and they were talking about buying a ranch-style house so there were no stairs to fall down as they get older... seriously? That kind of thinking, in my opinion, will MAKE you old.

I am going to an exercise class twice a week and wrestling and working out with people 20 years younger than me! And even though I am shlumpy and depressed, and yes, have a few extra pounds, I still see the value of ornamenting myself a bit and not letting myself go completely to pot. That's one of the things my friend Shana taught me- she had two kids under 2 at the time but everyday she got up, put on real clothes that were flattering and makeup on her face. She would say, "you never know..." meaning you just didn't know what was going to happen that day. But I also think she had the knack for not letting herself get lost, not losing her sense of beautiful feminine just because she had kids. And I'm not saying it was easy, either, because she worked as hard as any other mother, cooking and wiping asses and spills and breastfeeding and the whole bit. But that was just one thing about her that stuck with me.

Shana and I had a big falling out after I lived with her and her husband Bruce for awhile. She stopped talking to me so I lost connection with the kids and it was really heartbreaking for me. It seemed Ramel's wife was kind of rubbing that in my face. She was really making it a point that she was Shana's youngest son's "pen pal". She must know that Shana doesn't speak to me at all (even after I sent her all the photos I had of her kids when they were really little, a couple of months ago).

So seeing Ramel always stirs up a lot of nostalgia and weird feelings for me, sometimes the concept of "what it?" What if I had been brave, and moved with him? My life would have been different, but I don't know if we would have stayed together. They really don't seem to have a spiritual direction or depth, and that's something I've always been about. But also seeing them reminds me of old times and those mutual friends who no longer speak to me, which kind of bums me out. Sometimes I get this weird feeling like Ramel and his wife are not really that interested in me at all, like maybe I am just an old obligation or a slight amusement... it's hard to put my finger on. And even though they were off to have dinner with other friends from college, they didn't invite me. Which makes me wonder if maybe the other friends didn't want to see me?

Who knows. I guess life is as it should be. Maybe all that is too small for who I am anyway...

In any case those are just a few of the events that I haven't mentioned. I feel like we are much more caught up now, Diary.

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