Hold On, I'm Opening a Bottle of Wine....

In late November, Ex emailed me and asked me to meet with him so that we could come to a resolution in this divorce without going to trial. I agreed, albeit hesitantly, to get together in public. I wasn’t sure if he was going to abduct me and lynch me or if he might just shoot me in plain sight. Or perhaps he’d gotten a girlfriend, was over me, and would be rational (please, God!). I’m not sure to this day that it was any of the above.

The meeting took place on a late Sunday morning (with my long bangs firmly in place over my left eye to hide my injuries) in a well-known restaurant in my city and it began with chit chat about what was happening in our respective lives. Initially, I was puzzled with regards to the nature of the conversation because it was as surreal as chatting about the weather with Osama Bin Laden. I wanted to spend about as much time with him as I would with Charles Manson, so I wasn't interested in Britney Spear’s latest meltdown and whether or not Suri is actually a product of L. Ron Hubbard’s frozen sperm. I felt like I had just fallen down the rabbit hole. Or taken a hit of LSD (which I've never done, by the way, but I can only imagine after watching one of my distant cousins take it and then roll around on the asphalt in front of a gas station pump screaming, "I'm a bear! I'm a bear! Grrrrrrrr!").

Finally, nearing the end of the brunch, he handed me a piece of paper and said, “This is my offer.”

After looking it over, I said, “I’ll have to talk to Lawyer about this, of course, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

He agreed. Then he said, “Oh, and by the way, I have 12 bottles of wine from the wine cellar for you in my car. I want to give those to you before we go.”

Conveniently, half of the wine in the wine cellar was left off of the settlement offer. I was already feeling suspicious of the genial way he presented himself, so this just served to increase my suspicions tenfold. After all of the nutty behavior, believing that he was actually a logical person was as difficult for me as believing that Xenu actually flew DC-10s filled with aliens here 10 billion years ago. I wondered, was he trying to bribe me with a case of wine, and if so, did he actually believe that would work? Sure, I love good wine, but I’d rather go a lifetime without Opus One than let myself get screwed over in the divorce as I already had in the marriage. Or was he really being genuine, truly desiring a friendly resolution? The fact that the settlement offer was lacking, to put it mildly, gave me the impetus to lean toward the former, but I still haven’t quite made an assessment on that one.

Lawyer and I haven’t had much time together lately, partially due to my genius self-inflicted facial injury and traumatic brain injury, and partially due to his busy schedule, but I did finally get together with him in early January. I gave him the paper that Ex had given me.

“Well, we agree on certain things, but absolutely not on others,” he said.

We were out to dinner with his cousin and Anastasia, so I said, “Let’s get together later and really go over this to come up with a response.” He agreed.

Needless to say, the catch up game I’ve been playing since I f*cked up my face and brain in October has been more brutal than swimming the English Channel in a g-string and bedazzled pasties in February, so we hadn't gotten together yet.

A few days ago, I called Newscaster Cousin. I hadn’t spoken to him since my injury, which is unusual because we typically talk or see each other at least once a week, and he was initially pissed that I had gone into hiding. After I ran the gauntlet with him, metaphorically flogged myself repeatedly, did my penance, explained what had happened to me, and gained forgiveness, he began to disclose.

“Almost, Ex called me three weeks ago. He wants me to vote for him for some award that he’s up for and then he asked me if he could take me and my boyfriend to dinner.”

“You said no, didn’t you?” I asked, aghast.

“Of course I said no. I was pissed at you, but I’m still loyal to you. Even though you’re a bitch. And why in hell didn’t you call me when you injured yourself? I would have been there in a second,” he growled.

“Wait, let’s get back to the subject. Ex asked you and your boyfriend out to dinner? And by the way, you’re never this much of an a**hole on the air.”

He laughed. “I can’t be an a**hole on the air, but I can be to my beloved cousin who doesn’t call me for three months. Anyway, yeah, I think Ex is trying to get custody of me in the divorce. And plus he told me that you’re going to trial. I thought that trial was only for, like, the Heather Mills/Paul McCartney kind of divorce. What’s going on?”

I was silent. Blown away. He thought we were going to trial? It had only been a month and a half since we’d discussed settlement! Granted, he didn’t know that I almost either killed or permanently disfigured myself, but still, I thought he’d be more generous with the time factor.

“Uh, I don’t know,” I answered Cousin. “I have to call Lawyer and deal with this right this second, I suppose.”

“Yeah, you do, because Ex is a freak and he’s nuts.”

I hung up with Cousin and immediately called Lawyer, telling him what happened. He said, “My week is totally jammed, but how about a dinner on Monday night?”

I sent Ex an email, letting him know that he’d receive our response today, to which he replied that he has been preparing for trial and will continue to do so. I rolled my eyes because I know that he hasn’t even spoken to his lawyer in months, so that statement is about as true as if I were to assert that I’d just grown a third breast.

My meeting with Lawyer last night went just as I thought. We laughed, caught up, and finally went over our business, coming up with the same proposal that we had set forth months ago when we had a settlement conference with Ex and his attorney. We laughed about the total lack of progress in the case, but then Lawyer became serious.

“Almost, Ex would be a fool not to take this offer,” he said. “You’ll get a lot more if we go to trial.”

“I don’t want to go to trial and I don’t want more, you know that. The depositions, the witness stand…. all of that stuff makes me more nervous than a virgin in a supermax prison.”

He laughed. “Yeah, but don’t worry, I’m ready, and you really won’t have to do that much. And you know what? If they want to be fools, f*ck it, I’ll tear them apart in court.”

Trial is set for the end of February and Ex has a week to respond to our offer. Perhaps his response will answer the questions with which I was left after I met him alone to discuss settling this mess. If he accepts the offer or is willing to discuss it out of court, maybe he really has become somewhat rational. If he rejects it and we go to trial, I’ll know that he tried to bribe me with a case of wine and a friendly façade.

I think I’ll open a bottle of that Opus One tonight. I have a feeling that I’ll be sworn to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth in a matter of weeks.

Smart Women Who Just Seem to Love Asshats

Initially I planned to write about my last meeting with Ex, which I will address soon, but what’s looming in my head today is something entirely different.

I decided to go back to bartending a month ago when my old boss called me at the hospital and said, “I need you desperately tomorrow night. Can you work at this new club I just opened?”

Since my social life has been as dead as Jimmy Hoffa’s lately, I agreed. It was time to get back into society and reconnect with my old customers and friends. But just one night a week. So far.

I now work Fridays, and I received a text from Anastasia yesterday morning saying, “Ex is coming over tonight. I need to get out of the house. Are you working?”

Anastasia’s husband is Ex’s only friend and I’m pretty sure that they’re in love with each other. They sit around and talk about gas prices, energy savings, solar panels, how Al Gore is God, and then afterwards, they make out. Well, that last part isn’t true to my knowledge, but Anastasia and I giggle about it anyway.

Last night was busy. I had a lot of friends in, gathered around my section of the bar, since I’ve now been back to this for a month and word is starting to get out that I’m back. Next to them were three people, a married couple and a single guy, all clearly veteran drinkers. Eventually, the married guy requested a bottle of Cristal. I was more than happy to oblige, since it was my first Cristal sale since I’d been back to bartending.

I chatted them up while I was doing the whole bullsh*t presentation of a $600 bottle of champagne and found out that married guy’s wife is a doctor. I complimented her genuinely on being both beautiful and smart, and she blushed while she looked in her lap.

I poured the champagne and the single guy took one sip, saying, “This champagne is fabulous, but I have to jet. I have to be in the next state at 8 am. Let me check out.” I closed their tab, thanked them, and walked away to talk to my friends gathered next to them. Ten minutes later, Anastasia grabbed me and said in my ear, “Almost, the guy with the champagne just punched the girl in the face.”

“What?! That’s his wife! Are you sure? Where’s the single guy that was with them?”

“Yeah, he just flat out turned around and punched her with a closed fist. No open-fist slap, closed-fist to the eye. And the single guy already left.” Anastasia, as I’ve said, is a Sergeant, soon-to-be Lieutenant, in the police force, so she’s always detail oriented.

“Where is she?” I asked, while I turned around, unable to find her in the crowd.

“I think she went to the bathroom.”

“I need to find her and make sure she’s ok,” I said.

“I’m going with you,” Anastasia announced. I wasn’t going to protest because I’ve seen this 120-pound gorgeous girl put an out-of-control professional football player through a wall. If I needed backup, I wanted her.

Just as we were heading to the bathroom, Doctor Wife emerged. I put my arm around her. “Are you ok, honey?” I asked.

“I’m fine, will you people please stop making a big deal about this? I’m fine, now where’s Timmy? He’s giving me a ride home.” Her whole body shook and tears slid down her cheeks as she proclaimed that she was "fine."

I have no idea who Timmy is, but apparently he’s acquainted with the promoter, because the promoter said, “He’s on his way, just hang on.”

The lights were about to come up, so still with my arm around her, I said to Doctor Wife, “Come up to the roped off area, hon. Do you smoke? Do you want a cigarette?” (Shocker – I work in a hospital and guess what? Half of your doctors who tell you not to smoke…. smoke.)

“Yes, please. And keep my husband away from me.” He was sitting at the bar, about to fall off of his bar stool from sheer wastedness, so it was easy to get her a cigarette and keep him in his state of idiocy. Though he requested another drink, I suggested water and an intervention with a 90-day rehab program specifically designed for a**hole rehabilitation.

Two minutes later, Timmy pulled up and Doctor Wife took off with him. The bouncer then put a**hole wife-puncher in a cab and we called it a night.

I began to think about my own marriage and abuse. Ex never laid a hand on me, though I can say that he abused me emotionally and mentally. Often in my day business, I come across spousal abuse and the stories always vary. The emotionally abused wives (or sometime husbands) say it’s worse than being hit. The physically abused ones assert that they’d rather be emotionally or mentally abused. I suppose it’s a phenomenological experience for everyone in the sense that you can’t ever judge what’s worse for another since we can never wear their shoes and experience what they experience firsthand. It's a conundrum that will probably never be definitively answered. One thing I do know is that when I realized I was in an abusive situation, I left. It took me too long, but I finally did it.

But I’m left with one question. What makes a smart, beautiful woman wind up with an abuser? And stay with him.

Great Ways to Find Out Who Really Loves You

A few days after my last real post, I was working furiously toward an October 31st deadline and was working so hard that I had to contort my body in order to see my computer screen through the avalanche of books and papers that had mounted seemingly out of nowhere. In order to help accomplish my work, I thought it was a wise idea to have a massive accident in my own home, give myself a black eye that would shock Lennox Lewis, and split the skin around my left eye to the bone.

I had been awake for two days straight, working at my kitchen island where the chair is the most comfortable, and finally decided that, since I was probably unable to comprehend A Cat in the Hat at the time, I needed at least a couple hours of sleep. I swiveled in my chair so that I could head to bed when my feet got tangled in the footrests and I went over face first into the corner of the marble topping the kitchen island. That's the last thing I remember for 2 hours, which is probably good because I may have gotten up, looked in the mirror, and believed myself to be a feature character in a Wes Craven movie. Actually, I did that anyway.

Two hours later, I awoke in my bed, wondering how I had gotten there, feeling very disoriented, and looked around to see myself pooled in blood. My hair was entirely matted with blood, and for the life of me, I couldn't figure out the source. I started to get out of bed and realized that I had the balance of a Weeble Wobble, only one that would fall down, and stumbled to the bathroom to see three distinct slashes on the ocular bone both over and under my left eye. The entire left side of my face was already black. I was too disoriented to be horrified yet, so I began to try and reconstruct what had happened. My first thought was that someone had broken in and slashed me, but as I weaved my way out to the kitchen and saw a pool of blood right around where I had fallen, I realized I had brilliantly done this to myself. From the size of the blood pool, I figured I was on the floor, knocked out, for about 20 minutes or so. I felt like I was a detective on Law and Order as I examined the blood drops and smears leading to my bed.

I figured that I had way too much work to do to go to Plastic Surgeon's office, which is about 35 miles away, so in my head-injured wisdom thought, "Hey, I work in a hospital, I can fix this." I promptly washed the wounds and then attempted to put a Band-Aid on these actively bleeding wounds. In retrospect, I can't help but giggle at the memory of my thinking that this was going to help in any way. When that didn't work, I tried to superglue the slashes shut (which, by the way, sounds weird, but actually works in emergency situations, but only with more superficial cuts) and that recollection makes me laugh even harder. Here I was, totally disoriented, with a head injury to my left frontal lobe, wondering why, if superglue can keep that dude in the hardhat hanging from a beam in the ads, why can't it keep a few cuts closed?

It took me 2 days to finally call Plastic Surgeon and tell her what had happened. I drove to her office, but my balance was still off and the nature of the injury was such that the swelling had displaced my eyeball and I was seeing double. I drove like any drunk driver with one hand over my left eye. When I walked into her office, she took one look at me and was visibly horrified. She said, "Honey, what have you done? You've always been my Picasso, the one that I want my other patients to look like. Now you actually look like a Picasso!" During the 2 hours in which she stitched and cut necrotic tissue away, she asked why I hadn't called her immediately. When I explained that I just had too much work to do and was afraid that sacrificing the 4 hours I knew it would take was not an option at that time, she stopped for a second, put her hand on my shoulder, looked me directly in the (one good) eye, and said, "Baby, you're one of my best friends. I would have come to your house and done it there, even if it was 3 in the morning." Forty-eight stitches later and after assurances from PS that scar therapy would make the injuries invisible after a few months, I left.

This whole injury and PS's comment about coming to my house spurred my thoughts on other injuries I've had and the people that have either come to my rescue or have turned a blind eye. In 2000, I woke up one morning with what I thought were the worst menstrual cramps of all time, a fever, and vomiting. Thinking that it was just a bad flu combined with the monthly loveliness that is being a woman, I went back to bed. By 6 PM, I knew I had appendicitis. I drove myself to the hospital and called Lauren (who has a blog of her own now), saying, "I need your help. I have appendicitis and my parents are already heading to the airport to come out here. Please go to my apartment, clean out ALL of the cigarettes and hide my birth control pills."

She groaned. "Almost, I went out with some people after work and I've already had 5 margaritas, but f*ck it. I'll do it."

I warned her to be careful and she did exactly what I had asked and then met me at the hospital. She stayed with me until my parents arrived and visited for the next two days in the hospital, bringing flowers, ice cream, and gifts. On top of that, she drove my car back to my apartment since my parents would be taking me back there. I still haven't paid her back for that parking charge and she never asked for it.

Now that's someone who loves you.

In 2005, I began having lower back pain on my right hand side one day. It was uncomfortable, but nothing I couldn't handle. As the days progressed, however, it worsened to the point that I thought I'd rather have a Scientology e-meter up my ass than be going through this. I went to Ex and said, "I don't know what this is, but it's not going away. Do you think I should go to the hospital?"

He looked up from his computer and sighed. "Whatever. I don't know." He looked back down at his computer.

I called Lauren two hours later and described the pain. She said, "Get your ass to the hospital right now. You have either a kidney infection or kidney stones."

I went back to Ex and said, "I need to go to the hospital. Do you think you can drive me?"

As I was bent double, he looked up and sighed once again, but this time he added an eye roll. "Fine," he grunted.

"No, actually, I can do it myself, don't worry about it."

Begrudgingly he said, "I'll do it. Whatever."

When we arrived at the hospital, they immediately put me into an ER exam room while they scheduled a CT scan. Ex was with me, but I could see that he was clearly uncomfortable. I said, "Look, you don't look very happy here, so why don't you just wait in the car?" Of course, I was thinking that there was no way he would actually leave me alone and frightened in the emergency room, but I was wrong. He was gone before I could even say, "See you outside."

Three hours, three Vicodin, and a CT scan later, it was confirmed. I had kidney stones and just had to wait until they passed. I hobbled out to the parking lot, found Ex's car, and got in.

"So, what is it, an attack of the Hormone Monster?" he laughed.

"No, it's three kidney stones." That shut him up immediately.

When you're seriously injured or think you might have something of gravity with which to deal in your body, you quickly figure out who actually loves you. PS would have driven to my house at 3 in the morning. My parents immediately flew to my city when I had appendicitis, even before I was diagnosed. Lauren went above and beyond in caring for me when I was hospitalized, keeping my dirty little secrets away from my parents and doing everything she could to make me feel better despite the fact that she was 5 margaritas into the night. And Ex? I suppose his behavior speaks for itself.

But the one good thing about my latest injury? Because of the manner in which I excoriated the obicularis muscle around my eye, I will never have crow's feet there. That means only half the Botox!

P.S. There's been about as much action in my divorce process as there was in our bedroom for the last year and a half of my marriage, but I did meet with Ex briefly to discuss a resolution. I'm saving that for next time.

Abducted

No, I wasn't abducted by aliens, but close. Sorry for the lapse in posts, everyone, but I had what can only be described as a Traumatic Brain Injury right after my last post. I promise I will post this weekend and yes, I am still getting divorced, though I hear that some think I may be getting back together with Ex. Not true.

Thank you to all of you who have still been reading and I'll see you in a couple of days.