Giant Dwarf Loves Spazz

Again, I’m not so good at gift giving, so as a Valentine to my man, I am going to enumerate the ways in which I appreciate and love him. I’ve dated a lot of guys over the last 30 years. This dude is a good one.

These are in no particular order. Mostly because I cannot be organized enough to put them in any order. Or, I could also say, no one thing is more important than the other. That statement, of course, is not entirely true.

1) Here is the reason I wanted to write this list to begin with: a few weeks ago, Spazz called me up to let me know he was offered a different shift. Spazz currently works from 7:00 pm until 7:00 am and it fucks up our social life entirely. He would prefer a noon to midnight shift and has been asking for it, but currently it is not available. His manager called him and offered him the 7:00 am to 7:00 pm shift. His least favorite shift.

So the Spazz called me and told me about the offer. He wanted to know what I thought (seriously, he wanted my opinion) and thought it would be better for him to take the shift for us. For us?!? I’m not used to this kind of consideration. I said to him, “do what’s best for you.” He responded “I want to do what’s best for us.”

He took the day shift. I love him more for that.

2) He loves my body. When he and I first dated in 2001, I was a lot younger, tighter, and my boobs were higher. We got back together after I turned 40, when my body felt it no longer needed to metabolize food and my muscles began to turn to fat. He still thinks I’m sexy. And he has the right attitude: if I complain about my body he tells me he loves it but if I don’t like it, I should do something about it and stop bitching. That usually shuts me up.

3) He thinks my cat is the best cat in the world. He is right.

4) When he leaves my apartment after I do, he makes my bed, and he does an even better job than I do.

5) He thinks my family are the bee’s knees and loves to hang around them. He looks forward to talking to my dad about history (my poor father is not used to engaging so much) and he thinks my brothers are the funniest guys in the world (personally, I think they’re funny-looking). And he loves my mom.

6) He loves my best friend and her husband. He wants to go back and visit them every year.

7) He is honest to a fault. I trust him implicitly.

8) I love his family. His parents don’t speak much English, but they are loving and sweet. His sister is fun and personable and she has a great family. I love their culture and his sister’s cooking is off. the. hook.

9) He has an enormous capacity for love, which I admire. He gets frustrated easily, but he loves more fiercely than the average person.

10) He is cleaner than I am. I am a freak about washing my dishes….they have to be scrubbed clean. He is the only person who cleans them better than I do.

11) He has a great body. He really does. He, like me, complains about his own body, but I think he’s hot and I have no problem with his hirsuteness.

12) He is a champion eater. I love to watch him eat. He will eat anything and he can pack away a lot of it and still retain his great body (he’s a Spazz...he’s constantly burning energy). It depresses me that he now has to change his diet for health reasons. It’s hard for me to encourage him to eat better because I am so entertained by his capacity to devour enormous amounts of food.

13) He handles my affect better than I do. I can be a complete bitch to him and he either calls me on it right away or ignores it and moves on.

14) He loves bunny rabbits.

15) He loves me. And he’s not afraid to admit it.

Giant Dwarf Loves Valentines Day

For some reason, this time of year makes normally sane people behave in absolutely crazy ways. Actually, I guess that's true of many other times of year, but Valentine's Day seems to cause so many people (especially women) so much emotional pain and suffering. For some reason, people (especially women) seem to think that, if they don't have a date or lover for Valentine's Day, then they have failed in life somehow.

Back when I was in college, there was a young woman in my house who insisted on wearing black on V-day. Given that I insisted on wearing black EVERY day (it was the 80s, after all), it didn't bother me so much, but when I thought about her extreme reaction to V-day, it made me wonder why she embraced the hype so much that it caused her to react so violently (see, she DIDN'T wear black every day).

Then, about a month ago, as I sat in a French bistro with my very handsome gay friend, Silver Fox, I was struck by how much he was invested in finding a date for Valentine's Day. He, too, felt that if he didn't have a date for V-Day, it would be a sign of personal failure. So it made me reflect: how come I've never felt this way about Valentine's Day?

Since I was a kid, I've loved Valentine's Day. Even as a greasy-haired, bespectacled, skinny, shy kid, I loved exchanging the cheap store-bought, pre-cut Valentine's cards. Despite the fact that I ran the risk of social suicide by giving a card to the class geek Steven Blum and despite the fact that I fretted over NOT getting cards because I myself would be considered the class geek, I still loved the holiday.

As an adult, regardless of my romantic status, I still enjoyed it. The candy, the red (I love red almost as much as I love black), the LOVE. For me, it is a holiday celebrating love. A holiday solely devoted to love???? Can that even happen? Apparently, not here. Not for everyone. Because somehow, this holiday about love (nevermind it's bloody origins) has become a holiday about neuroses and rejection.

Still, I continue to see it as a Love Holiday. Back when I lived in Oakland with M, we would have parties to celebrate Valentine's Day with our friends. Each year, we had a different theme. I fought for two years to use a Pajama Party theme and M finally agreed our last year living together. It was an amazing success. Turns out, people love to drink in their pajamas.

I continued that tradition after I moved to LaLaLand for 7 more years. The party was always wildly successful and it was fun for all people either single or coupled (or tripled, as in some rare cases). It was a great way to celebrate a holiday which to me meant valuing the people you care about.

Where did I get this healthy attitude? Believe it or not, from my parents. Really. Growing up, my parents celebrated Valentine's Day with us. Every year on V-day, when we came down to the kitchen table, there would be a small heart-shaped box filled with candy and a Valentine's card on our placemats. There was no sense that V-day was only for my parents. We celebrated it as a family holiday.

So here's my gift to you, friends and lovers: Enjoy Valentine's Day. Celebrate it with your lover, your significant other, your children, your family, and especially your friends. We have been given a true gift in our capacity to love, and here is a holiday to celebrate it.

And before you think I've gone all soft and Southern California hippie on you, let me just say this: a few years ago, I arranged a single girls' night for Valentine's Day, knowing that a few of my girlfriends were going through a rough time. We ate our own weights' worth of food at Swingers, then headed to the Laemmle to watch a movie called "Teeth" which got a great review in BUST Magazine. "Teeth" was about a teenaged girl who discovers that she has been cursed with "vagina dentata." I'll let you look that up.

It was a bloody horror movie. I actually didn't hate it, but my friends have not allowed me to pick a movie since.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, I still wear black....a lot.

Happy Valentine's Day!
Celebrate Love!

Giant Dwarf vs. The Baby Bump

What follows is an I.M. conversation (slighly edited) that I had last night with my very old and dear friend, B.A., who, from here on out will be known as B.A. Baracus in honor of the great Mr. T. (Baracus for short.)

WARNING: If you have children and DO NOT HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOR, skip this one. You'll hate me forever after you read this. If you do read it, know that it was a conversation all in good fun by two childless-by-choice women.

Also, I don't know how to get rid of the urls. Sorry.

Baracus:

oh for crissakes

this is such a baby obsessed culture

when did this happen?

GD:

tell me about it

are you kidding me?

It's been happening

where have you been?

I would love, though, for people to stop reproducing at such an alarming rate

Baracus:

in my 20's, no one was talking about / caring about babies in the same way

now it's like = some expensive purse everyone MUST have

GD:

you know, I think you're right....my 20s too

I had ONE friend in my 20s who had a kid

and now she's a lesbian and the kid's a teenager

Baracus:

there weren't the celebrity baby bump things

GD:

you're right...it's that celebrity thing

Baracus:

I always thought it looked miserable, being a mom.

GD:

it is...first you gain a ton of weight, then the baby sits on some part of your body to cause irreversible damage, then you give birth and have to get an episiostomy (which still makes me sick just thinking about it)

and then the thing cries all the time and you don't sleep more than 2 hours at a time

(which, by the way, is the ultimate dealbreaker for me)

Baracus:

me too

GD:

then it eats only soft food and you can't feed it honey

then it cries incessantly

(oh I already said that)

Baracus:

and it poos

and poos

GD:

and it POOS

and then it throws it's food

and then it starts to walk and wreaks havoc

and then it climbs and eats all your anti-depressants

right and then it becomes a teenager and you wonder why you didn't just eat it when it was born

then you send it to college and when it graduates, it moves back in with you thereby wrecking what was left of your sex life, which was probably already ruined when you couldn't lose all the extra baby weight and you spent so much time with the kid and not your husband that your husband stepped out, so to speak, and you haven't trusted him since

(it was at this point that the conversation stopped and Baracus encouraged me to post it...blame her)