And ?

I still felt the need of someone to talk to every week, someone to whom I could unburden myself entirely and vent or whatever about the week’s issues. Now I have Funny Guy, and I see even more clearly how important it is for me to have a friend to talk with, a companion, another human being to listen and respond. Not that Funny Guy takes on the role of shrink, not at all; Funny Guy and I listen and talk to one another pretty equally. But my final shrink wasn’t really ‘analyzing’ me in any way. He was just listening.

So I began by warning him, the final shrink, whom I started seeing in February 09, about what had happened with the two previous shrinks, that they had become identified in a way that was completely inappropriate with a man I was dating, and when I had brought up all the very bad signs and red flags about these men, they had dismissed the signs without even considering them seriously, suggesting, instead, that I needed to stop making mistakes etc.

The new shrink (let’s call him 3) was very sympathetic and stated clearly that he would be aware of that problem.

Then I felt, what I hadn’t felt with either of the other two, that I needed to tell him everything about my past, about both parents, so I did. With the other two, I had been so wrapped up in the present moment, dating and all the exigencies of the immediate, that I had never really talked about The Past in a thorough and consistent way. Somehow, perhaps because I wasn’t dating anyone much in February, March, and April 09 (I just had a series of totally unpromising first-dates), or perhaps because some good intuition led me along this path, I looked back very carefully at my mother and my father.

Let me be clear: this all had nothing to do with Freud. No one, neither 3 nor I, was using psychoanalytic terminology, and he never pushed me in any direction at all. I didn’t require pushing or leading: I guess I knew what I wanted to say. I wanted to look at everything very thoroughly and carefully.

And??

Well, I discovered something very unpleasant.

Hitherto, I had seen, quite clearly, with eyes wide open, that my father was a rat. All my cousins thought so, his own brother thought so, and even his own parents were critical of him, because he was a truly horrible person. From the moment of my birth he ignored me entirely and even denied my existence. My parents were divorced when I was a baby, and my mother moved to New York when I was 2, so I didn’t grow up anywhere near him. He remarried and had another daughter, and until his dying day, which was the day Obama was elected, he spoke and wrote as if he had only one child. The only time he acknowledged me in the past 25 years was to write in his will that although he had two daughters, for the purposes of his will, “my daughter” means XXXXX (my half-sister’s name was spelled out). And no doubt he did that just because the lawyers told him that if he didn’t mention me, I could claim some of his money.

Whew.

Oh, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. He was much, much worse than that, but I don’t want to waste time on him now, because he’s not the story I’m telling. Although I was 61 when he died, I don’t think I saw him more than 8 or 9 times in my life. Truly, he pretended I did not exist. The last time I saw him, at a family gathering in the early 1980s, I went — dutiful child that I am, alas — over to embrace him, and he turned his back to me.

Oh gosh that’s pretty heavy stuff!

There’s worse to come, but not about him.

Anyway, it was clear to me, growing up, at least it appeared clear, that I had a good parent and a bad parent. I had one who took care of me and one who didn’t; one who lived with me and brought me up, and one I never saw, who ignored my existence; one who identified me as a child and functioned as a parent, and one who was entirely non-functional in my life and invisible to me, a complete non-person.

The awful realization I had in the first month of my talking with 3, when I was trying to fill him in entirely on my background, was that my mother was a bad parent also; that, in fact, neither parent loved me; that in fact, they were both hostile to me.

Mimi, how terrible! But it couldn’t be. You can’t be entirely right about that.

Would that I were wrong. Would that I were. I wish it more than you do. But alas it’s true, and if I hadn’t realized it, I would have been able to have the loving and fulfilling relationship I have with Funny Guy.

Oh gosh.

My mother did take care of me, food and shelter and school and birthdays and Christmas and the rest of it, but as I got older, it became clear that she was very hostile to me. She was always extremely critical of everything about me — my looks, my clothes, the papers and stuff I wrote for school, everything. And when I won prizes at school, because I was an academic kind of kid, she didn’t seem as pleased as other parents were about their children in similar circumstances. People would say, “Oh, your mother must be so proud!” but she never seemed to be. And the older I got, and the more abilities I showed, the more hostile she was. A psychiatrist friend of mine who is a reader of this blog remembers well, and even reminded me recently, that when, in 1974, I got offered a very good job, instead of saying (as I would have said under the circs),”Oh, that’s fantastic!! I’m so happy for you! It’s wonderful! Did you accept?” — she said dryly, “Well, that was a coup” — as if I had somehow engineered this job offer, as if there were something shady about it.

Yup. I can hear what you mean.

And when I’ve published books, not only has she never read them, she has made it clear to me that she has never read them. She’ll say things like, “I bogged down in the first chapter. Why do you use words like xxxxx?” and fasten on some word she doesn’t like. She hasn’t read more than a few pages of any of them, and we’re talking five books here.

I can’t believe that. Unless you write really technical books on scientific subjects —

Do I sound like that kind of person?

Well, no.

I’m not, and they weren’t. Oh, and I should also add, that for essentially all of my adult life, which is I guess a bit over forty years, she has always criticized or made snide remarks about the birthday and Christmas presents I give her. And she will make negative remarks more than once about “that awful book” and, at the same time, praise a present someone else gave her. I give her lovely birthday parties, with a meal, a nice cake, her friends, cousins etc., but she never thanks me for those at all, never says how lucky she is to have such a wonderful daughter who gives her lovely parties etc etc. Nothing like that at all. — I have had to ask myself recently why I keep giving her presents and parties, but I know the answer: I’m wired to be dutiful. It would be hard for me not to do all that.

But it gets much worse.

When my children came along, she was very critical of me as a mother: I never did anything right, I was ignoring my children, or not feeding them at the right times, or — her special critique — I was selfishly spending time on my own writing and not paying enough attention to their needs. AND — here we begin the really bad part — when they got to be older and began getting annoyed for whatever reason, as indeed girls (yes, they’re girls) do at their parents, she would encourage them in their hostility, telling them that they were right about me, that I was a terrible person.

Mimi, how can you know this?

Because once she told one of them that in a room right next door to where I was trying to nap. Child Q had gone to her to complain about me, no doubt knowing she would have a sympathetic audience, and my mother appeared not only sympathetic but enthusiastic in her conversation, affirming eagerly that I was indeed the “bad” person Q thought I was.

Oh gee. This is….not good.

I won’t even go into how my ex-husband, the father of my children, fit into this dynamic, but you can believe it wasn’t good either.

So at any rate, what I learned from myself, really, or rather, from my talking to the sympathetic 3, the third New York shrink, the one I went to last spring, 2009, could be formulated this way, though I didn’t formulate it that way then: the only paradigm I had for a loving relationship with another person was the one with my mother. And that was so tainted by hostility that it was very bad. She was outwardly affectionate, sort of, but inwardly hoping for the worst for me. And that was all I had to go on in forming friendships and romances on my own.

Wait a sec. Two questions: first of all, it wasn’t that outwardly affectionate if she was so critical, as you say; and secondly, how is it that you have so many friends?

Yes to the first question; she wasn’t all that affectionate, really, but compared to the nothing I got from my father, it appeared loving. She was envious and — entirely unconsciously — wanted bad things to happen to me. And as for the friends, well, I’ve realized recently that some of the people I used to consider friends were actually not very kind to me, and it has been a kind of relief to stop seeing them. But yes, I do have many good friends, and I guess that’s just good luck or good taste or both.

Or perhaps the fact that many people recognize in you someone who is a good and loyal friend, kind, generous, and thoughtful, as well as funny and quirky and imaginative.

It’s a good thing you’re saying that! I wouldn’t want to be in the position of praising myself….

Back to the story. I’m dying to know how all this connects to Funny Guy.

So at any rate, I came face to face, in February and March 2009, with the fact that really, neither parent had loved me; that I had grown up more or less disliked by both parents. — Now, I didn’t “go anywhere” with that recognition. I just had it…

But my relationship with Funny Guy is truly, far and away, the best relationship I’ve ever had with any lover. It’s completely and utterly devoid of any hostility on his part, and this is entirely new to me. He has said many times that all he wants is to make me happy, and he means that. He doesn’t have a job or some other purpose in life at the moment, and his child and grandchild live in a distant (American) city. I’m it, really, for him.

And, to come round to the point, I believe that without that realization about my mother — namely, that she didn’t love me either; that my father was not the only bad parent — I wouldn’t have been able to have the very good relationship I now have with Funny Guy. Although in the early days with FG I never made that connection, although in fact I’ve only made that connection I think in the past four or five months, I’m convinced that it’s true, and that I’m right about it.

Backing up a bit, Mimi, surely someone loved you in your childhood ??

Yes. My maternal grandparents loved me, doted on me, adored me. But that grandfather died when I was one-and-a-half, and my grandmother when I was 23, so I haven’t had them in my life very much, at least, haven’t had them living.

You have.

Yes, okay, in a sense, I have. Twenty-three years is something. That grandmother, E, doted on me, and I knew it. I remember years ago, 1980, holding a man’s hand during a movie. He was very kind and affectionate (that day, at any rate!), and I remember thinking that his hand felt like my grandmother’s, or that holding his hand reminded me of holding hers.

So you did have another paradigm…

I guess I did, but the other, my mother, was stronger. I didn’t grow up in the same city as my grandmother. She lived either a very long, overnight train ride away, or a complicated flight or two away, and for most of those 23 years I only saw her twice a year, and never for more than a week or two at a time.

But that love must have left a very strong impression.

It did. I can barely write this.

But not strong enough…

Well, yes and no, I guess. In the short run, not strong enough to undo the really dreadful effect of both awful parents; but in the long run, I didn’t forget it. I had had the experience of being truly loved, of being doted on, so I knew at some level I was worth it, that it was possible, and I wanted it again. I clung to that memory.

So you think that the memory of that true love, your grandparents’ love for you, which you held in your heart all those years (sorry for the trite phrase), and the recognition that your mother didn’t love you — those two things made it possible for you to have, at age 62, the first truly good romantic relationship of your whole life?

Yes. I do. And especially the second: I had to confront directly, and it was very upsetting, that truth about my mother. And it continues to be a difficult recognition, because I’m in touch with her daily, and I’m responsible for her. I doubt if she has noticed a change in me, but it’s there.

Well, Mims, there’s much more I’d like to ask, but this final post has gone on long enough. So tell me this: can we expect to hear from you again? And by “we” I mean your audience, such as we are.

Maybe. I’m taking down some posts, but I’m leaving all the Funny Guy ones up, and some of the earlier ones, such as “What does ‘I’ll call you’ mean?”, because it gets a lot of hits. It seems to be performing a useful social function.

I’ll respond to comments on this last double post, but I won’t add new ones. I’m now completing the novel version of Mimi’s dating adventures, and if you’d like to know when the book will be available, send me your email address as a comment to this post. I won’t publish the email addresses, but I’ll save them.

And so??

And so goodbye, blog-readers! This blog has meant a lot to me. Communication means a lot to me; I really require other people in my life, and conversation with them, so the blog has been in many ways a true life-saver. And to the friends I’ve made and met — Juliette of rendezvouswithromeos.blogspot.com, Suzanne of suzanneportnoy.com, Loverville of loverville.blogspot.com, funkybrownchick, elizabeth of sex in the public square — and the ones I haven’t met but have emailed — dating trooper, ruby, sapphirejay, viviane, lolita (one of my earliest fans), melissa — I’ve loved getting to know all of you. You’ve provided fun and wisdom and joy during a time that would have been pretty dismal without you.

Thank you all.

And buy my book (when it’s out)!!

lots of love,

Mimi.

You again.

Yeah, me again.

Whazzup?

So tell me, Mims, in your final post: what does it all mean? Dating, men, women, falling in love, living together — what, after all, does it really mean?

I hate bullshit questions like that.

But you know what I mean.

No, I don’t. I don’t have the foggiest notion.

Okay, I hear you. Let me ask some specific questions. There must be a lot of stuff you left out of your blog, because I don’t recall hearing about 57 men. So here’s one question: did you ever feel in any way threatened by any of the men you met online? were you every worried about physical force? You didn’t mention anything like that, but then, I know you don’t Tell All.

Never. Not once. No such concern, ever, with any of the men. I did a lot of screening and weeding and pruning (to mix metaphors). I cut off at the email stage a lot of men I found just plain rude or unpleasant or ill-natured, and there were a lot of those. So the 57 I met had been carefully weeded out of a large heap. And of course I met all of them for a first date in a public place, almost always a restaurant. It’s true that in a couple of cases, and I think that’s only two, I went to men’s apartments on a first date, but in both cases I knew so much about them that (in the words of another date) I knew more about them than they knew about themselves. Both were public figures of a sort, men I had read a lot about in the New York Times before I met them; both were grandfathers, one in his late 60s and one in his early 70s. I just went on intuition, and my intuition was obviously good, because in neither of those cases, nor indeed in any, did I ever have anything at all resembling the kind of problem you’re referring to.

Well, that’s good. You must have had good intuition. Can it be learned?

I have no idea. I wouldn’t want to be responsible for teaching anybody how to make judgments like that, because I really have no expertise in that area. It’s just something I apparently happen to be good at.

Next question. Leaping ahead: you and Funny Guy are very happy together —

Yes. We are. Very.

– and although you’ve been together for eleven months (on 10 April) and have been living together for about eight, you don’t have fights?

That’s right. We don’t. Funny Guy was a bit jumpy over Christmas and New Year’s, because that season is fraught with bad memories for him, so once or twice he was not his usual dear self. But in both cases, I talked him out of his bad humor.

Well, okay, if it’s really that wonderful –

— it is –

— then are you guys thinking of getting married?

Ah, I had a feeling that’s what you were building up to. Let me tell you something: on our first date, and probably in the second hour of it, I was telling FG about some surgery my mother was about to have. With great emphasis and at some length I said that I hated hospitals. ——– Funny Guy said, almost immediately after, that what I felt about hospitals was what he felt about marriage.

Oh!

Yes, it didn’t seem 100% pertinent, but this was after all my 55th first date (in this late-middle-age dating cycle), and I had experience of two or three other men (among them, actually, Plan C) who made it very clear right at the beginning that they did not want to get married again. I guess sexagenarian men are terrified that that’s all women are in it for, and so they want to exclude that possibility — that goal — that future — right at the start. I was used to that. It didn’t surprise me. And then FG told me in some detail about why he thought he’d made a mistake in his second marriage, and how he felt even ahead of time that he shouldn’t have been getting into it. He made that very clear, and he told the story so well that I could feel it with him.

But your relationship is different….

It is, yes. It’s much better, by far, than either of the marriages (2 each) we’ve had in the past.

So?

Okay, let me put it this way: I love the way Funny Guy and I are together. We must say “I luff you” (see three posts back for that ‘private’ joke) four or five or six times a day to one another. We’re truly happy together. I love it that we’re together because we want to be. If I think of our getting married, I think, Why would we want that? — If you’ll excuse some BS, I love the way we’re daily, hourly, always, ‘recommitting’ ourselves. We’re bound together very tightly and firmly.

Somehow, if we were married, it would feel a bit different, as if we were together now whether we wanted to be or not. — I have a feeling that if we got married, we’d have a fight of some sort — if only, I think, because the new situation would make Funny Guy very tense. And then we’d both feel, Oh dear, we were so much happier before we got married! — This is all so easy and so relaxed; why ruin a good thing?

I think I see your point. But what about ten years from now, or twenty?

Come back and ask me then.

I get it. — But have you discussed it at all?

When Funny Guy reads this post, that will be the first time the subject has been raised since our first date, May 10, 2009. And I can tell you with some confidence that I bet he feels exactly the way I do about this, that we’re really good as we are, and neither of us wants to interfere in any way with something that’s going so well. The balance of things, if that’s the phrase, is just right.

Okay, new topic. As recently as four months before you met Funny Guy, you went out with the awful T
——— So my question, considering that you had two failed marriages, and after each one a number of highly imperfect (or in some cases, just plain bad) relationships, is this: how is it that now, all of a sudden, you’re able to have one that’s so wonderful? What made this possible? What did you learn, or what did you do, or how did this come about? That’s what I want to know, and what your blog has never explained.

Yes. Excellent question; one I’ve asked myself.

You have an answer?

I do. But it’s not easy to explain. It takes a while.

I talked in the blog about two shrinks, each bad in ways that were not altogether different. The first, whom I saw from November 07 through December 08, was the one who thought Performer (my bf in the latter half of that time period) could do no wrong, and kept making excuses for every awful thing he said or every patently questionable practice (e.g., P was still sleeping, naked, in the same bed as his wife the entire time we were dating! their divorce was ‘in process’….). The shrink thought I was the problem, that I needed to ‘give him time’ etc. A dreadfully wrong shrink, and, I might add, for whatever edification this can offer my readers, a ‘celebrity’ shrink: he was well known, and many of his patients were famous.

You went to someone like that?

Well, with shrinks as with boyfriends, you have to know when to dump them. I should have figured out how wrong he was, wrong in his views of the situation and wrong for me, much sooner.

At least you finally did.

Yes, but then a similar thing happened again, with the next shrink. I was dating Plan C when I started going to him, and for a long time things went so well that there was nothing for him to say. But when things began going downhill, it became clear that he hated Plan C and became irrationally critical of him. Things were over with Plan C in early August 08, and when I met T, on Halloween in 08, shrink #2 really took to T. All the warning signs were there, vividly bright red flags, but he dismissed every one of them, as shrink #1 had with Performer. In each case, the shrink identified himself, I think, with the man I had met on his (the shrink’s) ‘watch,’ and became invested in having the relationship succeed. AND in each case, the shrink appeared to think that if anything went wrong in that relationship, it was because I was “sabotaging” (that favorite shrink word) the “relationship.”

Oh God. What a disaster.

Yes indeed. Very bad; very wrong. And don’t even begin to think about the fact that I was paying for this ignorant, wrong-headed advice.

Oh God. That makes it worse. If someone so smart and savvy and alert as you can make two such mistakes….

I know.

So? Go on. I’m impatient to hear how this story is going to answer my original question.

Well, I never mentioned in the blog that I broke up with the second shrink. That was at the end of January 09, after things ended with T. But I did. It had become unambiguously clear, superduper clear, that he was a complete disaster, not really smart at all, and altogether lacking insight about me. He began telling me things about myself that I knew were entirely wrong, that didn’t fit me at all, and what’s even worse, he was aware of that. When I said, I’m not going to pay you for those last two sessions, he said, I’m not going to charge you.

And?

(continued in the next post)

Please save all comments for the end of the next post. Thank you.

dates of first and last dates
26 June 2006 through 29 May 2009

professions of the 57 men
10 lawyers
1 journalist
2 medical doctors
2 psychiatrists
8 business men (of various types)
2 musicians
1 writer
4 university professors
2 architects
3 psychologists
2 visual artists
20 miscellaneous

how many asked me on a second date
23

how many second dates did i go on
14

4 or more dates with how many men
6

how many of the 57 men i dated would i like as a friend/neighbor/cousin
10

how many of the men i dated did i decide, at some point after our date(s), were really unpleasant
9

repeated names encountered (i.e., common names given to boys in the 1940s)
Roger: 3
Alan / Allen / Allyn 3
John / Jon 3
Andrew 2
David 2
Harry 2
Herb 2
Joe 2
Mark / Marc 2
Peter 2
Steven 2
[list does not include names encountered only once]

men between whom and me there were degrees of separation from someone we both knew (i.e., at some point it became clear that this man and i knew someone in common, even if it wasn’t a person i knew very well)
16
(a funny example of this: it emerged, slowly, that Funny Guy actually knew [in one case] or knew someone who knew [one case] two of the other men i dated)

number of men who forgot me so totally after our one and only date that they emailed me again, some months later, expressing interest as if we had never met
3 (one of them did this twice)

shortest first date
45 minutes

longest first date
13 hours

number of significant relationships (not to be confused with ‘number of relationships’)
5

number of men (of the ones tabulated here) who said i love you
3

longest long-term relationship (of the ones tabulated here) before Funny Guy
6 months

number of women i’ve not only become friendly with through our dating blogs but actually met and socialized with and now consider good friends
3

oddest facts
1) One man I dated had a) sold drugs; b) cheated on a drug deal someone who later became a celebrity; c) stolen a car and been jailed for the theft; d) shot someone; e) been married four times; f) sired an out-of-wedlock son who also became a drug-dealer.
2) One man I dated had met the future President Barack Obama when Obama was a child of about six. My date, an expert on Indonesia, had stayed with O’s mother at her house in Hawai.

general description of first date with The One, Funny Guy
May 10, 2009
6 – 7 we meet at a gritty neighborhood (my neighborhood) bar (my choice; FG thought it was noisy & sleazy and was eager to leave it) (he paid)
7:05 – 8:45 we eat dinner at a local hole-in-the-wall ethnic restaurant (my choice again; FG didn’t like it, but he didn’t mention that till many weeks later) (we split the cost, which came to about $10 for me, meal + tip) (well, I said it was a hole-in-the-wall, didn’t I??)
8:45 – 10:30 we walk around the neighborhood talking
10:30 – 11 we have drinks (me: tea; Funny Guy: scotch) at a non-descript, moderate-priced local restaurant that is almost but not quite closed (he paid)

number of dates of any kind, internet or otherwise, i want to go on in the future
0

*************************************

I told him I did celebrate it; it was part of my religion; but I didn’t do it the Hallmarky way, with bought cards or chocolate or flowers or jewelry etc. I didn’t help the economy in any way at Valentine’s: I made my own cards, and for me, Valentine’s was an exchange of homemade cards.

Funny Guy agreed to celebrate it, but he did end up buying me something — “your gift,” he said, a few days before The Day, which made me wonder, and hope he hadn’t bought something expensive or conventional. But I thought I knew him well enough to know he would not have done something like that.

I was right:

At a local toy shop, Funny Guy bought the letters of my name (Mimi is my nom de plume, or should I say nom de keyboard) in little wooden train-like pieces, with powerful magnets on the ends of each, so they attach to one another and can be pulled together. The colors are the colors he chose, but I’ve used the ever-practical Paint program to cover the letters with “painted” hearts and other letters.

Nice, eh?

* * *

And with only the materials to hand in my home office (and a couple of closets), I made him a trademark MIMI card. I’ve covered up the photographs of Funny Guy (blue heart on right) and Myself (red heart on left), but otherwise, the pic below is the card As Given:

The words, written in my own special grafitti-style letters, say TRUE LUFF. We’ve been saying I luff you ever since we saw a play last fall that quoted, complete with powerful Polish accent, the words of Pope John Paul II on his visit to Ireland in 1979: Young people of Ireland, I LUFF YOU!

Need I say, the allusion in the play was entirely ironic. We loved it; I mean, we luffed it, and have been quoting it ever since.

Funny Guy described my card style as “over the top” (I guess he meant, the generous use of gold glitter and silver glitter nail polish along with a profusion of glitter ribbons etc.)….he was much amused by it.

* * *

So that was our first Valentine’s Day together. Soon after we had opened our respective valentines, Funny Guy’s stepmother (for the past 47 years) phoned and asked, “Is this your first Valentine’s Day together?” and wished us happy returns of the day etc. Very sweet of her. Funny Guy is now at his apartment meeting Craig’s-list buyers for his remaining pieces of furniture.

* * *

And now for the “warning to readers.”

The first post to Sexagenarian and the City was 18 February 2007.

The time has come, I think, to kill the blog.

* * *

As some of you may remember, my greeting to the blog on its second birthday was Yeah, happy birthday, and may you die before you reach the age of four.

It is going to die before the age of four: it’s going to die at age three.

* * *

Three plus a few days.

Watch for a final “farewell” post next week.

I’ll still respond to comments on the final post.

TTFN.

* * *

Yes, Funny Guy is still moving in, and here are today’s newly relocated belongings:

1) his only daughter’s baby plate
Well, the kid is going to be forty in September…and Funny Guy has moved this plate around with him everywhere, to all of 10+ places he has lived since his original family split up. This plate lived in Europe for two years when Funny Guy did, and it has abided also in many parts of Brooklyn — Park Slope, Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn Heights. So now it moves (and not for the first time) to Manhattan. Welcome, sweet baby plate! And yes, Funny Guy is sentimental. That’s a very endearing quality, especially in someone as dry, funny, edgy, ironic, and yeah even stunningly negative as Funny Guy.

2) his Parisian socks
Yup, I would only invite to share my living space a man who wears Parisian socks.

Not that I ever saw the socks before two hours ago….I love them. Aren’t those cute little mousies? Now tell me, do any of you know a man who wears mouse-socks?

I knew he had some ‘interesting’ socks from Paris, but he never mentioned that they had mice on them.

I wonder why he didn’t bring them here earlier?

I’ll ask him.

* * *

“I didn’t even know they were there. I was just digging things out of bags. I completely forgot.”

* * *

Well, there isn’t much left now, I guess. Two ugly boring mugs arrived today also, not so colorful as the ones two posts back. I gather there’s not a whole lot left: some pictures (to be hung in the living room), a couple of jackets, some summer pants, “and a few odds and ends,” he says.

So that will be it, and then Funny Guy will be entirely moved in!

* * *

He said he was glad to get out of his old apartment today. Taking everything apart, he remembered and realized anew what a “catastrophe” (I believe that was his word) his last relationship was, the one that ended in that apartment in August 2008, but endured, sort of, as the woman in question was unable (for real estate reasons) to move out until this past June.

* * *

Mouse socks!

It takes a real man to wear mouse socks.

* * *

…and these are his baby shoes. His mother had them bronzed.

Bit by bit Funny Guy is carrying stuff by subway from his apartment to mine. Today he brought, among other things, a warm winter coat, a very stylish fedora (both choice fashion items from Housing Works), and a few little tchotchkes (as they do not call them in Sicily, where half of Funny Guy’s family comes from): an athletic trophy (the first in this apartment! — very nice, with his name etched in glass; he was a champion collegiate athlete, as I believe I’ve mentioned before), a little green frog from Sweden, and these baby shoes.

I suddenly realized that we were really combining households.

It almost made me cry.

Not since 1982 have I combined households with anyone.

* * *

To clarify: he has lived here since the beginning of August, but only his clothes, computer, and some books have been here.

* * *

Anyway, it’s great.

I can’t believe there’s a direct line of cause and effect from Match and all those dreadful hours and days and weeks and months — and Years! — of looking at those online profiles to the presence of the little bronzed baby shoes on my — our? — bookshelf.

* * *

But hey, you know? I do not not not want to be one of those couples advertising Match. Can you imagine our photo, Funny Guy’s and mine, framed in neon and smiling at you over Times Square?

* * *

No, you cannot, because it will never happen.

* * *

Cute shoes, eh?

* * *

So, whaddya think of those two mugs in the front, the ones that say PANAMA and have bright colors on them? Like ‘em?

Funny Guy picked up them from someone on the street a few days ago; he bought them for two dollars each.

* * *

Have I mentioned, Funny Guy is a shopper?

I hate flea markets. It always turned me off big time [sorry to be sounding like someone under 50...] when I saw “shopping at flea markets” as one of the “activities” or “interests” on some man’s profile. One reason, really the main reason I hated seeing that, is that I have way too much stuff in too little space.

It’s not that I have lots of crappola or tchotchkes. I don’t. But I have too many books, too much unsorted junk mail, too many shoppings bags of old tax information — in short, far too much paper.

But I don’t have “figurines” or junk of that sort because I have never, ever wanted to accumulate them.

* * *

I do love mugs, but then, I drink about two cups of coffee and ten cups of tea a day, and when I have tea- or coffee-drinking company on a big scale, they all are offered mugs, not cups and saucers.

And I especially like NPR mugs. I have two Car Talk mugs and two wonderful cobalt blue Fresh Air mugs.

I have so many mugs that I barely have room for them all. I keep the ones I use all the time, the NPR ones, in the front.

* * *

Because, then, the mug shelf is full to overflowing, and the kitchen is small and crowded, I’ve been wondering how Funny Guy’s kitchen stuff, whatever he wanted to keep, would fit here. He has been subletting his apartment since last summer. His lease is up in a few weeks, and he’ll get rid of most of his stuff except for his books and the few clothes that are left. He goes back to his apartment every now and then and takes out whatever his tenant isn’t using.

* * *

Funny Guy mentioned that he had a few mugs he was fond of, and because I’m so attached to my NPR mugs, I felt entirely welcoming toward those mugs. I thought I’d move some of the ones already on my mug shelf but near the back to some remote kitchen space in order to make room for Funny Guy’s favorite mugs. I looked forward to meeting them.

* * *

Well okay, so the other day I noticed the two mugs in the picture above, and I thought, Oh! those must be the mugs Funny Guy was talking about. Those must be his favorite mugs. I guess his tenant wasn’t using them, and he decided to bring them over now.

I mentioned them to him, and Imagine My Surprise when I learned that those weren’t the old fav mugs! but in fact new mugs that he had just paid $4 for….

* * *
Okay $4 isn’t a lot, even for someone like Funny Guy with No Money At All.

But still.

I was horrified: here we have almost no space for another toothpick in the kitchen, the shelf is full, the mugs already here are in danger of falling off the edge, your own fav mugs aren’t even here yet, and you buy MORE mugs!!??!? WHY??

We don’t need more mugs! We have more than there is space for already, and I’m going to be moving some out of the way to make room for your own old homey fav mugs. Why, why on earth buy More?

You can’t see how crowded it is in the pic, because my four NPR mugs — the two cobalt blue mugs in the pic above, and two Car Talk mugs — weren’t even on the shelf. Actually in this pic you can see on the far right one of the Car Talk mugs, with all the writing on it:

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To my surprise, I was really upset. I was ready to accept the PANAMA mugs, accept and welcome and love them as my own, IF they were Funny Guy’s own old fav mugs, you know, like stuffed animals or something.

But they were mugs he just bought from a guy on the street outside a flea market!! Why on earth??

* * *

I think it was the feeling of how cramped and crowded it is here — with my stuff alone — and how much throwing out and rearranging and tidying I have to do and have postponed as I’m devoting every spare minute to working on the novel — and the idea of More Crap sickened me. AND the idea that someone who knew how I keep postponing dealing with the mess of stuff but really want to get rid of it, that someone who knew that would actually bring more stuff in!! voluntarily!

That’s what upset me.

* * *

What can I say? Funny Guy is a shopper. He likes to buy stuff. I remember on our third date, as we were taking a long long walk on a lovely May afternoon, he stopped to look at some crap on sale on the sidewalk and bought something for a friend.

Generous. Silly. Wasteful on a small scale. But then, Funny Guy doesn’t have many possessions and doesn’t like to accumulate things. He “travels light.”

But he likes to buy stuff.

* * *

I know what you’re thinking: Hey! really! this is this guy’s worst fault? he buys two mugs for $2 each? and that’s all he’s done to annoy you in almost nine months of being together? he hasn’t flirted with other women, cheated on you, gone back on Match, yelled, whined, complained, picked fights? He just bought two — umm — well, not ugly exactly — two unnecessary mugs from a guy on the street?

You’re a very lucky woman.

Yes, that’s what you’re thinking: I’m a very lucky woman.

* * *

Well, to be honest, he was just a bit shall we say fussy over Christmas and New Year’s, because bad memories of bad family holidays apparently always make him not at his shiniest best over Christmas. But he really liked those two holidays this year with me (and thank you again, Loverville, for your company and hospitality on those days) and with luck he’ll be less “fussy” (temperamental and prickly is what I mean) next year at that time.

* * *
Anyway, the remainder of his stuff is moving in here soon, in the next couple of weeks.

I’m hoping I’ll have time to throw away more stuff of mine.

* * *

And if you live in Manhattan and need a couple of mugs, just let me know.

You can have them very cheap. Under $4.

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I’ll get Funny Guy’s permission first. He can post a comment here….

* * *

Result: I may see the podiatrist she recommended, who not only operated on both of her feet (not the same day, of course) but on both feet of Funny Guy’s ex-wife.

********

So there you have it: the toe connection.

Credit, indirectly: match dot com.

********

But oh yes: I have to see if he accepts my insurance.

Ho hum……….

**********

Well, this is just a bit late, and way past everyone’s first and even second wave of interest in Obama, and in my dates, but I recently remembered this tiny tiny fact about Date #50.

Date #50 was a very pleasant professor. He would have been a great next-door neighbor or friend. I don’t think either of us felt much or any sexual interest in the other, but we sat talking over coffee for almost 3 hours, as I remember, or perhaps only 2+, but it was a while.

So here’s the tiny thing I forgot: 50 used to do research on a Pacific island I won’t mention, and on his way back to the U.S., he would stay with an old friend/colleague in Hawaii. She was very smart, very hospitable, a friend he loved to talk with; and when he stayed with her, he always saw her young son, a pleasant, smart dark-skinned little boy, always hanging around also.

That was the young Obama.

My date, #50, had on a number of occasions seen the future president as a young boy, while staying with Obama’s mother.

************

Okey dokey, well, that’s it! Just this funny little fact I forgot to include last April.

***********

Funny Guy and I have taken our Christmas tree down. He was eager to get all the ornaments packed up and the tree out of the apartment, but I was all sentimental about it: Our first tree!!!

Later I went outside where the guys in the building had put the tree out on the sidewalk, and I cut a few branches off and stuck them in water. This tree stayed very green right up to the end, because Funny Guy gave it a quart of water every day, and I spritzed it. The branches I cut off were very green, and they still smell delicious.

When I showed Funny Guy the branches in water, he was very amused.

**********
Funny Guy’s cds enrich my slender collection. He has Bob Marley, and I didn’t. You should see him dancing to Bob Marley! FG is not a dancer, as Plan C was, but he’s hilarious when he dances, because it’s sort of a parody of a good dancer. I was bouncing to Marley, and FG said, No! that’s not how you dance to Bob Marley! He got up to show me: he floated around the room with his eyes closed, his neck wobbling, his arms extended and his hands pointing to the ceiling. He pretended to be holding a drink.

Later I came down before taking my walk: I was wearing my balaclava and holding a cup of coffee. I did a parody of FG’s parody.

He was laughing.

***********

Today FG took a long walk with me, a beautiful grey walk during which about 23 snowflakes drifted down. First we discussed the recently ended romance of a friend of mine, and then, at my request, FG told me all he knew (quite a lot; at least 2.5 miles-worth) about Lenin and Stalin.

***********

And that’s the news for the eighth of January, 2010.

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