Son of a preacher, man.

I'd been single for about ten years in 2012, and after the Internet dating bubble burst, I went back to good ole' fashioned, face-to-face contact with the same limited results. Based on the sound reasoning that I'd made a female friend of sorts at an alumni function quickly after my return from out west, I invited a Korean friend (also somewhat lukewarm) from my dojo to an alumni function downtown that served as an equidistant meeting point between our respective subway commutes from Brooklyn and Queens.

My fair-weather friend agreed to the get-together, which was somewhat surprising to me after she rebuffed other fun invitations, but summer in the city makes even the most winter-shocked South Korean eager to be outside. The theme was a disco dance party, which made my older friend happy at the prospect of enjoying. Something was in the air that night, because soon after she showed up, we started doing shots, and then time seemed to speed up. The music got louder, the bar got more crowded, and after an older man hit on me early on, the younger office guys started showing up from their pre-game bar hops further uptown that led them to our downtown soiree.

It got blurry after that, but I remember a spinning disco ball with lots of flashing lights, and dancing in a group with a cute, dark-haired guy. We took breaks from the dance floor to talk to him on the sidewalk outside, and then we were too drunk to go on. I didn't remember getting home that night, which scared my middle-aged self a lot more than the younger version of me. The city was rapidly changing with this latest wave of gentrification, and a lot of the newcomers didn't know the rules, which made it even more dangerous than it'd been before, in direct proportion to their out-of-towner paranoia. You could see the tension in their eyes walking around.

It must have scared off my friend, too, because other summer alumni party invites got turned down right away with no hesitation. We even emailed each other over the contacts we made that night, with both of us given the same info for the guy we'd been dancing with. She declined the idea of dating him while we were at the beach in Coney Island, silenced by my bodysurfing in the same way a Filipino friend from another dojo would be during my first, successful bodyboarding attempt using his board. He also never accepted an invite from me again, and they'd both been afraid of the murky Atlantic Ocean.

So, my new alumni friend and I struck up an easy correspondence at the same time I'd met another younger guy at a second alumni party that summer. Ryan was in his 20s, though, so we didn't get as far as my other paramour in his 30s did, but I was working a freelance gig midtown that made lunch dates and after-work excursions easy to arrange. He was good company, too, of a sort that I'd been accustomed to for a long time: an intelligent, educated Nuyorican making good after leaving the 'hood. I was proud to see other hardcore city kids get through "The Ivy League" system a lot easier than I did. 

That didn't make life problem-free, though, on account of us being natives. The manager at his landscape design firm was a real bitch who kept hitting on him, years before this recent spate of sexual harassment suits y'all are thriving in began. Every time she knew he was heading out the door, she'd drop work on his desk due immediately, like she'd done for our lunch date he was late for, and now this dinner date he thought she was weirdly trying to sabotage. 

She was a much older, extremely aggressive, non-native blond lady having fun jerking the chain of a young brother on the rise, in a classic RISD "pas-de-deux" of sexual tension marred by intense career competition. Poor kid couldn't tell if he was attracted by all the attention or if he was afraid for his life, when I asked him about it over pre-dinner drinks, which worried me even more. She was a seasoned cougar accustomed to muddying the work-waters with her shirts unbuttoned just the right amount, so that whenever she leaned over his desk, she showed her thickly tanned "creasage" to the newest kid on the block, confused and stressed out as he was by making it to "The Big League" firms of Manhattan.

Based on that disclosure alone, plus the rapturous detail he supplied to me about the technical qualities of the soil in the street planters we passed as we headed toward our destination, I knew he was "hands-off" dating material for me, but I liked the warmth of a humid summer night on the water. We were going to see a Muay Thai fight at the Hudson River piers later on, so even if our dinner date didn't go as planned, I'd still see some action that night. We were finally seated in a really loud restaurant that seemed to immediately perk him up with its Hispanic-flavored appetizers. We got more drinks and with our entrees, I leaned in to ask him some serious questions, as the Mojitos started to give me a fuzzy "halo effect" I could see reflected on his now more-amorous face.

Alright. Let's get down to it: food, family, faith....all the really good stuff. Here, he faltered a bit as the evenings' sheen wore away, like I suspected. Just talking about his hardened single mom from Puerto Rico brought about a dampening effect, as we dived down into the reality of our respective situations. I'd come from a broken family that did time in the projects coming up, too. I knew that without a very solid foundation, and if our careers suddenly "went south", we didn't have anything or anyone to rely on besides the stuff that got us to this point in time, and I needed him to feel that pressure a little bit, because I was way past the age of random hook-ups. He started responding to it, opening up beyond the bland office demeanor we used to pass through midtown offices, but I could see his confidence was fading.

By the time we got around to religion, he was almost done talking to me. I spoke haltingly about my traditional Catholic upbringing, and I could tell from the chill falling over him that "The Ivory Tower" we attended was still unreceptive to people of faith. Oh, well. I stopped talking so I could listen to him describe his mothers' descent into the extremes of Evangelical Christianity brought on by the stress of single motherhood, including demonic possession and public displays in the churchs' aisles while writhing on the ground speaking in tongues. Huh. I did not have that kind of upbringing. Candles, yes. Stained glass, yes. Beauty and discipline, si. This shit you sayin' to me? Uh, hell, no.

I truly did not know what to say back to him. He told me as his mom worked her way up the small, storefront church hierarchy, she'd egged him on to make up phony scenarios that would promote them even higher within the parish, by babbling gibberish and making a false conversion. "I lied about it", as he laughed uncomfortably in the face of my genuine experience. Yeah, I hesitated, but your moms...."Oh, I know!" He said it too loud and too quick, which meant he wasn't over anything. "She's totally nuts!" Right, but, that doesn't mean your spiritual life is over, I gently advised him. You're Hispanic. Catholics can always come home. And I meant it. He was my Brother-in-Christ. He was more insistent on putting all religions in the same category as UFOs and Bigfoot sightings. This brush-up with sincerity? He disliked that even more. It had happened to me more than once at RISD, so I knew the deal: the door was officially closing.

When he saw the stage version of my real-life warrior act down at the pier, I knew we'd reached the end of our destination. Now it was his turn to be silent over post-fight beers at a makeshift cabana by the water. "So, that's what you trained in, huh?" Yeah, my man. As the sun set over the river on a romance that was never-to-be, he suddenly seemed to want the evening to go on, with another round of beers and a renewed sense of energy, in pursuit of a feeling that left quickly with so many fighter men milling around the bar, dressed in tight t-shirts emblazoned on the back with a trendy design motif: two big, graphic angel wings with the feathers articulated in a highly realistic, line-art style. And just like that, it was time for us both to go home. Alone.

Happy Feast Day to Our Most Blessed Mother, The Holy Virgin, 
Our Lady of Guadalupe. Forever She Reigns as Queen of Heaven.

Moondance

I knew that my relationship with a certain young Mr. Mulvihill wouldn't last for very long because he was too proud of being inbred and ignorant as fuck, in addition to his poor diet, lack of appropriate sleep habits, and near-daily drinking habit to the point of intoxication, not to mention his utter lack of a well-rounded education. Irish-American boys had become my comfort food, best dated between long-term romances like, say, during a summertime spent mostly at the beach, to be dropped once the party turned violent, and in their battered homes, it always did. Someone else always started swinging first.

But, for a time, it was easy enough for me to see someone who lived a half an hour's drive away from me (with no traffic), so I could pursue my work life in the city. He didn't like the patterns of our weekend romance, but I honestly didn't have much more to offer someone who, while financially successful, remained a high school dropout. He was lost without his "homies", even as he hated being stuck in a co-dependent drunkfest with the old gang at Gerritsen Beach. He was a mechanically-inclined millionaire with a depressingly unfinished house in an insular pocket of Brooklyn, with horrible social skills and a peculiarly small worldview.

There wasn't anything I could do for him unless he did it himself, and with the fistfuls of cash he always had on hand, he seemed to think that he called all the shots with me, a world-class art director. It was delusional and arrogant, but money will do that to ya. He could run his yard and his demented crew, and that was about it. I'd never had a life that small, and the tension of our ill-fitted pairing showed early and quick. I broke up with him often, and the stress of being stalked and pursued yet again in my late 30s, after all my life experiences, made me angrier than ever.

I didn't want the whole juvenile "push-and-pull" dating thing; I never had. I wanted a hot love affair that lasts forever. I was the "queen of clean breaks" who bore her former suitors no ill will, but John had inroads with my family that made me worth pursuing in his mind, which also made me incredibly dangerous to someone as small-time as him. I could wreck him and his family forever with a call to the cops because of his past, and he knew it. Ultimately, after one night's big showdown, that was it. He knew better than to push his way into my life and my home, because he begged me afterward not to press charges.

His "ex" wife (not officially divorced though legally separated, as I later found out that he lied to me) had pursued domestic violence charges with a vengeance designed to chain him even tighter to her, and I was more than fine with that. I didn't need their brutal mind games in my life. Besides, the whole weird love triangle between him, his best friend, and his best friend's wife totally freaked me out, as did the strange semi-incestuous attachment his half-sister had to him. It was creepy and weird, and it felt like I was living someone else's life besides mine. I wanted out, and I got it by fighting for it.

That isn't to say we didn't ever get long. Obviously, a handsome Mick with a good job rolls off me the way water does a duck's back. It wasn't exactly unflattering, and cute New York boys have tons of confidence and charm, especially on a Friday night with their pockets full of pay for boozy food-and-drink extravagances. But, I was no ingenue. More than one girl has sat back and watched a parade of savvy boys try to play me like a fiddle. It takes a lot of finesse. Suffice to say, we had enough cultural commonalities that being with him could be as fun as getting drunk at a football game with a tailgate party full of cheeseburgers. You don't do it often, but once in awhile is fine, you know? I just didn't need season tickets to the show.

One of our last dates was one of our best, though with his crew's challenged perceptions about time, it went on for far too long. They tried to squeeze a good time out of me the way show-biz parents overbearingly set up their kids for child molestation: maybe they didn't mean to hurt me at first, but after their tenth beer or ninth hour, I could feel the suppressed rage of their intolerance towards me chafe like an ugly wool sweater that itched a red rash all over you. It was oppressive. The concert we went to see at Jones Beach* was like that.

They were a little too happy about seeing a show by a notoriously temperamental artist who'd walk off the stage in a huff if he felt the "vibe" from the audience wasn't right. I had that to look forward to, as well as the long car ride (with his sister and best friends, again) who still thought drinking and driving was fun, like being trapped in a time machine from the 70s or 80s. It was a bad feeling, especially with their young girl in the car, too. We got there way too early, which meant more boring hours in a parking lot trying to drink and have fun with people who don't know how to talk.

Finally, it was time to see the show. John was huffy with me in the seats because he hated one of my more mild college stories that I told to pass the time. His best friend defended me by saying that John had an experience like that, too, and he was more subdued after being caught in another lie. And then, just like that, the magic happened. Van Morrison sang one of his most famous songs about the moon in October skies just as a pair of swans entwined neck-in-neck swam by the stage in the surrounding Long Island Sound, sparkling moonlight and twinkling pianos and all. I wished that could have been our good summertime ending, but it was not. Still, I have one more memory to go along with one heck of a talented Irishman, diva or no. It was much appreciated, lad. Ta!




* http://www.dec.ny.gov/outdoor/66660.html

Vive Le Hate

 
While some women had terrifying brush-ups with serial date rapists and other ghouls that haunted the free site Craigslist during its heyday, I famously dated an international explorer and one very lonely celebrity chef. Neither was a good match for me, but I got pretty close to some decent relationships. Francois was an insecure Parisian businessman who convinced himself that I only wanted to date him because he was rich. Au contraire! The sex was as good as his West Village apartment, paid for every month by his firm.

Our first date was on a snowy evening to see "Le Jazz Hot" that I thought boded well for us both. But, soon he was doubting our age difference and language skills (neither true obstacles), and the discrepancy he saw in our looks. He called me a "Petite Modelle" (mannequin) during our first few beers together, astonished that a woman as beautiful as me was single, and therein lies the rub. He was a bit too thin perhaps, with a receding hairline and stained teeth of a European kind, but it was workable enough for me, though his insecurities were not.

At first, he insisted on seeing me more often, which meant I had to hurry home from work to walk my dog and then trek back to Manhattan for our dates. It was a good thing I was in my 30s and more motivated. Then, when that accommodation became intolerable, he said he would pay for my car service rides to-and-from his place, even though technically he had no money. Oh, mon dieu...then, he made a big deal out of taking the subway to see me in "le suburb de Brooklyn". I began questioning his judgment even more. He chipped away at our relationship like a gay man caught kissing a drunk girl for kicks at a soiree. What gives?

He mined the false construct of the Brooklyn 'burbs all the way to calling me "une salope" for my last name (so suburban), then ridiculing his limited palette sexually ("go find a lesbian to do the 'lick lick'. I am macho"!), to finally excluding me from a dinner party for his middle-aged friends because they would only speak French. That was after he accused me of pretending not to be fluent "en francais", so I could get out of reading his bad murder mystery he supposedly wrote on an intercontinental flight while sitting next to a showgirl from "Le Moulin Rouge" who obsessively counted each bite of food she ate because she was paranoid about getting fat. 

"So cute!" he said to me, as he pulled a bowl of chips away from me sitting on his piano, while rebuffing my amorous advances, citing that we should have dinner instead. He unraveled the strands of our relationship one-by-one to avoid an entanglement, because he told me the only successful long-term "affaire de coeur" he ever had was with a married woman whose husband didn't care if she slept around. Oh, how droll. I think I was supposed to be impressed by his utter lack of ability in handling a woman full-time, but, sadly, I was not. As I sussed out his neuroses one at a time, he just threw more obstacles in the way, culminating in a date "with a friend" that he suspiciously gave me the street address to after a series of texts, so I could find him with a pretty older woman with dark hair and eyes who was obviously interested in him, then fly into a jealous lover's rage.

We had our final mis-en-scene in the posh MeatPacking district of Manhattan. I dressed him down for encouraging these behaviors deliberately to get my attention, while his co-worker awkwardly waited down the block to see what would happen between us, finally coming up to us as we were walking away to say her "au revoir". Out of all these negatives, came the results of one inconvenient test that was absolutely positive. He told me Frenchmen were deliberately seeking to replenish their dwindling bloodlines outside of the country, then moving back home to retain custody that would actively cut the foreign-born mother out of the picture, and that was the last straw for me. It was preposterously abusive. You can only jerk around a smart New York woman so much before the "wild child" in her comes out, and that really threw him for a loop. When my patient French Catholicism was finally exhausted by all his trying immature antics, this mama did what any sane woman would do: I ended his line of succession forever. 
Tell me, where's the sin in that?

http://m.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/kelly-rutherford-loses-custody-children-ex-husband-article-1.2466812

Cruisin'

Years back—at the height of the social media craze—I re-connected with a former classmate I met in junior high school on a "friends" site, like so many of us who work with computers do. He wasn't part of my circle of friends back in the day, but I remembered him as a nice, quiet, serious boy; not exceptionally bright or gifted, but nice. My impression of him was confirmed during our reacquaintance in a series of IM chats through the online site that tended to go on and on, because he wouldn't disconnect from me first. He went to a SUNY school in the city for toy design that I thought was really neat, except that it wasn't for him, because he wrote to me that his architect dad "pushed" him into the program, when he really wanted to be a car designer. Oh.

It didn't make sense to me. No one can (or could) "force" me to be an Illuminator, especially my non-artistic immediate family, so how did it happen? He still really didn't know. He worked at a company for ten years that he described to me as his "dream job", in direct contradiction to his other messages. But, like me, he moved back from out west to Rockland County after years away, so we had that in common, along with design and martial arts. He got his Judo black belt from a strip mall dojo with a self-appointed "guru" who sold them potions while they were still on the mats, so I didn't expect much from our playful sparring, and he never competed. He sat on me with his full weight, and then told me that was a "pin" in judo, which I guess means a "win" without any technique or effort on his part. It was weird. "What do you, just sit on people?" Well, yeah...that was his strategy. Okay.

We diverged again artistically. I didn't remember him from any of my art classes at public school, and I'd taken them since childhood—even when they weren't offered on the curriculum—at my urging. He didn't strike me as an artist at all, nor do I remember any of his works. I'd simply never seen him in our studios at school. He was tepid about that, too. But, he did like to get the fuck out of his parents house while he re-established his career on the east coast, and that we very much had in common. My overbearing mom eases up immediately around strong men, because they telegraph "hetero" in a big loud voice that she doesn't like, so she skitters away vaguely. It gave me the head space I needed to endure dysfunctional family visits during their holidays—that they wrongly describe as "parties"—by having an excuse to leave, which was also noticed and attacked.

"You have to 'visit' with people when you come over!" my mom would say to me, only to either ignore me for the rest of the "visit", or abuse me into working "her" weirdo "party" filled with other headcases by serving and waiting on their lazy fat asses, only to have them insult me to my face. Fuck that! I can punch anyone of them in the face, hard enough to do serious damage. I don't have to sit in some overheated room to shove my face with bad food made for other addicts. We'd escape in his car for "joy rides" made through the twisting hills of rural Rockland County with the windows open to stave off motion sickness that sometimes didn't work, hiking our way through the trails we grew up walking. It gave us the counterbalance we needed in the mentally ill homes of our youth, as we adjusted to our adult roles of leadership in these families too sick to care for themselves in our absence.

He picked up visits to the acupuncturist his mother frequented in Nanuet, working out as a bodybuilder in New City and going to the local bars there. He established a suburban routine much quicker than I did, because I still worked as a designer in the city, and I had my own apartment in Park Slope that he immediately wanted to move into (not uncommon for me), by planting himself and his cat there for a length of time that was to be determined by me. He left on Monday morning. Besides his rather generic interests and habits, he also had a bland "white boy" sensibility about travel that was filled with dull cruises that he referred to as "cruising" online. I finally responded that to him that it's the go-to phrase for gay men on the make who are also fond of ships at sea. Oh...haha. Yeah. Did I like "cruising", though?

Oh, fuck no, "white boy". For a Filipino boy from New York, he had a lot less flavor than me, and he knew it. He told me he was always upset by people's reactions to his appearance, because he said he wasn't that exotic. "I'm kinda like a 'white boy' in L.A." Yeah. No shit, homeboy. You're kinda "white" here, too. It was doubly odd because the dude looked like a younger version of Jet Li or Donnie Yen; like, a good-looking martial arts movie star with an incredible physique. So, what gives with that? Why no "flair"? He didn't know the answer to that question, either. The last girl he dated was a homeless meth addict who slept on his couch (and with him) because he "felt sorry for her". 

He just liked to drive around aimlessly (he sent me the video links to his really dull driving videos that he made with a smartphone mounted on the dash of his car...yay), and his boring cruise ship pictures that could be anywhere with anyone. I immediately got tested after we broke up (negative for disease), and developed a much better attitude about men from my homeboy, so thanks for that. We had parted ways without any physical violence at all, which is quite uncommon for two martial arts "action heroes". No harm, no foul. It was a totally clean break from a kid who loved me from afar for many years, a schoolkid crush that he had made real for a short time, and that deserves some "kudos". But he doesn't deserve me, or a relationship with me that's a marriage with kids. That's for another superhero entirely. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_shipping

Madame Leveaux

Back in the heyday of "Online Dating", freedom reigned alongside the brave and the slightly (to very) insane, and I was right there with it on my desktop. Like any other amusement or entertainment, it can become addictive really quick, sort of like shoe shopping but with much more partner-swapping involved. Don't like a guy's email or photo? Oh, well. On to the next one! And there was always another one out there.

In order to truly test the waters—I'd been publicly against it in the past, based on the principles of human attraction and hard science—I dived in deeply, surfing in-between jobs posted to the printer at the office, or at home on the weekends. For the first time in my life, I was single for a prolonged period of time. I was accustomed to having a man around, especially with his 150-lb. dog that he left behind quickly, as New York City totally kicked the shit out of yet another recent arrival.

For years, men had formed a crucial part of my economy. Because of their sometimes higher-earning potential and/or easier availability for work, I could at least count on my man to have a job that would pay his bills while I paid mine. It was the only type of equality we knew in our working class homes. You do your thing, I do mine. No man = harder times. We became reliant on them for holding down money on their end, while we struggled to hold onto jobs we were significantly underpaid for, in workplaces still permeated with the attitude that women could just leave an office to get married.

Women could make it to leadership, but saddled with an entire family? Yeesh...not on our salaries. I was used to paying for my home, my car, all of my own insurance, plus food and clothes, but with absolutely no extras. I went for years without taking a day off, or a day at the beach using the subway, because who would take care of my big dog? Oh, yeah: if I wanted to go on a date after work, I arranged for it during the day while working, took the train back to Brooklyn, walked my dog (or hired a dog walker if I had money), and returned home after the date (paying pricey cab-fares) so I could be there when my very large dog woke up earlier than anyone else in our household, in case the neighbors complained again (even the ones with noisy kids and dogs), because I'm "me" and they're from out-of-town.

Easy, right? I did it as smartly as I could. I used blurry or out-of-date photos to obscure my beauty so I could have a conversation over email that lasted more than a few rounds, but it didn't work. Word got out, and New York is my native market, nowwhatimsayin? Within months, I dated: an international explorer to the Antarctic who recently video-chatted with cute schoolkids through his website, two video producers, a physicist-turned-oil-derivative day-trader with extremely deep pockets and a beautiful apartment, a celebrity chef from a popular t.v. show (I had no idea who he was, just back from Germany and all), a not-so-famous actor, a very handsome Transylvanian audio engineer/house cleaner, an opera singer still working a day job, two writers (a broke poet and a dull journalist), a French businessman with a trés chic West Village pad, and a motorcycling lighting designer in his 50s with the requisite country house in upstate New York...you get the idea. And all of them were wrong for me. 

It was either that their looks weren't on par with mine (and I am notoriously forgiving in that department, ladies, just ask around), or their temperament/attitude about life sucked, or they were culturally out-of-depth in my New York home, or their ethnicity wasn't "down home" enough for this area (meaning my entire family would hate them at first sight), or religiously they didn't fit into my life, or their work was boring, or their addictive disorder raged out-of-control...the list went on and on. I wasn't especially picky, either. I was just open to "putting myself out there", like the cliché  says. I'd never been able to do that before, because there'd always been a man waiting in the wings to date me, like I was their salami ticket on the deli line that finally came up. It was all about them and what they thought they wanted from me, but never me really, because I could do what I wanted to, with hard work and some time.

With that in mind (plus a million paranoid rants in my head told to me in my mutha's accent about the seediness of "singles ads" from years past), I came up with a fake email name loosely based on New Orleans culture called "Madame Leveaux", for an extra layer of protection and security. It worked remarkably well. It was French-sounding (like my name), but vague enough not to attract undo notice from those men looking to date and score rather quickly, which was fine by me. If I didn't like them, then it was easy enough not to answer an email again, and if I did, well...have you heard about women in their 30s? It's not hype, gents. That's our raging hormonal time, like a young man in his late teens and 20s.

I wasn't a "cougar", but I was old enough to know the "who/what/when/how/and why" I wanted exactly what I wanted (after years of solid relationships that fell short for me, through no fault of my own), and to the chronically-inept, very casual web surfer—in contrast to my rather professional posture as a desktop publisher—it was excruciating to entertain my emails AND my presence. I was either better than any photo could capture as a real live person, or wayyy smarter than some simple emails could hope to suggest to my male audience, which has always been my problem. I am "too too", you know? Too much for you.

And so, when I did a little web surfing of my own just the other day, as part of some historical research to go along with an old souvenir poster that I'd bought on a trip to New Orleans before the flood, I wasn't surprised to learn that the real Madame Laveau was far more than some local voodoo priestess. No, amis. She was way more than a tourist attraction cooked up for the white folk comin' to town, looking for the exotic to go along with their "purple drank" down on Bourbon Street. The real Madame was a lot like me: an herbalist, healer, and apothecary by trade. That's right, friends. An educated, working woman doin' her own thing excellently well, in a town and time that was vehemently opposed to it at first, I'm sure. But, that didn't keep them from comin' back to they mama, just like y'all do. Welcome back.

http://voodooneworleans.com/

Sea Monkeys

http://seamonkeys.wikia.com/wiki/Sea_Monkeys_Wiki

Except for the really expensive stuff we couldn't afford (the kind of stuff you asked for your birthday and Christmas gifts, combined), most of the ads for kid's toys on the back of comic books sucked, like those crappy stick-on tattoos from a Cracker Jack's box, or the cruddy gum packed in with your baseball cards, and those were the good old days of stuff for kids. People are nastier assholes about children nowadays, because so many people do it so poorly. I briefly dated an acquaintance from my school days here, mostly because he was coming back from L.A. and living with his parents in New City (in, like, his old room from high school and everything. I know, sooo bad), so he gave me a good reason to get out of my Mom's small apartment in Rockland and go hiking outdoors, which is taboo to my mom's dysfunctional clan. 

Nature is something to be feared and contained through allergy medications and climate-controlled thermostats, and weather is something so bad and awful for "hobbitses" to bear, that hearing rain outside or seeing clouds in the sky brings on panic shakes so bad, more mood pills must be taken, while cringing indoors behind closed drapes over tightly sealed windows, waiting for it to just pass. All of that is better than me leaving one of their horrible addicts-only "parties" to hike the trails I grew up hiking most of my life as a kid, which is a big part of the allure and beauty that is unique to this area, so much so that I needed some kid I barely knew from high school to bring his adult weight-training, black-belted self into my mom's place as a male presence that easily frightens latently gay fat creatures away, by deterring them from taking further action against me and my plans. 
In other words, I needed this guy for home visits. 

He was horrible, and I knew that, but it didn't matter. He wanted to use me for my affluence (beautiful Park Slope town-home apartment) and success (infamous Art Director in publishing) for his cat and bad family. It's not new to me. He also blamed his parents (I know!) for everything that went wrong in his life, with the exception of his delusional belief that the magical healing powers of Acupuncture would heal his brain of alcoholism and depression, which was practically see-through as excuses, because he comes from a wealthy, highly educated Filipino family. His uncle is a doctor in Manila and his dad designed the house they live in, because he's an architect. In the face of actual achievements, he caved like a bitch white boy to "pressure" by allowing his dad to steer him into the relatively new major at F.I.T. (that welcomed home of many monied Asians) of "Toy Design", which I thought was really cool. Uh, no, Marie. What are you, like, stupid?! 

He wanted to be a much more lauded and highly vauled CAR DESIGNER, which basically means he punked out of failing at that on his own, to do the dysfunctional Rockland kid trick of driving around aimlessly all day whenever he wanted to escape his parents place. 
He chose to combine his spoiled brat behavior with some daffy Southern Californian shit that he picked up on the road and at the local strip mall dojo (black belt+$$$=5 years), like how his bad "energy" made him drink whiskey in the middle of the day when it dawned on him that proposing to me after three months in the parking lot of a Piermont restaurant was perhaps a tad too far in "Crazy". Of course, I said nothing to him at the time, because I actually wanted him to drive me back home safely to my mom's place, and it was one of the most beautiful nights on the river that I can remember in recent times. Grandview was rebuilding from the never-to-be-spoken-of "Hurricane", a force so powerful that we must sacrifice ourselves to it forever, as the moon shone over the water on our way back to Nyack like rarely seen, right before we hit the Tappan Zee bridge and town.

I didn't need this particular old classmate to tell me he that he was a shiny fool's gold of a stone glinting under the surface of the water ("Don't you remember me? We were like, best friends in school!", which we never were), because this New York girl had it all down pat already to unpack right on top of his head, and don't you know he knew that? Like my brother Bernie used to tell me every time my little kid self wanted to see fantastical sea creatures grow in our small fish aquarium (the glass one that we used every summer for years, to keep those tiny orange goldfish we won at the Chestnut Grove Elementary school fairs that always died), because I still believed the ad copy on Bazooka Joe cartoons and Casper the Ghost comics: "Those aren't real 'Sea Monkeys', Marie. There's no such thing as a 'sea monkey'. They're just these tiny brine shrimp that grow a little bit under water, and you can barely see them. It's a total rip-off." Yeah, I guess you're right, Bernard. You can't fool a real Pirate Queen like me. 

For kids who already know about Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, click here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea-Monkeys