man bashing

But you won't hear it from me.

I'm getting it from all around. Mostly from badly wounded, scorned, divorced women who--I think--have given up on themselves but cloak it in the straight man bashing. It's bumming me out, man. That kind of "down with love" "all men are after is pussy" "they are not compassionate, thinking human beings" "they all have an agenda" bullshit is so goddamn divisive.

Where is the learning in that? Where is the personal accountability?

Oh if only blame could honestly fall on someone else all the time. How about no blame? Okay, so it's way harder and painful to own up to how we've all fucked things up for ourselves. But then when you scratch the surface and dig deeper, you can figure out that each ruinous date, relationship, whatever you once sought represented a piece of you, showed that piece to you, fulfilled a particular need or desire. Own that shit! Then move on.

. . . so says the girl who has gone on a handful of cheap and boring casual dates since her self-imposed break up damn near two years ago.

Today is HB's birthday. Today and tomorrow. He's a Gemini; don't ask. But that's what this is about. Yesterday I smelled him all day long. And I swear, I didn't douse myself in his cologne. I leaned over the staircase to listen for him downstairs; I was utterly convinced he was in the house. Then at my office, I kept smelling him. Weird. Haunting. Sick, perhaps.

I wrote a new chapter today. The first since my trip to Dallas. It started out being about the day my dad told me he was moving out, and it turned into a remembrance of my early girlhood crushes, including Jim from kindergarten who puked in class, causing me to abruptly love him no more; Michael Jackson and my 7-year-old's personal Thriller fantasy; the werewolf from "An America Werewolf in London"; Brian, the next door neighbor who treated me like a younger brother and then fell in love with another Betty from the block, dammit; and ever-pretty River Phoenix.

For the most part, they were weird creeps. Terrifying and thrilling at once. Nothing changes, do it? So how can I rightfully bash someone else for my choosing him, huh?