Change in the Weather

Good news: this old dog can, in fact, learn new tricks.

Time for an Asshat update.

If you’re new to Girl on a Wire and wonder what the hell I’m talking about, check out my earlier post and the uber-relevant links to Shannon Bradley Colleary’s Asshat Recovery Program.  It’s funny, practical, and - I’m going to go out on a limb here - it works.

The scoop?  I gave online dating a whirl recently.  I figured it was worth a shot - after all, that was how I met The Ex nearly eight years ago, and while, yes, we are divorced now, there was much about our time together that truly didn’t suck.  There were lessons learned, laughter and fun times had, positive change, that sort of thing.  Good stuff.  And lately, I have been feeling ready to welcome more good stuff into my life.

Because I am tragically Type A, before each online-dating-site date, I reviewed my list of traits I am looking for in a man.  (It’s two pages. Typed. Single-spaced. Yeah — Type A and irrepressibly optimistic.)  I also re-read the Asshat Recovery posts so they’d be fresh in my mind.  And let me tell you, folks - at this point, I could spot an Asshat from a mile away.  I passed on a few of them swiftly and without regret.  And since the flip side of knowing what I don’t want is knowing what I do want, well, I recognized that when I found it, too.

Enter the guy I’m going to call The Weatherman.

(And no, he’s not an actual meteorologist, so quit checking out Rhode Island’s weather-dudes trying to figure out who he is.  He needed a name, this works for a variety of reasons, and the coolest boyfriend title in the blogosphere, The Boyfran, was already claimed by Aussa Lorens.  And she could totally kick my ass.)

As I realize it is possible at this point that I am a tragic victim of oxytocin poisoning (see Ms. Bradley-Colleary’s post on the subject), I did what any good Type A chicky would do to get clear.  I made a list of things I know about The Weatherman.

The Weatherman:

• Is punctual.  Like, set-your-watch-by-him punctual.  And yeah, punctuality gets me all hot and bothered.
• Is thoughtful.  Brings flowers, but also goes beyond that standard wooing fare to come up with personal, meaningful gifts.
• Is genuinely interested in and appreciative of my work.  You know - in spite of the fact that I am a chick lit author and he is a straight guy.
• Willingly accompanied me to a family event.  Didn’t flee when he got a glimpse of my gene pool.
• Retired from one successful career and moved on to another.  Enjoys his work and is all grown-up-y like that.
• Owns a home that does not look like a scene out of Old School.
• Knows where his kitchen is and how to do stuff with food there. Seems unlikely to starve to death just because there isn’t a woman in the house.
• Is also capable of slow-dancing in said kitchen.  While singing.  On-key.
• Runs at my pace.  (Not a character marker, I know, but it makes me glad.)
• Seems very interested in offering me not what he thinks I want, but what I know I need.

Since I know The Weatherman reads my blog, I’ll leave it at that for now.  I don’t want the poor guy’s head to swell to the point where he can’t get out the door. 

And in case you’re single and are now jealous of my find, I’ll leave you with the link to this hilarious and informative Asshat Recovery Program post from The Woman Formerly Known as Beautiful, 5 Asshat Moves I Ignored Thanks to Lust.  Don’t be catnip for Asshats any more.  Click here to sign up for the Asshat Recovery Program Newsletter.  You’re welcome.

Now go have a lovely Asshat-free day.

www.kcwilder50ways.com  

The Kids Are All Right

I’d like to take a moment to give myself a little pat on the back.

I have excellent taste in friends.

I think this is no small accomplishment, particularly since I am well known for making poor choices in general.  But when it comes to choosing friends?  I rock.  And apparently I always have.

I recently had a whirlwind weekend adventure with one friend I hadn’t seen in nearly a decade, and two others I hadn’t seen since high school.  It was the sort of thing that could have been a shitstorm of awkward moments.  Instead, it was an absolute blast.

If our younger selves could have glimpsed us - nibbling tapas, sipping drinks, laughing hysterically and sharing meandering tales of our lives in locations near and far - I think they’d be amused as hell.  They’d also be pleased that we didn’t call it a night at nine p.m., but instead made our way to a show and rocked on, drinking beer from plastic cups, into the wee hours of the morn.  That I was only carded because I had tickets at will-call is beside the point.

Today one of my new favorite bloggers, Aussa Lorens, posted about the wistful way autumn nudges us to reflect on the past and make plans for the future.  Summer girl that I am, I have always found fall especially bittersweet.  I am reluctant to trade my flip flops for boots, yet the storyteller within me is romanced by the chill in the air and the smell of woodsmoke.  I also find myself haunted by the ghosts of plans never realized, the trail of losses inevitable in life.  While I’ve had a lot of amazing experiences and have checked a fair number of accomplishments off my lifetime to-do list, there always seems to be more I have yet to attain.

But my friends…

I am sometimes amazed at how lucky I am to have so many kind, funny, creative people in my life.  Old and new, my friends remind me that while we cannot help the losses in life, the successes are worth celebrating.  We who were once thrown out of school for everything from questionable fashion choices (exposed nipple rings, anyone?) to day drinking in math class are now running successful businesses, creating art and music, exploring nature, raising children, rising above tragedy, doing our part to leave the world a little bit better than we found it.  I’m not sure what kind of youthful trouble the friends I met later in life have under their belts, but I know that whether they were buttoned-down overachievers or wild, fired-up messes, their experiences helped shape them into the sorts of people I am very, very glad crossed my path.

This year, as I move from bare toes in the sand to the crackle of a fire warding off that seaside chill, I will try to think less of what’s missing and more of the amazing blessings I can count as mine.

Real friendship, of course, chief among them.

www.kcwilder50ways.com

Good Girls, Bad Girls, and the F-Word

If you’ve read my novel Fifty Ways to Leave Your Husband, you know that (1) there’s a fair amount of sex in it (it’s not for nothing that my mother refers to it as “Karen’s sex book”), and (2) the sidekick steals the show.  Tamara is the BFF we all want: fun, vivacious, loyal, nuttier than squirrel shit, and with a MOUTH.  She drops F-bombs like Margaret Cho on speed.

Tamara brings to mind one of my favorite freedoms:

Freedom of the sort of expression that would have earned you a bar of soap in the mouth as a kid.

Confession time: I love to say, “Fuck.”  I think, properly used, it’s one of the very best words in the English language.  And I use it - properly, of course - quite a bit.

To be clear, I’m not tossing the F-word around during work hours or in the presence of small children.  I don’t break it out at cocktail parties or Christmas dinner.  Everything has its place.  I get it.

I also get that I’m maybe not quite the sort of girl you’d expect to be so fond of the F-word.  Take a look at my promo pics.  I look like a Good Girl, don’t I?  

But here and now, I’d like to divest myself of the Good Girl label.  I’d like to do what my protagonist Eve does and ditch the Good Girl suit of armor - and all the heavy fucking baggage that comes with it.

I’d like you to do the same.

Because here’s the thing…

Being a Good Girl has no real value.  In fact, I think the label does a whole lot of harm.  Because if there are Good Girls, there are Bad Girls, too.  And heaven knows, we’ve got a whole slew of words for that kind of girl.

A couple of days ago I was reading a great article by Melissa Gira Grant entitled, There Is No Such Thing as a Slut.  “Sluts take up more space in our imagination than in anyone’s bed,” she writes.  More fully to the point, she illustrates the ways sluttiness is a myth - a “form of sexual privilege” - and perhaps worst of all, the way we women use the term/concept to leverage our power against one another, all the while foolishly undermining our own goals.

Someone like me, for example - white, middle class, able to determine on the basis of a lifetime of social schooling how to dress and when to bite one’s tongue - might come across as a Good Girl, while someone from a lower-class background or an unestablished ethnic minority might lack the social grooming to dress and speak so as to avoid unwanted labels.  Yet there may be absolutely no correlation between our public presentation and our sexual promiscuity.

In fact, statistics indicate otherwise.  Statistically, Good Girls know they can get away with more - and therefore, they do.

(I’ve got you all thinking naughty thoughts about me now, haven’t I?  Oh, go on…)

In the fictional world of my novel, Eve appears to be the Good Girl, while Tamara seems the foul-mouthed hussy.  But when one examines the situation more fully - (spoiler alert!) - Eve is out on the beach fucking a stranger while Tamara is home with her husband and kids - we get a better picture of how irrelevant labels truly are.

In my recent body-issues post, The Size of It, I suggested that we women could literally change the world for our daughters and granddaughters if we just were more careful about how we speak about our self-image.

I think the same is true here.    

My favorite blogs, books, films and Netflix fare celebrate and explore female experience with humor, an unflinching eye, and often a foul, foul tongue.  These writers and artists are not your stereotypical Good Girls.

They’re much better than that.  

That said, join me in bidding farewell to those polarizing, useless myths: the Slut and the Good Girl.  I’ll leave you with a few fun links from ladies who kick ass, talk and write sex, and yes, drop the occasional F-bomb.

I fucking love them.

Aussa Lorens redefines talking dirty in bed.

Shannon Bradley-Colleary talks about hot married sex (no, it’s not an oxymoron…or a misprint).

And Wanda Sykes’ Detachable Pussy routine remains my very favorite, funny-as-hell way to unload all that female baggage.

www.kcwilder50ways.com