New Blues Songs: Economy's Got Me By The Balls

Lunch today at work - very strange...this economic crisis has everyone by the short hairs. I honestly don't know why I still have my job. I mean, I guess I'm good at it; but what they say about advertising - the cutthroat, backstabbing, mean-spirited attitudes?

It's true.

I suppose one could use this time to write blues songs. Head to the crossroads (uh, where, between Park and 28th?) and grab a guitar, throw your head back, and yodel to whomever will listen that you can't afford the rent? That you allowed your boss to get away with that suggestive comment about your ass fitting snugly into your pants because you really had nobody else to hear it and don't want to make waves, not in this recession?


I keep hearing that the recession is over, it's over, rents are going down, we're okay. Wow - really? Nobody told me. Nobody told R. at my job, so that maybe he can stop being such a little cunt and trying to constantly get credit for my ideas when we work on a project. He's talented enough, he doesn't have to make me look like an idiot. I wish he and Lauren would work together - it would be lovely.

Picture if you will: flaming bitch and a flaming queen fighting to the death over who gets what copy over which image and who will be the one to get credit for it - if it goes well, if my inch-within-a-lawsuit boss finds it usable. Which he will; they are both good. I insinuated they were assholes, but not that they aren't good at what they do.

I have a friend who is an opera singer. I took singing lessons when I was young...I used to want to sing. I also took ice-skating, and even clarinet. I've always been good at what I did, never worried about it. I make good money, never worried about it. Dated and if it didn't work out, well...I'd get over it and never really worried about it.

Now, I'm worried about it. God, if I have to move back upstate...I don't know what I'd do. I'd find a way, but...it's strange that we claw and scratch to be who we think we are, who we think is the penultimate of what is "correct" to be; good at your job, making a good living, or at least good enough to live in New York, which is saying a lot.

I walked past this woman today, homeless; it's summer now going into fall, so the weather is at least decent, and she looks like she's eating. But how quickly does one have to fall to get to where...say I am (which isn't that high up off the ground) to where she finds herself? And when people say "well, they probably have an addiction problem," I think to myself - well, FUCK, wouldn't YOU, if you didn't have a job? But I guess that's a chicken or the egg kind of thing...and there is a difference between that chicken and that egg...but either way, she is living on a cardboard box at night, alone, and people look the other way when she asks for help.

I pray things get better.

Cutting Out Cancerous People

Well, I made the choice to cut someone from my life a few days ago...and it was difficult. I mean him no ill will. And most of my exes (including, surprisingly, both of my ex-husbands) I am still in contact with on at least a cordial level. Some are my best buddies.

However, he seemed to delight in constantly emailing me on FB to discuss his new conquests...or to tell me that for "some reason, and he didn't possibly know why" that he was thinking of my pictures...and insinuating that I should come up and visit him for a romp in the sack. Then, in the same cyber-breath, he would say something degrading or passive-aggressively rude - like he did when we were together; one of the reasons why I just fell out of whatever it was that I felt for him.

He is a man who says horrid things about people - the young lady he was dating within a week of our breaking up, he was putting her down to me...calling her nothing more than a dog and insulting her because of her being Muslim. I was horrified; I couldn't understand if he was so annoyed with her being more of a doormat (because he hated that I was so busy and wouldn't put up with his being so rude) - then WHY was he wasting her time? His time? I tried to actually play relationship therapist to a man that has proclaimed emphatically that he is a sociopath, with glee. He promptly began to cheat on her - telling me this, I suppose to make me jealous? I was simply relieved he had other disctractions - but I did tell him that he was making a mistake, because he left his ex-wife because she was cheating on HIM...so what makes him different now? He called his second lady "a disgusting alcoholic." Wow.

Even after we broke up, he would send me copy for a website that he is creating, and I would proof-read it and try to make him sound as smart as he is; he is, to my knowledge, somewhat in the Aspergers spectrum, and is incredibly intelligent. However, he is still a guido from Bensonhurst, with the grammar, mannerisms, and racist tendencies of many Italian men from that area. Sorry, boys - hate to burst your bubble, but there is a reason why the rest of NYC thinks you all are out of your fucking minds. He is an ex-cop who is brilliant with computers, and after making a critical error in the Police environment, he moved over to corporate professional hacking/etc - and started to make 6-figure salaries. With that comes the taste for expensive things; collecting art simply because you can, etc.

You know that old saying, you can take the Hick out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the Hick? Same thing goes for a guy from an armpit of Brooklyn who suddenly came into a bunch of money. Top that off with an inability to communicate, take advice, or simply have a give and take outside of the bedroom (eh...scratch that - sex was always painful with him and he really didn't care as long as he enjoyed himself) and you have yourself someone who may always have a date because he is very handsome and now that he's on the way to divorce and the money he had set aside that his wife couldn't find out about is okay to flaunt, there will be women who are interested in that.



During the brief time we were together, there were very good and very bad times. I will always appreciate the good very much...and I learned a helluva lot from the bad. I recently was looking on his page on FB (before I deleted him from my friends; the little things on the side that say "%$#& has new pics up" with shots of his new ladies was just too much for me to deal with), and in that album there is a picture of me - one that I use for my headshot. He is a fantastic photographer, and should really try to make money from it...he's THAT talented. Well, under the comments of my picture I noticed some people's comments that made me realize that he's been talking shit about me...and what gets my goat is that I have been nothing but nice and supportive to him since our breakup. This happened early after when I noticed something someone had said and it was obviously about me...but he lied and said "No...that was about someone else."

When I am nice to someone - I expect them to be nice back. Especially when the text me constantly, email me for advice (or just to have someone listen) or for grammatical feedback for their site since they have the grammar of a 5th grader. When we were dating, although he was always buying furniture and stuff and saying he had money (and then saying he didn't, though he admitted to a hidden money fund that his wife couldn't know about at the time), I tried to pay my way often; I bought him $300 worth of presents for his Birthday because he gave me an expensive necklace...I tried, best I could, to not make him think I gave a shit about his money, that I just liked him. And I did.

But when I found out how cold, mean, and quite literally mentally unstable he really was, I realized that perhaps I had made a mistake in my judgement...however, he was dissatisfied with my art being a focus in my life, and so broke up with me in an email.

Real class.

However, I was thrilled; of course my ego was a bit bruised, but I realized that it was saving us both a bunch of heartache. But that still doesnt' mean that I enjoyed him flaunting his women of the week in my face; I would never do that to someone. There is a part of me that still has feelings for him; and a part of him that delights in hurting me - a large part, one that I keep dear to my heart to remind me that our breaking up was a wonderful thing.

So, like a cancerous tumor that has to be cut out - I did just that. I deleted him from my networking sites and blocked him from my gmail. I doubt he's even noticed it - or cares, really; but at least I don't have to deal with him again for a while. Hopefully, he'll move on to better things. It's a pity; I really wanted to be his friend, but his misogynistic tendencies proved too great for him to really be able to treat me like a human being, and not like a used rubber that you yank off your dick before you flush it.

So...for RT - Here's a little tune from Lauryn Hill - Lost Ones - that is probably the most appropriate song for how I feel - and where we find ourselves now.

Maybe, someday, if he wants to play nice, then we can talk again. But for the first time in ages, I have cut someone out of my life who meant me nothing but harm - and I know I did the right thing.