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The Power of Female Friendships

In the fall of my 18th year I made two life-changing decisions: To marry my dysfunctional boyfriend and join the Air Force. I can’t even explain or rationalize my decision to get married to such an abusive, controlling person except to say I let myself be swept along with his wants. The same with joining the military. He thought it was a good idea for both of us to join, and I went along with it. Looking back at my 18 year old self now, I hardly recognize her. Who was this passive child-woman that allowed herself to be isolated from family and friends and controlled by an angry and suspicious boy who took out his anger on me with his fists?

Relationship abuse was not openly or frequently discussed when I was in my teens. There were no battered women’s shelters or hotlines to turn to, and admitting my ugly secret to anyone was out of the question. By my junior year I’d abandoned my previous close relationships with my high school girlfriends in order to devote time and attention to my steady boyfriends and their needs. At the end of my junior year, my parents sold our house and moved the family 50 miles away. This meant that I was to leave the town I’d always lived in and the schools I’d always gone to, and start my senior year in a completely different school. I don’t think my parents understood the impact this decision was to have on me – a normally shy person who didn’t make friends easily. It also did not sit well with my boyfriend, who had not yet begun physically abusing me, but was exercising various forms of emotional control. Shortly after the start of the school year, at my boyfriend’s urging, I ran away from home and went to live with him and his father.

To my parent’s credit, they didn’t force me to move back home and the restraint this took was not apparent to me until many years later. My father, a firm believer in raising independent children, signed the emancipation papers so I could reenroll in my old school and finish my high school education. In other words, my parents let me make my own mistakes, knowing that trying to prohibit me from leaving would be worse than trying to keep me home. To this day, I have a great respect for my parents for the way they handled that situation.

So there I was, a teenage girl living with my boyfriend and finishing high school. To say I had little in common with my girlfriends by then is an understatement, so when the physical abuse started I really had nowhere to turn. When he blamed me for making him angry, I believed it. When he insisted we get married, I agreed. When he decided we should join the Air Force, I signed the papers.

So in September of the year we graduated, we got married and he left for boot camp in San Antonio. I followed 2 months later, and in those two months I noticed something different about myself. I felt relaxed. Even better, I began to feel the beginnings of happiness blooming inside of me. Being separated from my now-husband underscored the huge amount of control I’d been subjected to. What on earth was I going to do now?

Boot camp was my first taste ever of female camaradarie. Instead of hating basic training, I found it comforting and safe. It was the first time I’d worked together as a team with other women, and I listened to them as they talked about their relationships with men – good men and bad men, understanding boyfriends and abusive bastards like my husband. I realized for the first time that I didn’t have to settle for poor treatment. That I deserved better. I never admitted what I was going through, but I kept my ears open and learned.

In the meantime, he had finished boot camp and was at training school in northern Texas. But things were not going well for him – his anger and poor attitude were rearing their ugly heads again. When my boot camp was over, I received orders to report directly to a base in Austin, just 70 miles up the road. I moved into the female barracks (barracks were not coed back in 1975), and again found myself surrounded by women. On weekends, my husband made the several-mile trip down to see me and we’d shack up in a motel. Things had gone fairly smoothly between us for a few weeks, but it was not to last. The inability to control my day to day life and the knowledge that I was making new friendships began to irritate, then enrage him. During our final weekend together, he convinced himself I was sleeping with other men and proceeded to beat me until one of my eyes was blackened and my face was swollen. The following day was Sunday. I allowed him to apologize – standard procedure – and the apology was profuse. I let him believe I still loved him – to do otherwise would only prolong his stay and I needed for him to leave so I could do what needed to be done. He took me back to the barracks. The next day I filed for a divorce.

I’m telling this story because it emcompasses so many typical aspects of abuse. But more importantly, it’s a story about camaradarie. My first experience with the power of female friendships was literally life-changing and quite possibly lifesaving. The support and friendship I received from other women is what gave me the courage and the self-esteem to assert myself. Without them, I would have been lost for a very long time.

Over the years I’ve come to rely on my female friendships for many things – but most importantly for sanctuary. Through the sharing of ourselves, we lift each other up. When one of us cries, the others offer hugs and understanding. When one of us rejoices we all celebrate with her. The truly amazing thing is that this is true even in our blogging world, and I see it happen every day. So thank you – my friends, my solace, my sisters. I love you all!

Venus, oh Venus

Published August 5, 2007 family , girlfriends , goddesses , music , reflecting , relationships , women 13 Comments

Many of you already know that Venus (a.k.a. V, as in Between the Gutter and the Stars) is my first cousin. This post is about her, but first some background:

My grandmother and grandfather married each other shortly after the birth of Venus’ mother, Beth, whose own mother died shortly after childbirth. Beth was the youngest of my grandfather’s children. My mother’s father died when my mom was very young, leaving grandma with 3 children of her own – my mother being the oldest. Beth’s dad and my mom’s mom married in the late forties, and combined families with their 6 children – a post WWII version of the Brady bunch. Mother is the oldest and Beth is the youngest of the six. I subsequently became the first grandchild and since Beth is only 10 years older than me, she became my babysitter. I worshipped my aunt Beth because she was totally cool. She was the one who introduced me to American Bandstand and shopping and hiking in the woods. She took me to her private spot on the creek, a place I thought was unknown to the rest of the world. I lived for the times when my mother would herd me and my brothers into the station wagon to drive out to the farm to hang out. This happened pretty often because we only lived about 8 miles away. When I was about 6 or 8 years old, things started to change. Beth was, more often than not, chatting on the phone or out on a date when we’d come over – perfectly normal for a teenage girl – but it made me sad that my idol was no longer interested in having her kid neice hanging around.

Beth married her first husband right after high school and promptly moved to Rhode Island, where her husband was to be stationed, and my favorite aunt was gone from our lives for awhile. When Beth announced the happy news that she was pregnant, we were all ecstatic and threw her a baby shower from afar. We brought our presents to my granparent’s farm, wrapped them as a group and sent them off to Rhode Island. The baby was born in February. “She’s named the baby Venus.” My grandmother said, shaking her head in disappointment. “Venus? Are you sure?” everyone asked. “Looks like it.” grandmother answered, then wondered aloud, “Where on eath did she get a name like that?” It was 1967, I was ten years old and an aspiring hippie, and the name Venus sounded perfect to me. Once again, Beth had proved her general coolness to me.

Now, if you haven’t figured it out already, Venus and some of my other 12 first cousins are not actually blood relatives to me. We are step cousins, but don’t really think about it that way. Our families have been firmly cemented together for so long, we don’t separate ourselves out along bloodlines. Venus and I are ten years apart in age -the same as myself and my aunt Beth – which means that in my teens, I was hired by my aunt to babysit Venus and her younger brother. Being a lacadasical, music-obsessed babysitter, I paid no attention to my charges but instead spent most of my time spinning the Rightous Brothers and other records on my aunt’s turntable while the kids did God knows what. I was not my Aunt Beth, that’s for sure.

So I don’t confess to remembering much about Venus during her wee childhood.

When I was 18 and Venus was 8, I moved 3 states away and began my bohemian adulthood. Venus grew up and married (not sure how old you were V, 18?), and before I knew it she had given birth to three children, all boys, with her first husband. “I’ve spent my entire adult life pregnant!” I remember her saying once. And I imagine that’s exactly how it seemed to her.

Fast forward to the late nineties, when V and I went through back-to-back divorces. The demise of V’s marriage was a shocker to the family, with many thinking Venus was plumb off her rocker to unload such a prince of a guy! My divorce was not much of a surprise since I’d already ended my previous TWO marriages in divorce. That was pretty much par for the course for me – but for V – well, nobody suspected this would ever happen to her. It was around this time that V and I started sharing things with each other about the secret lives inside our marriages and how bad things had gotten. We realized we not only had very similar experiences in our marriages, but we had a lot more in common with each other than either of us realized. We’ve surpassed our cousin relationship and now have a real friendship – once ditching another cousin’s baby shower mid-stream to go to a movie matinee together just because we wanted to. Two grown women tossing out poorly-made excuses to leave, then running away giggling – and not the least bit sorry we probably stirred up a shitstorm of gossip back at the house.

Here’s something you may not know about Venus (she’s not a braggart or one to draw attention to herself): She’s the lead singer in a country band that only does sad songs, and she’s good. Damn good. This shy little introvert can get up and belt them out in front of a crowd of people like she’s been doing it her entire life.

Venus with The Cass County Lamenters (husband Troy on the far left)

Here’s another thing: Venus finally met and married the love of her life, Troy – the total antithesis of her first husband. Troy is wonderful and he treats our goddess like gold. He is wonderful with her children. He’s kind and gentle and damn good looking. He plays guitar in her band, and in his own band (Live from Sturgis! August 11th! Federation of Horsepower!), and we love him to death.

Venus has become my coolness idol (you didn’t know that, did you?) and is living the life she deserves now. V, I just want you to know how much I cherish our relationship. Above and beyond all 12 of the other cousins, you and I connect in a way that is special and meaningful. And although you used to hate you name, (when she was a teenager she shunned her name because “only one other word in the English language rhymes with it”), I’ve seen you embrace it with a new intensity these days. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, your mother knew exactly what she was doing when she named you. You truly are our Venus. Love you, spirit cousin!

What DO they think about?

Published July 25, 2007 men , women 20 Comments

I have been surrounded by men all day long for the past 11 years, which has allowed me to do what I do best: Observe. Observing men in their natural habitat (surrounded by tools and equipment and stuff with motors) has often been frustrating, but as study material, they’re terribly fascinating creatures. I’m old enough to be off their chick-cruising radar plus, matter-of-fact and unobtrusive enough for them to sometimes forget I’m there. That’s when I gather my best material – sort of like Jane Goodall with the chimpanzees – and here’s a real news flash you women probably won’t believe: 1) Men can’t find anything that’s hidden behind something else and 2) Men have an aversion to throwing trash in a trash can. Women seem to possess these relatively simple skills and I wonder if having a uterus gives us special powers above and beyond childbearing. I swear someday I’m going to write a book and call it “It Takes a Uterus.”

Sometimes I like to take impromptu polls, just to see what’s going on in those brains of theirs. Once I asked some of the guys what the bathroom door policy was between them and their SO: Bathroom door open or bathroom door closed? The answers were so surprising – Men who I pegged as really shy had a complete open door policy – they did everything right out in the open. Men who came off as open and really loud-mouthed were totally closed door people. Blew that hypothesis all to hell.

For the past two days I’ve been asking the question “What do men think about?” Specifically I wanted to know which topics dominated their brains on a day-to-day basis, and ladies, I’m sure you won’t be too surprised to find out it’s NOT your relationship or which color shirt goes with which pair of pants. So without further ado, I present to you my findings. Note that the study group contains males, ages 21-35 living in the rural Midwest, working construction for a living (but I have a sneaking suspician that the demographic doesn’t really matter…)

Sex. Wow, I’ll bet you’re shocked by this one. The #1 thing men think about is sex, though the frequency varies depending on age. The younger the guy, the higher the thought frequency. No one was really willing to give me a definitive number – like every 38 seconds – but one guy said “a lot, that’s how much” so every 38 seconds sounds right to me.
Sports I was surprised. I really thought food would have been #2 on the list, but sports was almost always their second favorite thing. I included all sports, including golf and fishing and hunting in this one. Guys just love competition no matter if they’re playing it or watching other guys do it.
Cars, or anything else with a motor. Again, I’m surprised food doesn’t make an appearance yet. Guys around here enjoy car racing a lot – so I guess watching a sport that includes something with a motor is a lot like a multiple orgasm for them.
Food. Ah, I knew it was on here somewhere. Men and women definitely have different food tastes and needs. Men seem to think about meats, as in the cooking of meats and the taste of meat and how much meat there is to eat. Women think about chocolate and salads. Every Friday we bring doughnuts in for the work crews and you’d think every last one of ’em had just died and gone to heaven. Meat and doughnuts. That’s really all they need for sustanence.
Explosions and other things that go boom: This includes guns, TNT, firecrackers, and rocket ships. Guys love to blow shit up, they love to watch shit get blown up, and they love the sound of shit being blown up.
Money: Men think about money a lot – how much money they have, how much money they don’t have, how to get more money, what to spend their money on. Guys prefer to spend their money on stuff that explodes, stuff that has a motor, or stuff you can play sports with.
TV Sets: Guys also like to spend money on TV sets. Anecdotely, I was told by many of my subjects that they like to think about the next kind of TV they’re going to buy, just as soon as they have enough money. Take a minute to observe men the next time you’re in an electronics store. It’s weird the way guys will gravitate to the television section and just stand there, staring at all the screens, like moths to a flame.

“Gee honey, whatcha doing?”
“I’m evaluating the picture quality of these sets.”

Bullshit. They are fucking mesmerized by all the pretty flashing colors coming at them from all 4 directions at once.

So there you have it. Only one of my test subjects admitted to thinking about his relationship on a regular basis, but when I told him what some of the other answers had been, he decided that he probably thought about food and sports more than he actually thought about his SO. Some of the other answers given were: music, work, video games (again, sports), and dirt (WTF????). All in all, I’d say there were no surprises here. When the guys wanted to turn the tables and asked me what women thought about, I told them “Oh, you know, unicorns, gingersnaps, puppies, rainbows, and horses.” Man, if they get wind of our plan for a massive world takeover, they’d shit. Mum’s the word, ladies.

Old friends, bookends

Published July 21, 2007 girlfriends , reflecting , women 11 Comments

A postcard out of the blue arrived the other day from an old friend who was touring Greece. On the front, a photograph of ancient Greek erotica on pottery and on the back, the words she wrote: Greetings! We thought you would appreciate this card – cracked us up!

I met her husband first, when we both worked at the same hospital in the late 70’s. When Jim met Diane and he introduced me to her as his fiance, she and I fell instantly in love. Not in the sense that lovers fall in love, but in the way two women can fall in love each other’s souls. She was the tall one, I was the short one. She was the stable, fertile goddess, I was was the unattached and childless free spirit. Their house was the scene of so many wonderful gatherings of friends because that’s the kind of people they are – the kind that welcome you as a member of their family. I spent so much time in Diane’s kitchen – drinking coffee on Sunday mornings, or mixing drinks on Saturday nights – there were times I seriously wondered if they wished they could just tell me to go the hell home. On one very memorable night, Diane and I danced together with a total lack of self-consciousness and ease that I’ve rarely felt dancing with a man – her laugh ringing through the air and her wild hair tossing about. Her favorite song was “Boys of Summer” and to this day I cannot hear that song without thinking of her. They were, for me, a link to the family life I didn’t have in Texas. They were my adopted brother and sister and their 3 children became like neice & nephews to me. I was, in fact, called Aunt Karen by the children, which touched me enormously.

Our lives were entertwined for about 10 years, until we both moved our families away from Austin at about the same time in 1991 – me to Kansas City, she to upstate Washington – and our contact became sporadic, as often happens when geographical distance interferes. Monthly phone calls became yearly calls, then eventually stopped. I went through a very distressful and difficult divorce from Julian’s dad and closeted myself away from civilization for a long time. Diane sent me letters I did not answer with any regularity. One letter to her from me went missing the mail (where DOES that stuff end up?). I would email occasionally, but Diane is not a computer person so I never heard back from her. In the meantime, I felt terrible, knowing I wasn’t actually trying to put forth the effort to stay in touch and the longer it went on, the worse I felt. It got to the point where I was actually afraid if I called, she wouldn’t really want to hear from me. I missed her terribly but felt like I’d been a bad friend.

Then the postcard from Greece came last week and I made a mental committment to get in touch with her as soon as possible. Today was the 21st, their card was postmarked the 11th. Surely they were back in the states by now. Today was the day to make the phone call.

“I’m going to call Diane tonight” I said to Ken
“You should” he said
“I’m afraid. What if she hates me?”
“She doesn’t hate you. Just call.”

And I did. And it was wonderful. It was like we’d just seen each other the day before, even though it’s now been 16 years since we last laid eyes on each other. It was a phone call that I was long overdue in making, and one that, again, proves the power of true friendship. True friends love you in spite of your flaws and quirks, and forgive you your temporary lapses in attention. True friends think of you when they see that certain nasty postcard they just know you’ll love. True friendship never dies and I am thankful for that today.

Cheers, Di. I’m looking forward to dancing with you next year at your son’s wedding. Maybe they’ll play Boys of Summer, just for us.

what’s for supper?

Published April 13, 2007 food , relationships , Uncategorized , women 2 Comments

You know the Lean Cuisine commercial where the (obviously single) women are discussing what they had for dinner the night before and the conversation goes something like this?

“I had 62 pistachios and some almond paste.”
“Well I ate 6 Hostess cupcakes and some Havarti cheese.”
“A half a chicken and some ice cream.”

And then the 4th woman has to go and rain on everyone’s parade by saying, “I had grilled salmon on a bed of rice pilaf, and steamed French vegetables on the side. It was a Lean Cuisine Fancy Pants Meal.”

Well, I’m not like Miss Fancy Pants. I’m like her 3 friends – but only when I’m single. In my previous married life, it seems like I spent an inordinate time thinking about meals, specifically about the dinner meal. My last ex was a lean man who liked to eat and I’d wake up in the morning thinking about what to prepare for dinner that night. My shopping list was long and detailed and in a constant state of editing. There always had to be food in the house, and I’m talking prepared food here – like roast, or a casserole, or some other kind of dish that contained a substantial amount of protein – you know what I mean. For 15 years, I thought about his stomach and what I was going to put in it.Sometimes I fantasized about the rat poison I would have LIKED to have put in his stomach.After we split up, one of my very first thoughts regarding single life was “I’m Free! No more obsessive meal planning!” If I wanted to skip dinner, I skipped dinner. If I wanted to eat crackers and peanut butter for dinner, that’s what I ate. My shopping list went from a massive tome down to 10 items which were kept in constant rotation. And then things changed.Ken moved in with me last summer, which seems to have reactivated my domestic gene – the one that had gone blissfully dormant for 6 years. Once again I found myself thinking about dinner when I woke up in the morning. The shopping list got longer. I started cooking actual meals again. And I began to remember just how much work it all was.

Now don’t get me wrong. Ken is nothing like my ex-husband. In fact, I sometimes call him the Anti-Ex. If anything, he’s every woman’s dream mate – kind, considerate, self-sufficient, helpful, funny, outgoing, trustworthy. And he’s the kind of guy who’s perfectly capable of putting together a meal for us. No, the problem isn’t Ken. The problem is me. The problem is that I put all the responsibility on myself. The problem is that when I just want to eat some crackers and a handful of grapes for dinner, I don’t do it. I fix a meal instead. Maybe it’s the appreciation factor. Guys love a home-cooked meal and I love to hear how much they love it. It makes me feel like I’ve, once again, fulfilled my proper role as a nurturing female.

The other night, I really, really didn’t want to think about food preparation. I just wanted to do what I usually did when I was single – graze from the pantry. However, instead of hauling my ass down to the kitchen to stare at ingredients for a pasta dish I thought I could muster up the energy to cook, I did something daring. I told Ken “Honey, I just don’t think I can do it tonight. I can’t cook. Really.” And instead of sulking, or getting disgusted like my ex-husband would have done, Ken, the Anti-Ex, said “No problem. Would you like for me to cook instead?”

Wow. Just like that.

We ended up fixing up something simple for ourselves – he had soup and beets (ughh). I warmed up some canned black beans and a bag of pre-cooked rice for myself. It was great. Now I’ve found that it’s actually nice cooking for a man who has absolutely no preconceived notion of me as his live-in cook. Because I can take the night off if I need to. And the next night if I want.

Now THAT’S a soul mate.

Imus, you ignorant slut…

Published April 11, 2007 bad language , don imus , sexism , women 11 Comments

Did I miss something or is Don Imus the FIRST person to refer to a group of women as hoes? Turns out he’s just the first person to be called on the carpet for it publicly in the 10+ years the word has been used by everyone from gangsta rappers to comedians to drunken frat boys. The word has been part of our lexicon for so long, it’s been added to the American Heritage Dictionary. The Urban Dictionary (essentially the Wikipedia of dictionaries) gives a better insight to just how far down the social ladder a ho really is: Ho = slut, whore, bitch, skank, prostitute, tramp, hooker, etc, etc, etc.

Don Imus used the word ho in his satiric radio show last week, and has been subsequently (and correctly) tarred and feathered for it. My question is why now? Why not 10 years ago, before the word became so ingrained in our culture? Maybe it’s because most women who are demeaned by this term aren’t nationally recognized college athletes. We’re just average gals trying to get through our day to day lives while dodging the sexist bullets aimed at us every single day. Here’s a news flash guys: It’s never been OK with women to be referred to as hoes, or whores, or bitches, or cunts, or any of the other sexually-based epithets that are hurled at us, or about us, by men.

Maybe we should be thanking Don Imus for being the scapegoat, although I sincerely doubt there will be any real, permanent change in the national vernacular that will lead to ending the use of this particularly vile term. Society has always reserved its greatest disdain for sexually active or sexually provocative females, and ho is just one of many words used to “put us in our place.”

Isn’t it about time we evolved? Or is woman always doomed to continue to be, in the words of John Lennon , the nigger of the world?