| ||||||
|
Arts & Entertainment  BooksComics Health & Body Media Mothers Who Think News People Politics2000 Technology - Free Software Project Travel & Food  Columnists
- - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - Also Today For a full list of today's Salon Books stories, go to the
Books home page. - - - - - - - - - - - - Search Salon - - - - - - - - - - - - Salon Columnists - - - - - - - - - - - - Recently in Salon Books Reviews Book Bag Ivory Tower Reviews - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
My boyfriend has a former girlfriend who doesn't understand the word
"no." He broke up with her last year, but they maintained casual contact,
and when she found out he was dating me, she started coming to his
house, biking on our route, calling him for advice about the pump, the
furnace, the wiring, calling his mother. I told him that this was making
me jumpy and he assured me he was only being civil. I want to issue an
ultimatum, but that is not my style. My style is to move
on and leave the past behind, but I am finding that he has contact with
almost all his former loves and it bothers me. Am I worrying over
nothing? Is this normal for him to send birthday cards to all his old
girlfriends? I feel a big mess in the making. Distrustful Dear Distrustful, Your boyfriend is a nice guy who tries to avoid making
women mad at him. I understand this really well. He needs years of
professional help and a lot of pharmaceuticals. Or he needs to grow up a
little and get a backbone. I mean, how many women's furnaces can a guy
deal with? Obviously, he is mechanically inclined and willing to work for
cheap, so when you join the ranks of his former loves, you'll probably be
able to get good service too. Look at it that way.
Dear Mr. Blue, I got an uncontested divorce last year, found a wonderful new boyfriend
and am finally going to grad school. Life is good. But what should I do
with my wedding dress? It's traditional to use fabric from a relative's
dress for a ring pillow or something, but it seems weird to use part of my
first wedding dress in a second wedding. It also seems like a "bad luck
charm." Should I sell? Scrap it? Keep it around as a warning to future
generations? Over-Dressed Dear O.D., Put the dress out of the house. It's a weight, a drag, a
barnacle, and a person should divest herself of these encrustations and
bestow the dress on a second-hand shop where some young beauty whose
heart bursts with love and who is exactly your size will see it and rejoice
in her good luck. This is so much better than you opening a closet and
seeing it and getting a sour queasy feeling. And good for you to bounce
out of that divorce and land on your feet walking forward in a straight
line. Dear Mr. Blue, I'll be 27 next month, and I'm tired of having my heart broken. The
older I get, the more disillusioned I am with men, and the more I think
that true love is nothing more than a big fat compromise.
I dated a man for four and a half years and we broke up three years ago over
his drug problem. I couldn't take the heartbreak of watching someone
destroy themselves. Since then he has straightened himself out for the
most part. He will call me occasionally and tell me that he loves me and
misses me, and the thought of dating him again just fills me with dread,
but no more dread than the prospect of spending the rest of my life alone.
Since we broke up, I have found a great job as a writer and had a few
flirtations, some random drunken hookups, a handful of first dates and
many, many unrequited crushes. I seem to specialize in finding unavailable
men. I'm told that I'm bubbly and cute and fun and smart, and I look
around at couples and just can't fathom how to make a connection
with anyone. I feel desperately lonely, all the time. I just want to give up
on dating altogether, because I don't think I can take much more
disappointment. I meet men everywhere and they seem interested, then they
never call. Will you give me the go-ahead to give up? Also Today Not this year, dear
Mr. Blue Garrison Keillor's column appears every Tuesday in Salon Books.
Feeling blue about your prose? In the doldrums over your last date? Ask Mr. Blue. Weary in Washington Dear Weary, Give up on what? On life? On having fun? Or just give up your anxiety about men? You could give that up in a heartbeat, same as you could stop drinking if it were wrecking your life. You look at yourself in the mirror every day and say, "Today is one more day without a man, so help me," and you'd seek out the company of friends who you feel comfortable with as your lone self, no man needed. And you do this day after day. Consider one possible reason for your woes with men. I don't know that this is it, but consider that your dread and disillusionment and desperate loneliness may be coming across loud and clear to the men you meet, and that they can see, underneath the bubbliness and cuteness and intelligence, this snarling Doberman of misery, and so the only men who venture near are those securely fastened to someone else. If so, the way to cure this misery is to give up the search, which is making you unhappy, and to throw yourself into your job, which gives you pleasure. Work can be a big comfort, and you can safely let your job take over a few empty corners of your life. You know? If they need you to stay late, stay late. Volunteer for the hard stuff. All the things that women with intertwined lives can't handle, you can. And you can be ambitious about moving up the ladder and running the mouse maze and getting the big chunks of cheese. And then one day when you've stopped thinking about dating, you'll hear your Doberman's collar jingle as she wags her tail at an approaching gentleman. Dear Mr. Blue, My girlfriend and I have been living together for two years, and now, tired of paying rent, we bought a house together. We moved in and right away I began to question the future of our relationship. The idea of such permanence has really given me the willies. We're great friends, our romance still has sparkle and everything is fantastic in the bedroom, and yet I can't shake this nagging doubt in the back of my mind. I can't tell if I'm concerned about our relationship or if I'm just afraid of commitment in general. Awake at Night Dear Awake, Calm down. Who's pressuring you to rent a tux and hire an organist? You're suffering from a form of buyer's regret. You plunk down all that money and mortgage yourself to the First Carnivorous Bank and you feel faint and think, What have I done, O Lord who didst cast the money-changers out of the temple? and you reach for the smelling salts. In your case you've extended this case of the vapors to cover your sweet girlfriend. (What have I done, O Lord who didst keep Thyself pure from women?) Get over it. Enjoy Tuesday, and then deal with Wednesday, and then Thursday, and then you live Friday, and after that, Lord willing, it's Saturday. Repeat this cycle over and over. Don't worry about the rest of your life, just keep your lawn mowed. Dear Mr. Blue, My mother is 73 and living here in the same city as I. My older sister moved in with her about four years ago and now my sister's son and his wife have moved in with them. This doesn't seem to be a temporary arrangement. My nephew is 30 and isn't looking for a job. His excuse for not working is that he is too brilliant. My younger sister is ready to start a holy war over this. She is suggesting we have a "family intervention." (The last time we tried this was 25 years ago when one of my other sisters was in high school and acting up big time.) I'm willing to wait out the situation, figuring that my nephew's wife will tire of living with her mother-in-law and grandmother-in-law. In the meantime, I thought I might make good use of my time by turning the saga into a prime-time soap opera. How do I locate a good agent? Getting Some Fun From Dysfunction Dear Getting, You call Mike Ovitz and tell him Mr. Blue says hi and that
Mr. Blue thinks this is the next "Ryan's Landing." If he won't come to the
phone, call up Mort Janklow in New York and tell him that you're calling
from my office and that he left his sapphire cuff links in my beach house in
East Hampton and that Bruce is bringing them in on Wednesday when he
chauffeurs Mr. Pookie to his therapist. And then, when you have Mort on
the line, tell him you've got this terrific idea. Meanwhile, you need to
make it more terrific. Your mother needs to become a multimillionaire
with amnesia issues, and your older sister a chain-smoking nympho
attracted to men of the cloth, and the nephew an evil genius who is
stockpiling weapons against an invasion by the U.N., and his wife a
conniving gold-digger with a background in estate law, and your younger
sister -- let's make her a devout Mennonite, just for contrast, OK? You
got anyone else in your family? A closeted gay uncle, perhaps? An aunt
with a helpless addiction to crème de cacao? And do you have a place in
mind where you can go live when this series airs on Fox, sweetheart, like
Barbados, maybe?
- - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - Search Salon | |||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
|||
