Sputterpub's Blog

Zell thinks no one she knows reads her blog, but that’s not exactly true. Dana has the site bookmarked on her home computer, and sometimes she checks it out. She never comments or even clicks “like.” She doesn’t have a WordPress account herself, and she’s not sure she wants Zell to know she’s reading.

Millenials would call Dana a WordPress stalker. They use “stalker” to describe a parent who reads their Facebook news but never responds online. Their parents, who are of Zell’s and Dana’s generation, think “stalker” isn’t apt. It’s not like they’re threatening. They’re not even spying. They’re just gathering from words and pictures that their offspring are okay.

Silly offspring. So self-centered they think their parents are always interested. They don’t understand how boring, how tiresome they can be. It’s often enough for the parents, to know the offspring are well. Interaction is not necessary.

Zell knows this. She’s a parent. Dana isn’t, so she doesn’t. Dana doesn’t even have a Facebook page (because she’s not a parent…parental FB accounts are always set up by offspring).

Dana read “The Egotist’s Complaint” and is still reeling from it. “Fiction,” she muttered when she finished the first read-through. “The only thing fictional are the names.” She recognized just about every detail in the blog narrative.

She feels busted. She’s still upset about Zell’s lecture but reading the episode makes her misstep seem worse. She’s sadly accustomed to ruing her own words and actions, less often now that she doesn’t drink, but still enough that the regret is like a familiar…feeling, she might say, except it’s almost like the noun “familiar:” a witch’s companion that haunts her and keeps trying to claw her lap. Zell’s an outgoing individual and she’s had plenty of experiences when her exuberance dented someone’s feelings and caused her the morning-after guilt that made her renew her never-kept resolution to keep her mouth shut. Reading the blog report focused the bad feelings like a magnifying glass before a sun beam.

Zell’s her best friend. Zell is her main support, through romantic, medical, financial, and familial issues. Zell is a hard-ass strong woman, but she never berates Dana. Until that phone call. About such a small thing – Dana’s casual encounter with Zell’s brother Charlie – no big deal no matter who is hearing it. At first she stepped up and defended herself, probably stridently as she recalls (“got up on her high horse,” is how her dad would have characterized her behavior). But Zell argued back. It scared Dana, alarmed her, and then made her pay attention. Shit. Why had she told Zell that Charlie said “I love her to pieces, but…”? Her immediate response was that she told because it was such a typically Charlie thing to say. Like she was providing character color. But of course Zell knows Charlie’s traits better than Dana does. That justification won’t wash. Was she trying to, in Zell’s words, take her BFF down a peg?

“Shit,” Dana thought then. “Now’s not even a good time to try to process this.” She’d had a bad night. She was still tired, and her blood sugar was seesawing. The usual issue: too high a reading a midnight, too many units, alarms all night about the low, most of her glucose tabs eaten (talk about chewing with no pleasure!) and then, of course, near 300 when she got out of bed.

Okay, okay. She knows she could improve the craziness if she’d be more regular. She should get up early, eat at consistent times, exercise daily. But she’s so fucking tired of the disease controlling her. All in all, she’s been good. Thirty years of it, and no major complication yet. Never a day off. She refuses to give up the last skirmish: she will sleep in when she’s tired; she will eat when she’s hungry. Dammit.

She starts a load of laundry. She does her sheets almost daily, because she sweats them into submission most nights. As she pushes the white linens into her front loader, she thinks, “Zell doesn’t advise me to get up early. She understands. She says we’re all entitled to make stupid decisions sometimes, especially about ourselves. At first I bristled when she used the word ‘stupid.’ But then she made it about her too. She’s clearly done damage to her respiratory system, with all the smoking. Even after she stopped buying tobacco, she stepped up the pot so she continued to put her pipes through a mess. She said it’s her stupid decision to continue to smoke and it’s mine to indulge in wrong food and rest.”

She’s smiling by the time she starts the washing machine. At herself. Because even though she told herself it’s not the time to process this, that appears to be what she’s doing. After a normal bad night, she’d stay in bed for another couple of hours at least. Then she’d make some coffee and look at the paper, and watch a cooking show, and maybe she’d get to this laundry in the afternoon. But it’s 8:30 am and the laundry tub is filling already. Her coffee is ready. She’s too restless for the paper. Dana’s about to go for a walk, by herself, before she usually has her morning shit. Is this the start of a new habit?

She takes a moment to get organized. She’s learned to leave most of the necessaries on the end of the kitchen bar top that is closest to her door. She puts ID, sugar, and cash in her little crossbody bag, inserts her sunglasses into the hair on the top of her head, and picks up her house key. She slips her feet into her knockaround sandals, throws a kiss to her aging cat, and walks out her door, through the vanilla-scented corridor, and down the concrete stairs to the locked front gate of her condominium development.

It’s a gorgeous morning. The sky is spanking blue, there’s a caressing breeze, and the drivers seem courteous. Dana strides along with an empty mind for half a block and then Zell enters it.

Her best friend. They met almost half a century ago. They’ve had spells of estrangement, but all in all they’ve never stopped talking to one another, loving each other, and marveling at their closeness, given how different their lives have been. Lately Dana has been trying to express her admiration to Zell. That’s part of her attempt to be less critical and grumpy and, to use the word Zell did (until Dana warned her that it was really hurtful): draconian. Just last month she’d taken the time to say to Zell, “You know, I’ve known you long and I’ve known you well, but it’s only recently that I’ve come to realize what a stand-up woman you are.”

It was said over the phone. Dana didn’t get to see Zell’s face or posture. She was surprised that Zell didn’t thank her, let alone find something good to say about Dana. Then it came out during the call about the Charlie encounter. That’s when Zell told her how shocked she was to hear Dana say she’d just come to realize it. Zell is a stand-up person (incidentally, a woman). She’s the fairest and most honest individual Dana has ever met. She’s got plenty of flaws, but she’s a loyal friend. She knows how to render a disinterested opinion.

Zell said she thought Dana knew that all along. She wonders now why Dana has loved her, if she didn’t realize till recently that Zell was worth loving.

Yeesh. Talk about a conversational recoil! Dana had fired a complimentary shot and hurt herself. At that moment, just as she almost trips on a curb a block away from her condo, Dana has a small epiphany. She hears herself in the car with her sister a week ago, on the way to the mall to look for a mother-of-the-groom dress for her nephew’s wedding, telling Laura how much she admired her mothering, her volunteer work with disadvantaged youth, and her ability to stay married. Then she turned the table: “So tell me what you like about me.” Laura was silent for half a minute and then gushed about how patient Dana is with their demented mother, how generous she is, financially and emotionally, with Laura’s three sons. Dana had sat back then, semi-satisfied.

Suddenly she sees the scene like she’s in the audience at a drama. Oh lord: she’d actually been fishing for a compliment! She thought at the time she was seeking some sort of positive clarity, but now she understands she put Laura on the spot. Her poor sister had to come up with something. Oh dear.

Dana doesn’t listen to Zell as much as Zell thinks. Sometimes she acts attentive, but she loses it while Zell wanders into an intellectual subject, or starts in about words, or makes one of her pronouncements about drivers. However, she has been paying attention to Zell about loneliness.

Zell used to say the only thing worse than boredom is depression. Now that she and Dana understand depression equals disease and not unhappiness, Zell has modified the choice; she says there’s nothing worse than boredom and she’ll take loneliness over it any day.

Dana disagrees. She suffers from loneliness. She doesn’t have the kids, career, or creative outlet that fill Zell’s time. Especially since she broke up with her chronically married boyfriend, Dana has little to occupy her. She has taken to accepting social invitations from boring women and mundane couples: she’s trying to be receptive; she’s willing to do just about anything.

Clearly she is choosing boredom over loneliness. She inserts her key into the front gate, enters the lobby, and starts up the concrete steps to the second floor. As she opens the door to her place, the second realization hits her. She pauses in the small foyer. Her choice isn’t about avoiding loneliness as much as it is about avoiding boredom. Like Zell! The truth is that Dana is most bored when she is alone. Zell is most bored when she’s with people.

Dana thinks she might be on to something. She’s sure Zell will be interested. Her mouth twists with a little chagrin.

The washing machine begins to fill for the rinse cycle as Dana shuts her door. She hangs onto her train of thought and heads for her phone.

Charlie and Dana ran into each other in the market on Saturday. They’ve been acquainted for decades and they always have things to say, so they conversed. That’s fine, of course. What bothers me is what each told me afterward.

Dana reported in first. She’s my best friend since college, and she’s the only person with whom I still enjoy regular interaction by telephone. Landline even. We talk every Saturday morning for about an hour, like it’s a meeting. And about every other day as events occur that warrant discussion. She called Sunday partly to reschedule our tentative dinner plan, but also to report that she saw my baby brother.

Charlie doesn’t like it when I refer to him that way in public, but I was already eight when he entered the family, and I babysat him. I remember how bright he was. I recollect his toddlerhood better than my kids’. He was adorable. And had so much potential.

Dana told me how pleased she was to encounter him. She said she saw him before he noticed her, and lounged against the deli counter until he looked her way. They hi’d and how-are-you’d and then had a few words about the office. Charlie has worked with me for ten years and will assume the reins when I retire in a few months. Maybe. I’m determined to retire, or at least retreat to one day a week, but neither Charlie nor I are sure he’ll be able to drive the place. Dana told me that Charlie began at least two statements with “You know I love Zell to pieces, but…”

Ouch. That hurt. No one ever starts a compliment with the phrase “I love her to pieces, but…”

I didn’t complain about Charlie’s words to Dana. I put them in the hopper and let them bounce around.

Charlie gave me his version after I got to the office on Monday. I had no particular intention to bring up the subject, but he piped up with a cheerful “Hey! Did Dana tell you we saw each other on Saturday? She looked good. How much weight has she lost?”

“Like twenty pounds. She attributes it to giving up booze, but I think there’s more to it.”

“We chatted for a few minutes. She’s a riot. She kept saying, ‘Zell doesn’t have to hear this, but…”

My heart thudded a little. Clenched a bit. I wasn’t pleased but I didn’t want to talk about it then. I parked my feelings inside where they could percolate.

Two days later I spoke to Charlie about it. He didn’t get me. He referred to an event a year ago, when I objected to a Charlie-and-Dana dinner date, and told me he understood – clearly she was my friend and I wasn’t sharing her. That isn’t it! My initial gripe about their dinner was that they didn’t include me – the occasion was Dana’s attempt to thank Charlie for hooking up cable in her new condo, and in fact I’d helped just as much as he and should have been a third at that table.

But my sincere objection to the dinner had been about little secrets. He told me afterward that they agreed that what they discussed at that table would stay between them.

Uh uh. No way. I refuse to enter that murkiness. I love them both, and I will NOT be part of a group where each pair has secrets from a third member. It’s just too difficult to keep it straight. Too easy to hurt feelings. I’d rather be alone. I told them both then, that if they wanted to create that sort of dynamic, they could do it without me.

Charlie and I rehashed that memory as we processed this new event. “I don’t care that you met and talked,” I reiterated. “What struck me is that you each made a point of reporting to me, and your report included words the other said that are hurtful. What the fuck?”

“What words?”

“C’mon, Charlie. You quoted Dana as saying (a couple of times!), ‘Zell doesn’t have to hear this but…’ or ‘This can be between you and I’ (typically ungrammatical Dana). Those phrases are always a clear lead-in to a small secret.”

“Jeez, Zell. You’re what we have in common. I don’t remember either of us saying anything nasty about you.”

“And when Dana narrated the episode to me, she let me know that you said “I love her to pieces, but…”

Then Charlie got wet-eyed. He told me he heard me. He apologized sincerely. He repeated that he heard me, but… (which is a lead-in to defensiveness. Sigh). He mentioned that all he said to Dana, really, regarding me, was something about how since they both heard me “talking smack” about others, didn’t I realize that of course they knew that, when with others, I was talking smack about them?

“Oh come on,” I blurted. “First off, I don’t talk ‘smack.’ As far as I’m concerned, that means bad-mouthing people. Sure I express some negative judgments, but guess what? They’re what people find interesting. Do you realize how smarmy it seems, to always be finding the positive thing to say? It’s as boring as the kindergarten idea of heaven. Yeesh (I was starting to roll by then) – don’t you hear yourself criticizing Mom? Angie (his ex-wife)? Sue? Do I bad-mouth Sue?”

Sue is our office assistant. She’s not bright and not confident, so she makes plenty of mistakes. Charlie is constantly critical of her but doesn’t alter his management style to accommodate her weaknesses.

“Well no. I guess you don’t.”

“The fact is, you and Dana talk as much or more ‘smack’ as I do. You’re just not as good at it! I deliver it with dramatic emphasis and impressive vocabulary. You remember my performance better than your own. And you have nothing better to do when you’re together than talk about me. You two need to get lives of your own.”

Which was true. And the most hurtful observation I could make (not that I meant to hurt, but that didn’t matter, because Charlie had immersed himself in his customary guilty feeling, and he was listening to something inside him).

I wanted to talk to Dana about the subject in person, but we again postponed dinner, and I thought it would be useless to wait any longer. That would be making an alp out of a mesa. I used the telephone yesterday.

She yelled at first. We’re both passionate people, but there have been several times Dana has lit into me, for “thinking only of myself” or for “not understanding the unwritten rules about who I can fuck” or for simply being too serious, while I (known in my family for my outbursts) have always been patient with Dana. I viewed her as more vulnerable than I when we first met (child of nasty divorce and addictive parents, into feeling more than thinking, wearing her liberal heart on her sleeve) and took on something of a caring role, and my position didn’t change when she was unable to find a job after college, or a husband after lovers. We were 35 when I had an emergency hysterectomy and she developed Type I diabetes; let’s face it, my crisis was acute, but she got the chronic condition that requires everyday diligence.

She raised her voice, but I raised mine more. She flailed around defensively, couldn’t remember saying “Zell doesn’t have to hear this,” and started to blame Charlie for talking, but I rolled over her and then thrust through. I wasn’t angry. I was hurt and confused. Why had my two best humans made a point of reporting hurtful words, from a beloved, to me?

She started to hear me. She apologized. She said neither of them meant me harm. She floated the old “Okay. From now on my lips are sealed. I’ll never talk about you to Charlie again.” But that’s silly. I’m starting to wonder if any two people can talk a disagreement without sarcasm or hyperbole.

As far as I’m concerned, they still did it. It felt like they were trying to take me down a peg. Which has of course been attempted before.

Dunderheads. Dipshits. They don’t get it. They don’t notice that my critical comments are about them and only them. I complain about Charlie’s passivity to Dana and I bemoan Dana’s indolence to Charlie. Because they’re my favorite people. I love them so much that they can disappoint me.

They don’t get it. Like the fat bald self-absorbed guy I once perused on OKCupid, who berated women on the site for characterizing themselves as “post-sexual.” “Hello, women,” he wrote. “The name of the website has the word ‘cupid’ in it. Don’t you understand that means eros? Sex?” Wow, I remember thinking. There’s a senseless man. The dude clearly didn’t see that claiming I’m post-sexual is the kindest way to say no to him.

Recently I complained to Dana about Charlie by saying that he’s stuck. He won’t make a decision. He doesn’t dare start a change. He won’t expand into new areas of the job, because he’s “not comfortable” with those tasks (when did being comfortable become an occupational goal?). He goes with what is familiar and comfortable every day, and those days add up to weeks, months, years. His life is passing and his position is that of spectator.

“Gee,” Dana said into the phone then. “That kinda sounds like me.” I didn’t say anything. “I’ve been stuck for a long time, I know, but it feels like I’ve been where I need to be, and I think I’ll be coming out of it soon.” I changed the subject. I hope she heard herself.

Then again, lately Dana’s all about what “works” for her. “I don’t learn the way my IT guy is teaching,” she’ll say. Or “I’m not comfortable in a large gym; I’ll start working out when I find the ideal situation.” Or “I know me, and texting and emailing and social media won’t work. I’m a phone type of gal.”

I can’t stand it! They’re both stuck. They’re both very good at watching professional athletes, but neither plays a sport. I’m not free to discuss my ideas or creations with them. I love them both. But I don’t want to spend time with them.

The fact is, and I’ve been offered the choice all my life, I keep selecting loneliness over boredom.

There isn’t enough
room in your comfort zone for
a victory dance