Broke, not Broken

Things get pretty boring when you're broke.

I guess I could start with a couple of days after my birthday. When I first moved to the city, I moved into a transitional area of town. It was the cheapest option to get downtown. After a year and a half of fine transitional living, the neighborhood changed. Instead of the swing towards gentrification, the baddies took the neighborhood back with a vengeance. The pendulum snapped back with full force. My truck has been broken into twice. Scott's been mugged once and had his bikes broken into three or four times. I watch drug deals on my drive to work. We joke, but it's actually gotten pretty scary around here. I don't go out after dark by myself anymore, not even to the grocery store.

A couple of nights after my birthday, Scott shook me awake.

"Baby, what are you doing? It's 3:30," I mumbled. "I have to get up for work in a few hours."

"I just got mugged," Scott croaked.

"What? No, you were mugged in November." I rolled over.

"I got mugged again."

I looked up. Scott was standing beside the bed in tears. He had a hard time speaking. The last thing I remember was him sticking is head in and announcing he was going to the gas station to get cigarettes at 1 a.m. And I had already been in bed for at least an hour.

As he left the gas station and got on his bike to leave, four men approached him and punched him in the neck, knocking him off his bike. They couldn't hit him in the face because he was wearing a helmet, so they aimed for his neck. That's why he couldn't speak. They wrestled him to the ground, held him down, and robbed him.

I remembered the date in my head. My birthday is at the end of the month. "Rent," I whispered.

"It's all gone."

I just wanted to reach up and slap myself in the face. Things were finally looking up. He had a job to go to, albeit a horrible one, but I finally had money to spend on myself. Instead of saving it, I bought myself decent clothes for work, ie my birthday presents. It's all gone, indeed.

I sat down and reworked my budget to encompass both of our rents and all of the bills. I could cover it, but it hurt. It's been Ramen Noodles and fried eggs to eat all month. I am miserably broke.

Life while broke is pretty static, hence my dropping off the face of the earth. I'm not doing anything; I'm not going anywhere. The only thing I could write about is my running commentary on TV, of which I have refrained.

Scott got a second job making sandwiches, which was fortunate because I love sandwiches so much, I could eat them every day. And I have been. He saves his free sub he gets when he works and brings it home and we split it for dinner. I also just found out that we qualify for food stamps, so that's something to look forward to, fitting in with the neighborhood and all.

On a side note, did you know that crack addicts will break off your car radio antenna because they can smoke crack out of the hard plastic part that connects the antenna to the car? Because they do. And they will.

It's my birthday, my b-b-b-birthday

It's my birthday today and I'm sitting here in the office with my double monitors and view of the pollen-covered parking lot. I've never had to work on my birthday before, but I've been taking a lot of sick days while I've been getting my medical issues sorted out, so I didn't want to use another personal day just yet.

It's not that bad: working on your birthday. Everyone in the office has been wishing me well, and I wouldn't have gotten that sitting at home in my jammies and watching bad TV. My boss canceled our morning meeting so I could sit at my desk and eat my breakfast, which was Italian leftovers. A coworker said I could pick whatever restaurant for lunch and he would pay, and he hardly complained when I said I wanted the wing place that leaves your mouth feeling like hot garbage.

I also skipped out of the office midmorning to go rent some movies for this weekend, sneaking back to my desk 30 minutes later. And then I did it again after a couple of hours of on-line shopping to try on a pair of pants when I didn't know what size I needed. My office is in the middle of the city's shopping mecca—every store I could possibly desire is less than a mile away. No one's really bothering me with any work, so I'm getting away with it.

That bad part is I'm sitting in front of the computer with the Internet in front of me and my credit card beside me. I've so far managed to justify $175 in birthday purchases to myself. And I still have two more hours left at work. But who knows, I may sneak out the back door a few minutes early.

Dinner last night was great. And by great, I mean anticlimactic, which was the best possible outcome. Family crisis averted. Tonight Scott is taking me to our restaurant, followed by going to 80's night at a club for some dancing. Tomorrow night I'm meeting up with the friends for some karaoke, and Saturday night we're having dinner with my mother and Scott's mother. They haven't met yet. Like how I slipped that in there?

Tit for Tat

The more emotional distance I put between myself and the situation with my father, the more the answer came clearly. This is the fight worth having.

My father had an affair. He proposed to my step-mother while he was still married. He wanted to wake me from my bed in the middle of the night to tell me he was leaving and my mother screamed at him to at least wait until morning. "Let the children have one more night of good sleep," she said. "Because it will be the last good sleep they'll have." And then he picked up and left.

But what I'm doing is morally reprehensible.

I feel like he is saying it's okay to cheat and divorce, as long as you don't move in with your new family before heading to the court house. And I will never accept that. I will never be okay with that.

This isn't about the apartment; this is about my father forgoing his chance at righteousness when I was 5 years old. He forfeited ever passing judgment on me. Luckily for me, he was so busy with his 4 new children that he didn't have time to tell me what to do. I'm not sure he ever showed enough interest in what I was doing, good or bad.

And now I'm on the eve of my 27th birthday. I am full-time employed with my name on a lease and car title. I feel like the raising has been done and it's a little too late to begin parenting.

I will never accept his hypocrisy in this situation. I feel very strongly about this. If I went out to dinner with him and pretended things were okay, I would not be true to myself or my ideals. I feel the same about even maintaining a relationship with him. Yesterday I asked him to stop hurting me and the man said no. This is the fight worth having.

So I went home and sat down with Scott and I told him my decision.

"I have never seen you so upset as you have been in the past couple of days," he said. "I'm going through my family stuff too, but this has affected you differently. You've just been so hurt and anguished." Scott took a deep breath, "So I called him."

"You talked to my father?" I blinked.

"Yes."

"You went into the lion's den without any armor?"

"Yes. I didn't want to be the wedge between you two. I told him that I meant no disrespect to him by moving in with you. I told him that my intentions were honorable. He liked hearing that. And I told him the real reason I signed your lease."

"YOU DID WHAT?" I gasped.

"Relax, I said that my lease ended in February and that's when I moved in because my name has been on this lease all along. Anyway, your father did most of the talking and he didn't say it outright, but he alluded that he just needs more time to get used to this, and that eventually he will be okay with all of this," he gestured. "He said you hurt him, he hurt you, and now it's time to move on."

"What the hell is this, the Bible? He's just doing this for his 'eye for an eye'?" I crossed my arms and slouched against the back of the couch.

"I'm not defending him, I'm just telling you what he said," Scott explained.

"If he's so hurt and upset, why does he want to have dinner so much?" I grumbled.

"He doesn't want to do it at the expense of missing your birthday. I told him I would talk to you when you got home and you would call him with your decision about dinner tomorrow," Scott finished.

I rolled my eyes. I was prepared for war. My battle ax was sharpened and aimed at the enemy. But if Scott can man up and call my father, and my father can make concessions, then I guess I can too. A lot of people are invested my relationship and I would be disrupting the family balance.

I picked up the phone. "You can go to my step-sister's apartment when she's cohabitating, and you can not care if my brother did this, but you sure as hell aren't coming to my apartment. I think that makes you cruel." I sighed, "but I will come to dinner."

At 9 a.m. this morning my phone rang. "Fine. We'll be at your place at 7," my father said.

"But I didn't clean."

Right Fighting versus Fighting Right

Yesterday morning I received an e-mail marked From Dad:

My not wanting to come to your apartment that you share with Scott in no way reflects how I feel about you or him. I welcome him to come to my home any time. He is welcome at the beach house anytime. He is a welcome to participate in as many family activities as he chooses.

I wish you would reconsider not having a birthday dinner. I can assure you that we will not discuss anything that would make you or Scott feel uncomfortable. My intent is not to make anyone feel uncomfortable, but to celebrate my daughters (sic) 27th birthday as a family.

First off, good. This is the first time he has ever acknowledged my boyfriend. When my father calls, he doesn't ask about him; when he invites me out to dinner, he excludes him; and when he set up the family vacation this summer, his name was left off the list. So this is good that he acknowledges all of this.

However, it looks like he is remaining firm on his stance not to ever come to my home. Which, in turn, makes me still not want to go out to dinner. His hypocrisy in this situation astounds me.

I let the e-mail sit and then avoided two phone calls from my father. Clearly he was making an effort and the ball was officially in my court. After pouting for most of the evening, I called him back.

"I don't want to step foot in an apartment that you're sharing with a man when you're unwed," he said.

"But you went to my step-sister's apartment when she was living with her boyfriend! Why can you go to hers, but not mine?" I asked.

"I don't remember going to hers. That was 6 years ago."

"Well you know, Dad, this isn't really the point. I think when it comes to taking the moral high ground, you have no right to talk. At all," I spoke sharply. I thought bringing up the cheating and the picking out the new family would put a stop to this asinine nonsense.

"I don't have a right to say anything when it comes to the moral high ground, but so what? I am."

I sat at the other end of the line, dumbfounded. I could feel the black storm cloud form above my head as I sat on my living room couch. If I had actually started getting rained on, I couldn't have been any more surprised.

"Well I think it's pretty shitty that my father refuses to come to my apartment. I am completely insulted and hurt over your actions," I snapped.

"It's my way of showing my displeasure in your decision," he reacted.

I reached for an old argument: "If you can't accept me, then I don't think you should be there."

"I do accept you."

"No, you don't!" I shouted. "I can't go out with you and pretend that this doesn't exist. That my home life doesn't exist. That my apartment doesn't exist!"

"I shouldn't be a part of your home life. I don't want to be a part of your home life. That's between you and Scott. It has nothing to do with me."

"That's right! It's between him and me! And by you being vindictive and refusing to come to your daughter's apartment, you are inserting yourself right in the damn middle of my home life!" I hollered. I mean, I can't be the only one convinced that I'm arguing with a crazy person. I took a deep breath and tried another tactic. "Look, I am telling you that you are hurting me, and you won't do anything about it. You are refusing to make it better. You have every right to your opinion, but the way you are going about it hurts my feelings."

"You hurt my feelings by moving in with a boy."

My mouth gapped open, "I thought you said you wanted nothing to do with my home life."

"I don't."

"So why are you're feelings hurt? You know, you say you're not to be involved, and then you throw yourself right in when you don't like the outcome. That's not fair. You're not playing by the rules. You are setting me up to fail."

Then he said something—I don't remember what*—but it was blatantly obvious that no matter what I ever said to him, he would never stop being right. No amount of logic and reasoning would ever affect him. Nothing I said impacted him, including calling him out on his behavior. There was no point on continuing the conversation.

And to be honest, I don't know that there ever will.



* I just remembered. It was when he told me if my brother had moved in instead of getting married, it wouldn't have been as big a deal.

F is for Family. And Fuck you, Father.

It started as a phone call to make birthday dinner plans with my father this week.

"Well, where do you want to go?"

"The Fish Market?" I tried.

"No, that's too expensive. I'll pick some place."

"Er, okay," I chewed. "So do you want to meet at my apartment first? We can do wine and appetizers?" This is what we do every year. "You haven't seen it since they upgraded me," I finished.

"No, Sarah. I do not want to see your apartment. I do not agree with you living with someone and I don't want to come over and see it anymore."

I was shocked. He just sounded so mean. "We can just meet at the restaurant then," I stammered. I quickly hung up the phone with him before he heard the tears.

"He said what?!" my mother gasped.

"It was just so mean and hurtful," I cried. "I don't even want to go out to dinner with him anymore."

"He proposed to your step-mom before I even knew about her existence," my mom growled.

"But he didn't move in with her until they were married," I said automatically. I think. I'm not sure; I was so little when it all happened.

"But he doesn't get to pick and choose righteousness," she barked. "I'm only telling you this so you will be angry and not sad."

"When my step-sister moved in with her boyfriend, they came to her apartment. She invited them over for dinner and they came. She told me that's what I need to do to get him over this. And I did. And he's refused," I sobbed.

"What does Scott say about all this?" she inquired.

"He's upset. He's upset because I'm upset. He's upset because he feels like the catalyst. He said he doesn't want to go out to dinner anymore either if it's going to be two hours of tension."

"I think he's right."

So I called my father back.

"I don't want to go to dinner anymore," I rushed, trying not to sound upset.

"That's your decision. Why?"

"Because I think you refusing to come over to my apartment is cruel and it hurts my feelings," I began.

"I don't agree with your lifestyle," he said clinically. It drives me nuts that he never shows any emotion towards me. He treats me like he does his customers.

"Well if you can't accept me, then you shouldn't be there to celebrate my life," I retorted.

"That's your decision," he repeated.

"No, it's yours. Goodbye."

I thought if I told him how I felt, he would change his mind. Instead he remained stoic as I cut him out of my life faster than he was trying to cut me out. I was stupid to think that we'd grown closer after my four-month stint living with him when I was 24. I was so stupid. All of a sudden I'm 16 again and I'm working two jobs to pay for my own way in life while he is a millionaire. Only one of my employers let me off for Father's Day; the other job denied my request off. And when I told him that I could only spend half the day with him, he got angry and we didn't talk for a year. My mother is right—he doesn't get to pick and choose when to be a father. He might have more right to his opinion if he didn't choose to live with and raise another family. He might have more of a right if I didn't serve as an afterthought.

And now we're officially estranged.

Spaghetti!

I was greeted at home this week by two pots on the stove. Scott had made spaghetti. I don't know why I was so elated: he does all the cooking in our home (score!), but it's never even been started when I walk in the door, much less completed. Furthermore, because his kitchen specialty is Italian, he never makes it or eats it at home. I knew the spaghetti was made to please me.

I clapped my hands and looked around the apartment, but Scott wasn't there. I dug my cell phone out of my bag.

"Hello?"

"You looooooooooove me!" I cheered. "Where are you?"

"I'm outside with Annoying Neighbor." (My term, not his.)

"You made spaghetti!" I cooed.

He laughed at my appreciation. "Well don't get too excited. It's just the jar stuff that my step-mom left us. It was the only thing we had in the apartment."

"But it was made by the time I got here. And it's spaghetti!" I chattered.

"I can't believe you're getting this worked up over something so small. It's no big deal, really."

But it was a big deal to me.

And when I came home the very next evening, I saw this:



And this:



He lit candles, moved the table from the wall, uncorked a bottle of wine, roasted a chicken, and prepared a salad and a heaping bowl of mashed potatoes. All waiting for me when I got home.

This time I danced and jumped while I clapped. "You love me! You love me!" I exclaimed.

"I thought I would really give you something to be excited about," he said. "And seeing the look on your face made it all worth it."

Apology

"You know it's not fair," Scott whined. "I call my parents and they end up taking your side. They always take your side. They're my parents- they are supposed to agree with me and defend me, not tell me I'm an idiot and I should come back to you on my hands and knees."

"There isn't a 'your' side and a 'my' side. We're supposed to be on the same team," I pointed out.

Scott nodded, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. But still..."

"If it makes you feel any better," I offered, "My mom also thinks you were being an idiot." I grinned at him.

Scott groaned. "Great," he muttered. "I guess from now on, I'll have to do things backward-"

"Forward," I corrected. I tapped my finger to my nose and then pointed at him, the way I always do when I want him make the connection.

"Well, backwards from how I'm used to doing things."

"But forward in the relationship."

"Yes, forward in the relationship."