Maerwynne Dilston's Open Salon Blog

You're so vain, you probably think this blog is about you.

Wed, 31 Mar 2010 11:03:01 -0400

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

What part of that disclaimer do you not get, Donna J. Klinghoffer?

Back story: Last summer I left my horrendous job at the nadir of the economic catastrophe with no employment prospects whatsoever, only the certainty that I could not endure another moment working under those particular circumstances. As this OS post is not a work of fiction, I ask you to use your imagination now and assume that it was even worse than that.

A few weeks ago I started a fiction web serial about a crazy workplace. I could have written about my former job, which had a cast of ~~psychopathic~~ interesting characters and several twisted plotlines, but I didn’t.

One day I received this comment: Why don’t you write about how you hired a big loser to lead the sales team? I immediately knew who had written the comment, though I had no proof.

More back story: Here is where real life is far more fascinating and awful than anything I could have invented. I hired Klinghoffer (not her real name) myself. She wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but she had just been laid off and I needed a secretary. I had no idea that someday she would singlehandedly destroy my team and nearly ruin the reputation of a hardworking young woman. The “big loser” Klinghoffer referred to in her comment was a skilled if somewhat overweight salesperson I promoted to lead the sales team.

In the course of three months, Klinghoffer—petite and poised with a sociopath’s chilling ability to morph herself into whatever persona would work to her advantage—quietly lobbied my supervisors to replace the “big loser” with—who else?—Donna J. Klinghoffer herself. Because of her weight, Linda was “an inappropriate representative of our organization,” as she phrased it in an email accidentally forwarded to me.

When that produced no immediate result, Klinghoffer stepped up her campaign. She had it on good authority that Linda and her friend had patronized a strip joint. “What if one of our clients had seen her?” Klinghoffer implored in another email that had been forwarded to me in a blind CC. “Do we really want that kind of person representing the company?”

Eventually an investigation was launched and Linda was demoted. Not for being overweight (that would be illegal) or for patronizing a strip joint (that would be preposterous) but for “falsification of a time sheet.” Apparently Linda had failed to record two hours as PTO the day she went home early to deal with a sick dog.

Linda was demoted, Klinghoffer got her job, and I resigned.

Fast forward seven months: Why don’t you write about how you hired a big loser to lead the sales team?

I’m no computer expert, but I was able to trace the comment through its IP address to a tiny, very specialized beach resort. I was familiar with the place only because Donna Klinghoffer had told me about it. She goes there every March, right around the same time I received notice on my blog that “a comment is waiting your approval.”

I did not approve it.

Donna Klinghoffer, if you are reading this, please know that I’m onto you. You've done your damage. You got your way. Now leave me alone.

GOP gives my wife panic attacks:Actual chat transcript:

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 11:03:41 -0400

This is an actual transcript from a gmail chat I just had with my partner, a quiet, level-headed, reasonable woman. (I'm the one with the Xanax prescription, not her, if that tells you anything.)

Elsabeth: I need some xanax or something. I really can't even go on FB anymore. My relatives are terrible and ignorant.

me: oh no.

Elsabeth: Some of whom I'll be seeing tomorrow at the wedding, of course.

me: oh no.

Elsabeth: I hate all this nastiness. I want to move out of the country.

me: lol.

you don't even want to move to California, let alone Canada!

Elsabeth: I'm not kidding. I'm a wreck.

me: brb - must pee

Elsabeth: I have been obsessing for days.

This is why I can't concentrate.

me: back. really?

you're obsessing about politics?

Elsabeth: About all the people saying we need another revolution. Worrying what will happen. Worrying that someone will shoot Obama. Torn between really wanting to argue and engage and just to avoid because there's no changing anyone's mind.

I've been worried and depressed.

me: got it.

wow

ElsabethFor days.

I am crying right now.

me: oh, honey.

Elsabeth: Which is why I think I need xanax.

me: really? so you were serious about the xanax?

Elsabeth: Would I lie?

me: you would not lie, but the xanax part i thought was a joke - something I'd say. Not you.

Elsabeth: I am normally not prone to these kinds of feelings.

me: sweetheart.

take a deep breath.

let go. let it all go.

picture a balloon filled with all that crap and just let it go and watch it float into the ozone.

this is out of your control.

and there are people far more skilled and powerful than us who are fighting the bastards

hard and every single day

Elsabeth:I want to send Obama another $25.

me: do it.

Elsabeth: You know it's generally my job to talk others out of their tree(s). I am normally not prone to these kinds of feelings.

This reminds me of when I was very upset about all of the anti-gay signs during the 2004 elections. The gay marriage amendment was on the ballot and there was anti-gay stuff everywhere. I felt so hated.

That was more personal, but this is worse in a way.

Because it's more widespread.

It's not just the gay - it's the liberal and the non-christian and the black and the pretty much any non-conservative thing.

me: hey. would it be okay if I posted about this on open salon?

Elsabeth: ok.

me: i would like to get some support from liberal OS bloggers - see what others have to say.

Elsabeth: I'm afraid that what they'll have to say is that they're worried too. And that is not going to be reassuring.

me: well, don't look until I've read it first.

Facebook stalking my ex-husband's very young girlfriend

Wed, 24 Mar 2010 10:03:58 -0400

I've been masochistically perusing Bailey's Facebook photos, professional glamour shots, many of them beautiful. Bailey is my ex-husband's girlfriend. She is 29. He is 53. They met at a convention soon after Stan and I split up.

Stan and I are still close friends, so I get to hear all about his relationship and I listen because now I'm not his stewing ex wife, I'm just his friend, possibly even his best friend. And that's how I came to know that the thing he loves most about Bailey is her youth. He told me so just the other day over a breakfast of eggs and toast at a restaurant downtown. Because I am his friend and he tells me things.

I've always known that Stan was attracted to younger women, which really sucked for me since I was only getting older, day by day, wrinkle by wrinkle. When we were married he was obsessed with the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in particular the actress who played Willow and the other one, her lesbian lover, whatever her name was. I probably would have enjoyed the show if I didn't hate it so much. Our marriage was already falling apart by then. It wasn't the show. I know that.

As a professor and a rock star in his field, Stan has the ideal career for a man enchanted by younger women. When we were married he was always meeting with graduate students, and there were a couple in particular who seemed to take up most of his time. He referred to them casually in conversation and I assumed, given my own misconceptions about women in his field, that they had to be mieskeits. Oh, how ridiculously wrong I was. They, and many other girls in his orbit, were drop dead gorgeous. And even if I wasn't half bad myself, they had something I would never again possess. I was living in a college town where the visitors, like vampires, never aged. That's something that only happened to the rest of us. But it only mattered for the wives.

"It's not physical, not at all," Stan explained, sopping up the last big of egg with his bread crust. "It's. . . the lack of baggage. It's exciting being with someone who is just so... new."

I know it shouldn't have bothered me. We are no longer married and I've been happily partnered for five years. But I am also a woman sliding into my invisible years after a lifetime of attention from men. I am closer to the end of my career, unlike Bailey, who is standing at the threshold of hers. And even though I don't want to be married to Stan anymore, I also like to pretend that he still wants me. The truth is, he doesn't and he didn't when we were married.

What I fail to understand is why someone so new would want someone so old. But I suppose that's a story for another time.

My So-Called Wife: A Lesbian's Dilemma

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 12:03:40 -0400

Elsabeth and I celebrated four years of living together this week, and I've been far more happily "married" than I was for 25 years with the man I legally married soon after college graduation. That was a stable but not especially joyful union, every anniversary marking another year of bickering and resentment.

I never expected to, or planned on being with a woman but here I am and it's pretty darn wonderful. We are best friends, playmates, intellectual companions. We have the shared experiences as mothers of teenagers and daughters of aging and ailing parents. She slept on a cot for two nights at my side in the hospital when I had my hysterectomy and I would gladly do the same for her.

With Elsabeth I have many of the pleasures I didn't experience as a married heterosexual: We have romantic fidelity (no "affairs of the heart," no flirting with pretty graduate students, no e-mail dalliances or surreptitious chatting). We have an adventurous sex life. We don't tussle over household chores. And if I try to shut down when I'm too stressed to talk, she follows me into the next room and tells jokes until she can get me to crack a smile. Consequently, no tension between us has ever lasted more than a few minutes. Elsabeth is my favorite person to be around and I am hers; in a house of 3,000 square feet we usually find ourselves sharing the same love seat.

So what do I call this woman who is my mate? Wife doesn't work for me, even if same-sex marriage were legal in my state. Wife makes me think of drudgery and, ultimately, divorce. Partner, my default option, sounds like we work in a law firm. Life partner is too corny. I've thought about calling her my fiance, but I'm afraid the next question would be, What's his name? and I might not be ready to out myself at that particular moment. Girlfriend is too flimsy. I actually tried coining the phrase "Sig-O" (short for significant other) but it didn't exactly take off.

So, dear reader, I pose the question to you. Any ideas?

Open Call. My Worst Fear: Doomed by my Genes

Mon, 8 Mar 2010 12:03:53 -0500

When my father was 40 years old and I was 16, he was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer that killed him 14 months later. Two years earlier he was working on his third novel and had moved our family to a real house in a neighborhood with trees. He thought that his every dream of was now in reach. He was wrong.

My kid brother told me that our grandfather said our family was born under a dark star. I wasn't sure what that meant exactly but when I heard it I somehow knew it might be true and the idea has haunted me my whole life.

My mom's father died on the operating table during an elective bypass. He had dragged his family out of war zones and immigrated first to Cuba, then America, deftly sidestepping fascism and communism with every transcontinental move. My grandmother died a few years later, not long after she started hiding her own feces in the top drawer of her elegant cherry dresser. My mother developed dementia when she was about 60 and died nine years later, biting at her blanket like a rabid dog. My paternal grandfather died of a heart attack. He was a smoker so his particular demise doesn't scare me. But my young and beautiful father, dead at 41? Terrifying.

Having witnessed this familial parade of death it has always been difficult to visualize myself as an old person. Signing up for a 30 year mortgage or contemplating where I might live after I retire always seemed like ridiculous hubris, a luxury of forethought afforded only to people from sturdy stock. I wanted to be one of those people. I always have. When I catch up with old classmates, these days more than likely, on Facebook, I am grindingly jealous when they tell me their parents are still going strong in their 70s and 80s. I'm not proud of that reaction, by the way. I'm just being honest.

So I do what I can to be healthy. I don't smoke or drink (but neither did my father). The only "flesh food" I eat is fish. I don't love to exercise but I try to get a half hour on the treadmill most days, and then pull on some weights. I take vitamins when I remember to. This whole "dark star" theory has affected me in different ways. When I was newly married and we stepped across the threshold of our first house, I was hit by a wave of anxiety and nausea as I thought of my father's face when he held up the keys to our new house. He was filled with such joy and optimism, and look where it got him.

Later, in my 30s, I became a virtuoso hypochondriac. Every itch and twinge was a symptom of cancer or worse. I once convinced myself I had Lou Gehrig's disease. I didn't. My doctor insisted I start Prozac and the hypochondria soon disappeared.

But I believe that my overarching response to my sense of impending doom is this: I live with a kind of restless disatisfaction, a sense that time is running out and there is much to do (even when I can't quite articulate exactly what needs to be done.) Since the jury's still out on reincarnation, I seem to be trying to inhabit as many different identities as I can while I'm still here. I've lived as a married soccer mom and a tattooed lesbian. I have started five different nonprofit organizations, all successful, but never joined the staff of any of them. I have had a husband for 20 years and a now a wife for almost five. I've been self-employed, and I've worked for the biggest firms in country. I have been blonde, I've been dark-headed. I've had long flowing hair and I've had a faux hawk. I've lived in stately suburban homes and tiny bungalows in scrappy neighborhoods. I won't exactly say that I'm a carpe diem type --I'm too sad and neurotic for that-- but I'm seem to be seizing something. I'm just not sure what it is yet.