Texan who was tricked by Used Husband into moving to Milwaukee. Fomenting feminist revolution based on potty parity, pockets, and psleeves. Bad bacon eater. Also, cats. Also, REVOLUTION.
Almost every night, I call all the Wisconsin Republican delegation in Washington DC. I tell them to release the Epstein files, to fund the VA, to stop the tariffs – basically, to do their jobs and to honor their oath to the Constitution.
And every day, they disappoint me.
They don’t surprise me because I don’t expect them to have any balls, but they disappoint me.
Last night, ABC capitulated to threats and cancelled Jimmy Kimmel’s show because the regime didn’t like what Kimmel said.
I have not heard any of my legislators speak out against this horrible violation of the First Amendment.
Not one.
Indeed, one of the Wisconsin Republicans, Derrick Van Orden, an apparently ignorant, kind of dumb, pugnacious drunk who posts horrible things on social media, threatened to withhold funding from his own constituents because he got his poor feelings hurt when someone in the district pointed out that Charlie Kirk said some very hateful things.
Yes, you read that correctly. He wants to withhold funding *from his own constituents.*
He has company.
This is what the president of the United States just said:
“When you have a network, and you have evening shows, and all they do is hit Trump, that’s all they do—if you go back, I guess they haven’t had a conservative one in years, or something.… When you go back and take a look, all they do is hit Trump. They’re licensed. They’re not allowed to do that,” Trump said Thursday aboard Air Force One.
Is it just me or should we not expect the president of the United States and our elected representatives to understand the Constitution and the Bill of Rights?
If the current Republicans in Congress had been around during the American Revolution, that revolution would never have happened.
It wouldn’t.
Those men risked their lives for our independence.
The current Republicans won’t even risk hurt feelings. They don’t want the president to tweet something about them.
Dissidents in the Soviet Union went to the gulag.
Aung San Suu Kyi was under house arrest for years.
Nelson Mandela was in prison for decades.
The men who signed the Declaration of Independence knew they were risking their lives.
And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
You would think a sign summarizing the Fifth Amendment would be relatively uncontroversial but you would be wrong.
A white woman sat at the stoplight, not making eye contact with me but making a thumbs-down into her lap.
I called out to her, “It’s in the Constitution! You can read it for yourself!”
She shook her head.
What. Ever.
A 30-ish white man turning left came to the far lane just so he could yell, “Fuck Joe Biden!”
My dude.
Joe Biden is no longer president I am not sure why you are saying this.
And then another 30-ish white man – this one on a bicycle – shouted, “For CITIZENS!”
Oh my dear friend.
No.
For all.
For everyone.
NO PERSON SHALL be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor BE DEPRIVED OF LIFE, LIBERTY, OR PROPERTY WITHOUT DUE PROCESS OF LAW; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
I wrote about the counter-protesters on a social account and a friend replied, “The Republican Party no longer exists. There are no longer reasonable negotiating folks across the aisle. They are white supremacists, kooks, liars, and child molesters.”
Every word my friend wrote is true.
Which must be why another person – I hesitate to call him friend, but he is a cultist who lives in a bubble and my posts might be the only information he ever sees that’s not maga, replied with, “Wow, you speak as if you’re superior to everyone else.”
I cannot explain the cultist’s response – the defensiveness that *not* being a white supremacist, kook, liar, or child molester is somehow bad.
Isn’t *not* being any of those things the desired state of being?
I can’t explain it.
But I can explain the “superior to everyone else” part.
Yes.
Yes, I *am* superior for thinking that being a white supremacist, kook, liar, or child molester is bad.
I *am* superior for taking action to get rid of such people from public life.
I *am* superior for not wanting our government to consist of white supremacists, kooks, liars, or child molesters.
In 1994, my friend Claudia and I took the 12-hour bus from northern Chile to Santiago. She had a Walkman and a cassette from a new band – The Indigo Girls. I had finished my book, so Claudia shared her music with me with me by letting me use one of the earbuds while she used the other.
We sat in the back seat of that long-distance bus listening to that album and watching the big Chilean desert sky go from a piercing clean blue to black and and it was sublime.
If you want to be with like-minded women, if you want an enchanting experience, go to an Alanis Morrisette or Cyndi Lauper or Melissa Etheridge or Indigo Girls concert.
That is, if you want to feel the beautiful hypnosis of being outdoors on a gorgeous summer evening while an amazing artist sings the songs of your youth and you all sing with her and you all feel this connection – that you are united in these emotions of now and of then and that you are not alone and that you are not wrong to get angry, then see these women.
When “You Oughta Know” came out, a guy I was casually dating couldn’t understand why it was so popular.
He couldn’t understand why I liked it so much.
I tried to articulate that this was the first song I had ever heard where a woman was expressing rage. That I hadn’t even realized until I heard the song that I had not been hearing women communicate the full range of human emotion. That I didn’t know how angry I was until I heard the song.
He didn’t get it.
(We did not date much longer.)
At each of these shows, it’s been almost all women in the audience (which actually kind of pisses me off – that women are fans of male musicians but men are not fans of female musicians, but at the same time, it’s so, so nice to have a space that’s OURS) and it’s women who like the message in the music and we all sing and get mad at jerk men (and women) together.
“This is the song that got me through my divorce,” my friend Dierdre whispered to me last night at the Melissa Etheridge show. “I spent hours driving around with the windows down and the music cranked up.”
Some of the women in the audience are straight and some women are gay and some women are dressed up and some are not and it doesn’t matter if you are dressed up or not because we are not there for the Male Gaze – we are there for ourselves.
We are there for ourselves.
And we are there for the young women.
At the Cyndi Lauper concert, the League of Women Voters and Planned Parenthood both had tents at the show. Cyndi promoted her fund, Girls Just Want to Have Fundamental Rights. Alanis highlighted information about rape and domestic violence at her show.
At the Melissa Etheridge show, when a teenage girl questioned the “Don’t tread on me” t-shirt, the woman wearing the shirt and I explained to her that politicians were trying to take away our rights.
That they are trying to make abortion illegal again.
“They’re trying to take abortion away?” she gasped.
I nodded.
“But – but what if someone is raped?”
“They don’t care,” I told her. “Abortion is legal in Wisconsin right now, but there are people who want to revert to an anti-abortion law from 1849. That law was made before women had the right to vote. Before Black people could vote. Before Native Americans could vote. This was a bunch of white men making laws about our bodies.”
I continued. “And now they are trying to take away our right to vote.”
She gasped again.
“Are you registered to vote?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I don’t turn 18 until November.”
I handed her a League of Women Voters voter registration information card – I always carry them with me.
“Make sure you register and then vote in the spring in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election,” I told her. “We have the chance to get another liberal seat on the court. The conservatives are going to try to make abortion illegal here and the court is where we have to stop it.”
She nodded.
“Make sure all your friends register and vote, too. We don’t want your generation to have fewer rights than we did – we want you to have more.”
She threw her arms around me and hugged me. “I will,” she said. “I will.”
When I was canvassing for Kamala and then for Susan Crawford (for Wisconsin Supreme Court), I would talk to the people on my MiniVAN list (this is a list the campaign manager gives you — it’s based on various publicly-available criteria, such as whether someone is registered to vote, has donated to a campaign or group, leans left or right, and/or voted in the past election), but I would also talk to almost anyone I saw sitting on a porch or working in the yard.
Of those porch/yard people, I encountered several folks who told me they were not registered to vote.
When I tried to tell them how to register, they told me they didn’t want to vote. That they never had voted.
They just – didn’t vote.
I couldn’t understand it. How could anyone be so disengaged from the political process? One of these people is 76 years old – old enough to have seen things and to know what’s going on. Also, incidentally, someone who had polio as a child and whose left arm has been crippled since then. And who is not rich at all – who lives on Social Security. This is someone who is deeply affected by what happens in DC.
These people live in different neighborhoods. Range in age from late 20s to mid 70s. All middle or working class – nobody rich.
The one thing they have in common?
They are all white men.
Why on earth would these men not vote? Why would they not care about voting?
It took me months to figure it out.
It’s because they don’t need to.
They don’t need to vote.
No matter who’s in office, the system works for them.
They don’t care about abortion.
They don’t care that the police are twice as likely to shoot a Black person than a white one.
They don’t care that maternal mortality for Black women is three to four times higher than it is for white women.
They don’t care that in the richest country in the world, children are losing their Medicaid and food stamps.
They don’t care that undocumented people are being put into concentration camps.
They don’t care about any of these because none of it affects them personally.
No matter what, their lives go on. They still have perceived authority because of the color of their skin and what’s in their pants. They still get Viagra and they still get research to make Viagra even better. They’re not questioned. The police don’t follow them. Their lives are fine.
So why on earth should they care about anyone else?
When I lived in Chile and my roommate and I had parties, we would just tell guests we were going to bed and to lock the door behind them when they left, but that practice does not seem to transfer to the US.
What do you do when you invite someone to supper – someone you have not seen in a long time and is only a casual friend (but is nonetheless, a kind, warm person) – and it’s 10 p.m. and he still won’t go home?
Mr T and I had a houseguest, HG. HG and Mr T have a mutual friend from their old job who lives near here. They asked Mutual Friend (MF) to dinner.
A couple of years before covid, MF moved back to town to care for his aging parents. We would see him about once a year or so. He always showed up with nice cheese and a bottle of wine. He was pleasant company.
(MF also, it turns out, despite being a well-educated, intelligent person, has turned into an anti-vaxxer trumper end times conspiracy theorist. But I didn’t learn that until after this most recent visit.)
(We will not be inviting him back.)
We ate and then I announced I was going into the bedroom to read and the three of them could carry on.
Three hours later, HG announced that he was going upstairs to call his wife. He said goodbye to MF.
Twenty minutes later, HG came back downstairs.
MF was still there.
“How long are you guys staying up?” he asked.
Mr T came into the bedroom, closed the door, and whispered to me, “He won’t go home! How do we make him go home?”
I said, “Just tell him you have an early morning and it’s been nice to see him.”
Mr T answered, “I can’t do that! He knows both HG and I never get up early!”
Do I have to do everything myself?
(At least I knew I could get MF out of the house. When Mr T’s parents stayed at our house for nine days nine whole days nine miserable days for our wedding, Mr T’s mom fell down the stairs and I thought HOLY SHIT SHE’S BROKEN SOMETHING THEY WILL NEVER LEAVE.)
I sighed.
Put my book down on the bed.
Got up.
Put on my slippers.
Walked out to the dining room where HG stood helplessly.
Walked up to MF, smiled, put my arm around his waist, started walking him to the door, and said, “MF it’s been so good to see you again! I’m afraid I have to kick you out, though. I need to get to sleep and y’all are too noisy for me. Thank you so much for coming!”
Dear Miss Manners: How do I politely and firmly convey to an interested party that I merely want to discuss business, and am not interested in meeting for coffee or any other alone time that could be construed as romantic?
I feel that an abrupt “I do not drink coffee, but I will see you at the next official function” would not sufficiently discourage the interested party from inquiring further.
And that the commenters who dismissed the letter writer’s concerns are (probably) men.
“LW2 getting coffee is not romantic alone time, it’s an opportunity to build a business relationship.”
“Really? This seems unduly rigid. There is nothing wrong with getting to know a colleague better. If someone is hitting on the LW, it’s better handled in a coffee shop than by shutting down all platonic outreach completely. Not everyone has a bad motive.”
“People are assuming inappropriate intentions around this coffee. If someone wants to meet professionally to talk about business but in a coffee shop, or even if they want to get to know a colleague better in lieu of a water cooler, these are not monumental requests. Responding coldly as if LW can NOT be bothered to have a single informal conversation and no interest in knowing a coworker or worse, assumes the coworker is hitting on LW, that’s so rude. Who would want to work with this person? Part of work is sharing ideas, and that happens well in informal settings. And part of working with coworkers is having positive relationships with them. Nothing about the request is unprofessional but many of these catty responses are.” – Frank
Years ago, my male and otherwise really good boss Bob got angry with me when I told the ad salesman from a trade publication that I didn’t want to have dinner with him that night after work.
Bob and I had already met for a few hours with the guy.
We had covered the business issues.
I was done.
But then the salesman asked me to dinner that evening.
I am not the most perceptive person when it comes to identifying flirting, but damn. This one was obvious. He asked female me and not my more powerful male boss?
This was not about the work.
Bob told me it was my job to do things like that.
In his mind, it was a simple dinner.
In mine, it was a huge infringement on my personal time by someone who I had already met with during working hours and with whom I had no interest at all in a romantic or any other kind of relationship.
A customer asked me to meet him for lunch. I reluctantly agreed, because I needed this guy.
But – he didn’t want to meet at the restaurant. He wanted me to meet him at his workplace (he was the produce manager at a grocery store that was letting us photograph ads there).
I met him there. He wanted to drive. I got into his car.
He turned on Kenny G.
Y’all.
This is not Professional Lunch music.
At the restaurant, while I was trying to talk about the ad campaign, he told me how lonely he was since his divorce.
He asked me how it was that I was still not married.
We all know This Guy.
Some men have blinders.
Some men really do think it is all about the coffee.
My boss Vinny thought so.
Once a week or so, a few of us would walk across the street to the coffeeshop and grab coffee. It took us maybe 20 minutes total.
I always asked Vinny if he wanted to join us.
He always said no. One day, he explained that he just didn’t like coffee.
I laughed and said, “It is not about the coffee! It’s about spending a few minutes with co-workers and developing relationships!”
I didn’t ask Vinny to coffee because I wanted him to have a cup of coffee.
I asked him to coffee to improve our work relationship.
It is never about the coffee.
The answer the Miss Manners letter writer is seeking is, “My calendar is always current. Please feel free to request a meeting with me and include an agenda so I can be prepared. We can us the meeting room on the third floor.”
The Metis Founding Mother, and Menominee “Queen” of Milwaukee
Josette Vieau (1804-1855), half French Canadian and half Menominee, married Solomon Juneau, the man who would later become Milwaukee’s founder and statesman.
Fluent in French and multiple Native languages, Josette served as her husband’s interpreter, facilitated alliances and access to tribal trade networks, ran the trading post when her husband was away, raised thirteen children, and was midwife to American newcomers.
She was praised as having a queenly presence, and widely credited as saving the settlement with bravery while her husband was out of town, averting a planned raid by the aggrieved Potawatomi tribe members against the white settlers by patrolling the streets herself all night.
By all accounts she was amiable, self-possessed, charitable and diplomatic. That plus her long marriage to Solomon Juneau earned her the name “Founding Mother of Milwaukee”. The Juneaus marriage was loving and lasted for decades. She died 1852, and Solomon died a year later, almost to the day.
When I read this post about Josette Vieau Juneau, I wrote, “So Juneau married a woman who gave him what he needed to be successful in his career. It’s a story as old as time: a man sleeping his way to the top, sometimes by marrying the boss’s daughter (looking at you, half the beer barons in Milwaukee and a senator), sometimes by marrying an entire network.”
And oh boy did I kick open a can of worms.
Well, with one guy. So maybe a worm.
The admin of the group wrote, “That’s about it, yep. Fur Traders needed Native business connections and they married into them.”
But another reader got all butthurt that I would diminish Solomon Juneau that way – by implying that he made a fortune only because he married the right woman. The idea that a woman even had anything to do with Juneau’s success was just offensive. How dare I.
He responded indignantly,
I would highly suggest you read primary sources on Juneau and Josette before Milwaukee was even considered becoming developed. Your comment about sleeping his way to the top is appalling. The Milwaukee County Historical Society has their original letters and you can still read them to this day. Based off his letters and others who wrote about their marriage, all evidence points to your theory as nothing more than a stupid fb comment.
I’ve read and handled countless letters from Juneau, Morgan Martin, and Josette. Absolutely NOTHING is true about Texan’s theory about Juneau. It’s obvious she hasn’t done her research concerning him, his relationship with Josette, and his role in Milwaukee History.
Absolutely appalling
Please note BTW that he says absolutely nothing that refutes my statement. Nothing he writes indicates that Juneau would have been successful even if he had been married to another woman.
PS I would also suggest that a marriage in the early 1800s that “lasted for decades” is not unusual, as it’s not like women were in a position to divorce easily back then. The way to leave a marriage was death.
1995 question: Ms Rodham Clinton, what do you think would have happened in your life if you hadn’t married Bill Clinton? Where would you be today?
Rodham Clinton: I’d be married to the president.
But sleeping your way to the top has long been a Wisconsin tradition.
For men.
It has long been a tradition for men.
In a new exhibit at the Milwaukee County Historical Society museum, I noticed that many of the famous beer barons became famous beer barons only after they married the daughters or widows of famous beer barons.
(Kudos to the museum for calling out these important details.)
(How much do you want to bet that the daughters could have run those breweries just fine on their own?)
(And how much do you want to bet that those daughters actually did run those breweries? But the men got the credit?)
Philip Jung, who rose to own a successful brewery, married the boss’ daughter. The historian (whom I greatly admire) who wrote the story below says Jung’s rise was not a result of nepotism, but I would have to say that Jung might not have been promoted to brewmaster in the first place if he had not been Best’s son-in-law.
Three years later, he married one of the Best daughters, Anna, but Jung’s subsequent rise was not the result of nepotism. A master of the art of beer and a tireless innovator, the young man was promoted to Best’s brewmaster in 1877 and promptly tripled the company’s output. Jung worked closely with another Best son-in-law, Frederick Pabst. That flamboyant former lake captain eventually became sole owner of the brewery and renamed it for himself in 1889.
Wisconsin’s senator Ron Johnson married into his money.
In 1979, Johnson moved to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, with his wife, Jane. He worked for his wife’s family’s plastics company, PACUR….Curler created the company with funding from his and Jane’s father, Howard Curler. Howard Curler had been named CEO of the plastics giant Bemis Company in 1978, and for the first several years of PACUR’s existence, Bemis was the company’s only customer.
According to his campaign biography, Johnson worked as PACUR’s accountant and a machine operator. In the mid-1980s…. Johnson became its CEO.
Johnson was named CEO of a company his brother-in-law owned – and for whom the only customer was the company of which his father-in-law was the CEO.
I am wondering if Ron would have risen to CEO in a company where he wasn’t related to the owner or only customer.
In my nightly call to Ron Johnson (I also call all the other WI legislators), I asked him why he was protecting a man who rapes children and then I asked him if he had ever wondered where he might be if he had worked for anyone but his wife’s family. Did he really think he would have been a CEO or accomplished anything else without working at a family business and then using family money to run for office?
I’m just asking questions here.
If you have been wondering how absolutely completely stupid and otherwise unqualified white men fall up, wonder no longer.
How do you even know if you were raped? How can we ever answer such a difficult question? And have we forgotten that we are here merely to be livestock? (Well if we’re white.)
Medusa With the Head of Perseus, Luciano Garbati.
My friend’s stepmom, Betty, is 74 years old. She helped raise my friend and her brother and they adore her.
When I asked if she had children from her own body, she said yes, she had a daughter.
“I had her when I was 14,” she told me.
I raised my eyebrows.
“I was raped.”
“I had a boyfriend who was a few years older. He took me on the rides at the fair and I was dizzy and sick and he took advantage of me. When I figured out that I was pregnant, I told him, but he said I must have been with someone else. I didn’t know what to do.”
“But then his mama found out. She loved me. And she said, ‘That’s my grandbaby.'”
“And she helped me.”
Madge, an artist, is also 74.
She was raped when she was 21.
They found the raper (I KNOW, right?) and she testified at the trial.
She thinks they picked her to testify instead of one of his other victims because she was kind of plain and not flighty. They probably weren’t going to ask the woman wearing khakis and a t-shirt what she was wearing.
(Oh wait of course they would.)
(Below are images from the What Were You Wearing? exhibit, which shows the clothes rape survivors were wearing at the time of the crime.)
The defense asked her how she knew that the rapist actually penetrated her.
(WTF. Also, as if it would be OK if he had just held her to the ground, ripped her jeans off, and put his penis next to her vulva? That would be acceptable behavior?)
Madge has never married. She has never had a serious relationship.
“I think I am like an onion and the only layer I let people see is the one on the outside,” she said.
The raper was sentenced to one day to life.
Madge has never listed her phone number under her real name.
“I don’t know if he’s still in prison,” she said. “And I never want to answer the phone and hear his voice at the other end.”
And the word “rape” is not used in any of the news stories.
Although even in Arkansas, 15 is below the age of consent.
So it was rape.
By definition, this was rape.
Second Judicial Circuit Judge Scott Ellington gave Gipson a year of probation.
And he has ordered him to take parenting classes.
Parenting classes.
Why would a rapist be ordered to take parenting classes I really want to know the answer to this question.
I knew the Republican senators from Arkansas – Tom Cotton and John Boozman – hate women. Seems like all the Republican men do.
But wouldn’t you think that Sarah Huckabee Sanders – a woman – might have something to say about girl – A GIRL – being forced to give birth to her rapist’s baby and then TO LET HIM HAVE ACCESS TO THAT BABY?
Why is this man walking anywhere outside of a prison yard?
My sweet raised in a different time grandmother always referred to women by their husband’s name: “Mrs Don Schmitz ” instead of “Sally Schmitz.”
She didn’t stop there. She called entire families by the father’s name: “The Jake Jacobson’s sold their farm.” “The John Staab’s had us over for sheepshead.”
She was a product of her time and I guess so were the scientists who named the birds. But – did it ever occur to the bird namers that their names were inaccurate?
How do you look at a male Bluebird and a female Bluebird and decide that the name should be “Bluebird?”
When I got married, I changed my surname because I wasn’t philosophically opposed to the idea.
And then I learned more.
And I became extremely philosophically opposed to the idea.
Like – furiously philosophically opposed to the idea.
So I changed back to my maiden name. (With all the disclaimers that this, too, perpetuates The Patriarchy and “maiden” has implications that are just gross, etc, etc.)
I changed because I had grown to hate the practice, because I missed my old name, and because I knew it would anger Mr T’s parents, who by then had become my sworn enemies.
I knew they would see it as a rejection of them and indeed it was.
They continued to call me “Mrs Mr T.”
But my own mother, whom I love and who loves me in return, also continued to address envelopes and refer to me as “Mrs Mr T” and “Texan Mr T.”
She had a really hard time with reverting to addressing me by my maiden (ick ick ick) name.
How do you look straight at something and give it a name that doesn’t describe it?
How do you change the mindset that only men and males matter?
(My mom now refers to me as “Texan” and she has grown to hate the president. I guess I did inherit the ability to change from her.)
I found a stack of old letters, including one my friend and former housemate Bliss had written to me after she got married. I had sent her socks – SOCKS! – as a wedding present and she, ever gracious, thanked me for them.
They were handmade socks that I had found in Chile, where I was a Peace Corps volunteer, and were very cool socks, but still – I gave her socks as a wedding present.
But that’s not the story.
Before I joined the Peace Corps, I was dating Brad. He was super funny and smart and interesting and we had been friends for about a year before anything romantic happened. It had been clear to me that entire time that he wanted more than friendship, but I just didn’t feel that spark.
Translation: He was not hot. To me.
But after a bad breakup with Jerky McJerkFace (that is, JMcJF wanted to break up and he broke up by asking out my friend Darcy while I was away for a semester abroad – a semester abroad where I missed him so much that I came back after only a week, which was a big fat waste of plane fare and I destroyed my chance for a semester abroad, something I had always wanted to do I am an idiot) where almost the entire basis for the relationship was JMcJF’s hotness and his amazing kissing ability, I decided perhaps chemistry was not the most important thing.
(Darcy was a new friend and he gave her the impression that he and I had broken up before I left for Amsterdam. We had not. At least, I had not. She spent a year trying to repair our friendship and I finally relented and when we compared notes, we discovered JMcJF had used the same lines on us. He didn’t even bother to get original material. He has since faded into the ether, his career a big failure hahahahaha and Darcy and I have been solid for decades. We don’t talk about him anymore because he is boring.)
I chose friendship.
I decided that friendship was more important than chemistry.
Reader it turns out that friendship is not more important than chemistry.
It turns out that no matter how much you want it to be so, no matter how much you just like a person, kissing someone with whom you have no chemistry is just – boring.
It wasn’t just that it was boring.
It was also that bless his sweet heart he was a very bad kisser. Very bad. Very very bad.
But I never told my friends.
So when I wrote to Bliss – in a note that went with her wedding socks – that I was thinking of breaking up with Brad, she wrote back to say I was nuts. She reminded me how much I liked him. How much I liked his family.
And I remembered, reading her words to me, 30 years later, that I had never admitted to my friends that the sex was so, so bad.
I had focused only on the positive.
I didn’t tell the truth.
I didn’t tell the truth to the friends I knew best – the ones who knew me best – and who would give me the advice I needed to hear.
Because I know if I had breathed one word to her about the s-e-x, Bliss would have said, “What? NO! You cannot stay with someone where you don’t like the sex! It will not get better! It will not!
If I had breathed one word to any of my friends, they would have said the same thing.
Which is why I didn’t breathe a word.
Because I knew but I didn’t want to know.
Once you know – once you admit the truth, you have to do something.
I broke up with him.
By letter.
From South America.
Well I wasn’t going to call him and that was my other communication option.
I’m glad I broke up with him but sorry I ever got romantically involved with him because I lost him as a friend.
I googlestalk him occasionally. I think he’s happy. I hope he is. He’s married to a woman who looks super interesting and accomplished. Looks like they have a nice daughter. He is successful in his chosen profession. It worked out for him and I am glad.
And I sent that letter back to Bliss with notes and an apology for giving her socks as her wedding present.
I got a letter back from her today where she told me that her husband still has the socks and he still wears them.
Texan in Exile 