Around 3 months ago, our good friends were having a garage sale, and we having recently moved loads of The Daver’s crap from one apartment to our freshly-bought condo, had tons of shit to unload. So, I packed and packed the unused crap into boxes for Dave to pack into the car to take to their house. Pretty much any story where stuff gets moved involves me packing while Daver lays down with a headache.

(as an aside: we have a division of labor here; Dave carries shit down the stairs to wherever it happens to be going, and I do EVERYTHING else).

(an aside TO the aside: and by “division of labor” I mean that I pretend that Dave is going to carry the stuff downstairs and so I get it all together and about half of the time he actually carries it down)

(an aside to the aside to the aside: I want an elevator)

Predictably, the garage sale came and went. And the boxes sat. Dave always gave me some vague mumbles about donating the stuff to charity while the boxes remained in the same dining room position, slowly gathering dust and moss. For months.

Rather than getting angry about it I figured that I would take care of it myself.*

According to my calculations, it dawned on me that the longer that I let these items sit there, the more apt Dave was to remove them from the boxes and lovingly welcome them back home because he loves his things unnaturally. Like old threadbare underwear and broken cassette tapes.

I, of course, was having NONE of this. Our condo had no storage as it was and the less stuff we had, the better.

So there I went, huffing and puffing my way down to the dumpster, where I put the stuff to the side, hoping that someone might go through it and take what they’d needed. Because while I wasn’t going to be giving the Gnomes on Ice glasses a home any longer, someone else might find them perfectly lovely.

Before I brought my last load down, I took a break to eat. By the time that I had managed to get back downstairs, I noted that all of the boxes that I’d set out NEXT to the dumpsters were gone. Vanished. Fin.

This assuaged my guilty ego in more ways than one. Maybe I should invite them in to peruse Dave’s collection of old receipts and gum wrappers.

*this would prove to be THE running theme in our marriage. Well this and “Becky is kind of a bitch.”

Daver and Ben are clones. They’ve always been clones.

We’ve joked about it a lot because while Dave is Ben’s step-father and certainly the father in Ben’s life most of the time, he’s not biologically related to Ben. It doesn’t matter a lot to us because that’s the way it’s always been, but it’s so interesting to see someone share so many of the same quirks and eccentricities.

If they shared genetics, it would be one of those “that is OBVIOUSLY YOUR side of the family things,” but since they don’t, we just laugh. Dave’s the cheese to Ben’s macaroni.

The final proof occurred when we ventured out to Pashmina’s condo. Now, upon arrival and close examination, Ben realized Pashmina, not having children of her own, has no *toys* and was directed to play her old Nintendo.

Ben’s first foray into video games was Duck Hunt and was eerily good at it. He actually killed ducks which is something that I’d never mastered, not then and not now. Next Dave gave it a shot. I saw years of painful training behind his perfectly executed shots at the ducks. I sat slack-jawed and drooling as I watched my husband kill them ducks dead.

I was spellbound, enraptured, and utterly unable to remove my eyes from the screen.

Given a couple of more tries, Ben was remarkably better. He even began to shoot at the annoying dog, like generations of kids before him.

Then attention was focused on me. It was my turn. Let me explain that I had not had a Nintendo as a child, I had come from a Sega Genesis household; two vastly different worlds. I had played Duck Hunt maybe 3 times in my life over at my next door neighbors house, and I’d never killed a single duck.

I warned my captive audience of this as I sat brandishing the beautiful orange gun, and I fired. And I fired. And fired again. I sat there, firing impotently while Dave, Pashmina and Ben laughed hysterically. I did not, and probably never will hit one of those damn ducks. Being good at video games is just not in my genes.

Wasn’t then and it isn’t now.

Ben, though, he’s clearly The Daver’s son.

When I was pregnant with Ben, in order to stay under my parents insurance plan, I had to remain a full-time student. That meant that I could start to take the blow-off classes I’d always wanted to take but been too busy with my Biochemistry Labs. I gleefully (read: hungrily) signed up to take a couple of lit classes and a child psych class. It was a refreshing change of pace for me.

I remember the day. There were 3 pictures of the 3 temperaments: a happy child smiling (easy child), a child who looks somewhat apprehensive about something (slow-to-warm-up), and a child who was pushing away a bowl of food and looks pissed off (the difficult child). I remember saying a prayer to whomever was listening that my unborn child be an easy one.

Well, whomever was doling out personalities had a good laugh at the child that was dispensed to me. As a baby he screamed ALL OF THE TIME, he wouldn’t eat, he was up ALL NIGHT LONG, never wanted to be held or snuggled, so much so that I found myself wondering if my child hated me. My Ben, he just seemed to hate me.

When he got older, he was diagnosed on the autistic spectrum and went through millions of hours of speech and occupational therapy sessions. It was surreal, raising him, and it still is.

I mean I made the kid eat a hot dog just so he’d try it. A HOT DOG! ALL kids love hot dogs! They’re full lips and butt holes, and salt and fat, and in kid-speak, that means extra-specially delicious. What kid DOESN’T love hot dogs?

Mine, and only mine.

(he loves them now, lest you think I’m beastly for it)

I’m constantly regaled with stories from friends, and friends of friends who tell me about their children sleeping through the night, trying different foods, LIKING HUGS and it always kinda chafes my ass. In all of those stories, I always can detect a certain smugness, a sense of superiority, intentional or not, it’s still there.

And it always seems to do the trick on me, I mean, at some point you begin to wonder if all of these people have normal kids, what in the hell am I doing wrong?

There’s a lot of therapy available for kids with special needs. They’ll teach the kids to try different foods and handle textures, noises, and sensations. If the kid is non-verbal like mine, the therapists work with the child to speak, first sounds, then more sounds, and eventually words, sentences and so on.

But what about us? The parents, I mean. Those of us who sit sobbing quietly in the bathroom, wishing for a hug or a simple dinner without a battle over food. Those of us who know how much it hurts to hear about how we’re fucking up our kids and how inferior our children are.

Where’s the therapy for that?

Last night was Parent Night at Ben’s new school. I sat there nervously next to The Daver on the hard pew and looked around into the sea of hippies all 10-15 years older than us, dressed in various shades of browns and greens nodding attentively. I was dressed in an electric red sweatshirt while Dave was wearing a bright purple shirt with blue jeans. The gasp of “there goes the neighborhood” when we walked in was palpable.

It’s not just that we were younger or that we were wearing designer clothes that weren’t from sustainable farms or that we didn’t listen to NPR or eat all organic foods, it’s just that we were different. They knew it, we knew it, and there was never going to be anything we could do about it.

I sat there, trying to pay attention as my ass cheeks feel asleep and noticed that I was the only parent in the room who spent the meeting figuring out how I was going to convince Dave that $450 pants were an investment.

Even Dave looked more enraptured by the speakers than I did. He wasn’t fidgeting, re-reading the handouts for what could be missed gossip about Britney Spears, or trying to count the hairs on HIS legs like I was.

It’s not that I don’t care about my 4 year old. I care very much about his preschool. I care what he eats and when he sleeps and if he potty trains on time and that he’s well adjusted and that he’s getting enough calcium and if he gets to play enough and most of all, if he’s happy. I care a lot about that.

But I can’t live my life for him.

And as we chose “groups” to join after the meeting was done, I introduced myself to the ethnic/cultural group that I had to join (joining a group, I learned, was mandatory) I plastered a smile on my face and was as polite and friendly as I could be as the circle of parents formed around me.

Pretty soon I was standing outside the circle, edged out by all of the unwashed, unshaved hippie women who, were living their lives for their children. So there I stood, on the outside of the circle, unwanted. I saw that, sighed and I walked away.

One of these things is not like the motherfucking other. Thank Jesus.

—————

Several months after that, we pulled Ben out of that horrible school and then we moved out of that town. Our interactions with other parents and staff at the school never improved and it was very, very clear that there was never going to be anything that we could do to fit in.

Thank God.

With friends like that, you wouldn’t need enemies.

Somewhere between the kidnapping that happened on August 20th and the wedding that happened on September 10th, my body began to betray me.

Perhaps it was something that I picked up at the macabre display of carnivalish body parts that we saw at Body Works, perhaps it was something that I got from one of the many wedding vendors that I had to sign over my organs and promises of my second born son. Maybe it was some combination of all of it.

I can’t be certain.

Between the horrible mutant fever bug that made The Benner spew The Exorcist-style chunks all over my living room and, well, anything else in his path while running a fever so high that had me running him to the ER and all the last minute, “I owe you an extra three thousand for what exactly?” Somewhere along those lines a mutant bug so big and so bad began brewing inside of me.

By the time September 10th, the day that I promised to Love, Honor and Repay The Daver, rolled around, I was already so sick that I could hardly stand up. It was a mixture of sheer willpower and adrenaline that got me through the day.

It looks like, though, that my wedding guests got a little something extra besides the candles and amazing tapas and all the sangria they could possibly drink. It looks like I was Person A.

Typhoid Becky.

Apparently I infected all of my wedding party, a good portion of the guests, and THEN, in the spirit of all things wedding-y, I got on an airplane. Well, no. Thanks to the good people at Delta, I got onto 5! airplanes. 4 cities.

Then I flew somewhere tropical.

You’re welcome.

I don’t love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

but this, in which there is no I or you,
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.

-Pablo Neruda

In four days, the two shall become one, or something like that. So here we are, posting as one.

Aunt Becky has been running herself ragged getting everything done for this wedding, because I don’t do anything for silly things like weddings. I prefer to focus my energies on my online girlfriends and computer-related foibles. I do this because you can’t hear online girlfriends queef.

It’s interesting that Powdered Gay Man or whomever DAVE would like to be would say something about weddings. See, hear me out, I didn’t want a wedding. No, no, in every OTHER man’s romantic life, I would be the most simple, kindest of women, because MY idea of romance is a short flight to Vegas away. I’ve not even BEGUN to understand why on earth ANYONE would want to spring such money for one single day. And honey, we will NEVER be “one.”

Hey, I offered a Vegas trip. I wanted to be married by Elvis. Of course, the ceremony would have to happen in true Road Trip fashion, the only TRUE way a Vegas wedding should be: Skydiving. That’s right. You, me, and the King with parachutes flapping open in the breeze, saying our vows in just enough time before having to pull that cord and land back on earth, joined in wedded bliss. But as much as my love SAYS she wants a Vegas wedding, this small little request was returned to sender. Denied. Kaboshed. And honey, we’re ALREADY one. We just don’t have the rings on yet.

I did quite appreciate the Vegas offering, I did. Let me set this record straight once and for all, though. You ONLY offered this trip AFTER I said that I would go skydiving, and I quote myself here,”when it becomes socially acceptable to shit my own pants.” YOU didn’t think that having my pants filled with dookie would be “romantic” or “sensual.”

You forget, my love, that I offered to clean those soiled drawers for you myself. With my own tongue. And on top of that, this is what Depends are for. You’ll never remember the dookie in the drawers, what you’ll remember is the love in the air. Besides, no one will smell it at 20,000 feet or so, in free-fall, you’re ALWAYS upwind.

See, honey-muffin, here’s where you’re lying to yourself, and to me AND TO THE INTERNET. Now I know FOR A FACT, that had you ACTUALLY offered to “eat my shit,” literally this time, I would have been more than happy to oblige you. I’ve been waiting to see something like that happen for AGES. No, this whole elaborate wedding is your fault, as are natural disasters, the fact that my closet doesn’t have enough purses, AND soaring gas prices. P.S. There is no one. The computers must count for SOMETHING.

It’s no lie. I mean, I may have been a bit, y’know, *figurative* about the actual “eating” part, but no, I’d have cleaned you up nice afterward. Instead, now, we’ve got all these people coming into town, an oncoming bar tab the size of China, cute-ass little place cards, and even some minor family drama. P.S. I’m sorry about the gas prices, but baby, your closet has so many purses that we don’t need to buy luggage for our honeymoon. We can just fill up the purses and carry ’em on.

God Bless America, and God Bless YOU, Dave. You have SO MUCH to learn about purses. I’ll teach you ALL about it after the honeymoon.

Oh baby, I can hardly wait. Maybe someday SOME day, I’ll have a purse of my very own in my closet. But I wouldn’t hold my breath.

The purse in your closet, honey, is actually called “spillover.”

We need a bigger house.

We need wealthy benefactors.

Now THERE is a brilliant idea. This is why I love you. Benefactors? You out there? Show us some love. W’re buying 160 people dinner on Saturday.
Give us the hookup!

You’re shameless.*I* was going to have a”love child” with an old, old, rich oil tycoon.

And you scrapped that brilliant plan just to marry me?

There are still four days left for me to change my mind.

There you have it, kind readers. True love.

Happy Fourth Birthday, Benner. Without you, I would be nothing. Someday, maybe I will explain why today was such a pivotal, important, terrible awful day. But for now, let me just say that I love you more than anything and I’m sorry and I hope that the McDonald’s and the ice cream cake that I had The Daver run out to get make it special.

Happy Number Four, baby boy. I’m so proud to be your mom. You make me so, so proud.

For as long as I can remember, I have made jokes about being t-bagged because it’s just such a ridiculous thing. My male friends in high school–The Metal Heads–were always going back and forth with me, joking that they were going to put their balls on my face. It wasn’t a serious thing and I don’t think anyone actually wanted to do it.

Well, maybe they did, but probably just to get me to shutthefuckup. I mean, wouldn’t you?

But no one took me up on that. Well, until the smokin’-hott stripper for my bachelorette party showed up.

Now he was a surprise to me, one that I had a mere 2 hours to psych myself up for. I had expected a stripper that is hired totally last minute would be nasty; a filthy 50 year old man with chest and back hair, and a belly like Danny Devito. Or someone akin to Cletus the slack-jawed yokel, red mullet and dangly ball bag. I dunno.

But dude. NO. He was actually hot.

Without rocking any sort of buzz, I was reduced to a gooey giggly mess of bride-to-be, for all of my friends to see. Because what else can you do when a naked hot dude starts rubbing his junk all up on you but laugh your ass off?

And then, in the midst of the humping, and the mock muff-diving, he climbed up on me and put his balls on my face. Rubbed his balls on my face. For what seemed like hours. I was suffocating in the fumes and enormity of it all.

His balls, my face, all in front of my friends. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry so I think I did both. I wept into his ball bag until he finally pulled his sac off of me and I could breathe again. Never has air tasted so good.

Next time I get married, I am SO eloping.

I would like to make a list of the various things I would do if I ever acquired a penis of my own.

1. Mushroom Printing. I would love, Love, LOVE to dick-smack some chick with my penis. Over and over, and over again, until the imprint of my mushroom tip is imprinted onto her face. Don’t ask me why this appeals to me because I’m not all anti-woman, but it does.

2. Write my name in pee in the snow. Now I have heard from many a man that this is much, much harder than it seems, something about bladder control and the whatnot, but I think that a yellow cursive “Becky” would make my heart sing.

3. Have sex with a woman. Having only ever been a “catcher” in the bedroom (or any other room, really), I have never been able to conjure up in my mind what having sex with a gaping hole is really like. Don’t offer up a dildo to me, I want the real thing, mister.

4. Pee standing up. Now for someone like me, who has gone camping any number of times AND was born with a squirrel sized bladder, I have pissed on myself and my clothes more often than I’d like to admit to. I would enjoy tremendously nothing more than being able to whip it out and piss where I damn want to.

5. Jump up and down naked with an erection. Because, really, I want to see if it feels as funny as it looks.

6. Teach my penis to dance to a Madonna song. I have never, ever been able to convince someone ELSE with a penis to do this, and I imagine it would be the funniest thing. Ever.

7. Exit a restaurant bathroom with my penis hanging out, but the top of my pants buttoned. Now, I don’t mean that I’d actually ZIP my pants up ala Something About Mary, but moreover “forget” to tuck my willie back into my shorts. Hilarious.

8. Scratch my balls- because, OBVIOUSLY.

9. Wake up with Morning Wood. I want to know what it’s like to wake up with a drippy wet penis.

10. Have my balls licked. I need to have someone lick the chicken-skin of my balls and report back what it feels like.

There it is, folks, the reason that each of you have patronized our joint blogging venture for a year. Because we are not afraid in the least bit to go where no one EVER wants to go. But I’m not so sure that’s a good thing.