men are not prisoners. quit treating us like wardens.

I am not an idiot.

I’ll just say that up front. I am well aware of what kind of person I am to live with and where I must drive people crazy. I am not the easiest woman in the world to date, I know that. But, you know, it’s.. .like… worth the effort, or something like that, right?

Last night I didn’t want to go to the bar like we do every Monday night, but we did anyway and I did what I do when we go, which is try and get as many people who don’t give a shit about (insert-whatever-game-is-on-that-night-here) into a large conversation. By the way, it’s always freezing in that bar, and I don’t like sitting around drinking beer, so I usually go to the coffee shop around the corner and sneak a latte in for myself to drink. I like this bar, I really do, but I don’t like spending six nights a week of my life in a bar. I’m either performing, rehearsing, or hanging out in a bar every night of my life. And if you add Monday night into a bar night… that’s every night of the week.

And I think that the smell of smoke will never really leave my hair. Ever.

But whatever, we go to the bar, we have a good time, Eric is ready to leave. We get into the car and he says, “Is that the time?” And he’s totally disappointed that it’s an hour earlier than he thought it was. He tried to hide it well, “Oh, I just thought it was later, that’s all,” but his head is totally cranked around looking towards the bar like he’s my Irish Setter that I’m taking to the vet.

This becomes a discussion over who gets to do what they want to do in this relationship and who’s tagging along just doing stuff to be with the other person. This is a very common discussion with us, and if we are both sober, we agree that we have an equal relationship. But if one of us has been drinking, they feel rather slighted socially.

So, last night, I played Resident Evil on the Playstation until Eric felt like he had a little control, since that was his original plan, was to go home and play the game. But my feelings were hurt. I don’t like feeling like I’m ruining his social life because I like seeing him outside of a bar setting every once in a while. And he knew that my feelings were hurt, so he waited until I killed a few zombies before talking to me (about the game of course).

I am not an idiot. I know it’s safer just to talk about the game and we can act like we forgot what we were talking about before because the game is so interesting.

This morning he was supposed to go out and play basketball with his friends. When the alarm went off, he had me turn off the alarm. “You want me to hit the snooze?” I asked.

“No, just turn it off. I don’t think I’m playing basketball today,” he cuddled closer to me.

“Are you sure? Chuy will be disappointed.”

“I’m sure. We’ll sleep in together.”

I closed my eyes and went back to sleep. I heard some rumbling, opened my eyes, and found him in the closet in sneakers, sweat shorts and a t-shirt.

“I thought you weren’t going,” I said.

“Oh. You’re up. You’re awake… I.. yeah, you know? I’ll just be gone about an hour or so. Hour and a half, tops.”

And he left. That was just under two hours ago.

I am not an idiot. If you want to go play, go play. I am not a warden, or a parent, or a teacher, or a parole officer. It is not my job to keep you somewhere and I don’t want you to feel like you have to run away when I’m asleep.

I’ve seen this happen to other women. They are just talking or discussing something and the man automatically assumes that he is in trouble. Men: Listen to me. We don’t want you to feel like we sit back with some keys swinging around our fingers and a bully club in our laps. We don’t want you to feel like the second you leave the house we get on our computers and watch your movements on some radar system we’ve got hooked up to your car. We don’t want you to give up doing what you want to do so that you can do what you think that maybe we think you should be doing.

We just want you to live your life, and when you want it to include us, we want to come along. And while we’re living our lives, when what we’re doing includes you, by all means you’re welcome to join.

And, jeez, guys, if you are looking at online porn on the computer, fucking fess up to it, okay? A few months ago someone was looking at www.beautifulpussy.com on my machine, and the only three men who have been in my apartment in three weeks were like, “What? Jeez! Who would– WHAT KIND OF PERVERT WOULD DO THAT TO YOUR MACHINE? It’s terrible. I… that’s horrible.”

And to this day, not one of them has admitted to looking at porn on my computer. And every day I have to erase those e-mails it sends out, reminding me that someone spent some time at www.spread-em.com. “Hi, my name is Kandi, and I just got some great shots of my tight ass. Come on over and check it out.”

“It’s probably one of your readers,” one of the men said to me.

“Kandi is not one of my readers. She’s a computer that automatically sends out spam to anyone who has been on the porn server. My readers don’t invite me to look at their tight asses.”

“That’s too bad.”

I am not an idiot. You cannot trick me into buying into your false logic.

And, you know, I’ll still sit here with my hair done, in my dress, with makeup on, under the illusion that he said we’d go out to lunch together when he gets back… but the reality is he’ll get home, he’ll take a shower and we’ll have to take the cats to the vet and when we get back it’ll be time to go to rehearsal or something will come up or…

it’s hard being a martyr, it really is.

No, he’ll be here any second and we’ll go have lunch and get the other kazillion things done that we need to get done today. I just hate feeling like he’s trying to know what I’m thinking so he does things expecting to be in “trouble” when I never do that.

I am not that girl.

But I am hungry. I hope he gets home soon.