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Women in my generation can’t complain that they weren’t given opportunities simply because they were women.  Every once in a while you still encounter some yahoo with an opinion, but the negative vibe has changed over the last 30 years.  When I was younger I can remember people saying that women might not be fit for certain career choices.  That because of some physical or psychological component, there were professions that should be reserved for men.  When I was a teenager, a board-game was released called “Careers for Girls”.  In this game, you could be a fashion designer, school teacher, or “supermom” – anything a little girl could ever want to be!  The board-game was pulled from the shelf after a few weeks, and I’m inclined to hunt down and collect copies the way some African-Americans collect lawn jockeys, but the fact that this game made it through R&D and test marketing in 1990 never fails to amaze me.

The negativity now is more of the should/shouldn’t variety.  It comes out in lovely expressions such as “HR is a good career for a woman.”  Or “women shouldn’t be lawyers because men don’t like women with so much educating.”  Both of those are in quotes because they are actual things that people have said to me.  The shouldn’ts are worse than the couldn’ts.  If you can’t do something, then the option isn’t on the table.  For example, I cannot be a successful runway model.  I don’t fit the sample sizes, and even if I did, I fall down in heels.  I can’t be a professional singer.  I have great pitch, but the quality of my voice just isn’t there.  If someone tells me that I can’t be a singer, I’m not going to go home and cry about it because it was never possible in the first place (and by the way, the American Idol hopefuls should consider that before losing their shit at Simon).  But when someone tells me what I should or should not do, I have a big bone to pick.  The bone gets way bigger if the reasoning is based strictly on the fact that I’m a woman.  Or that I may someday be a mother.  Because motherhood and career success seem to go well together.  I would think people would want to set that type of example for their children.  But the shouldn’t people are out there, and they want to convince you with math.

Here’s my favorite argument for why women with small children shouldn’t be in the workforce.  They, and in this case “they” are usually mothers who stay home and men with small penises, point out that sometimes the cost of daycare is greater than salary earned.  Women in their twenties and thirties still drink the Kool Aid on this one all the time.  The thing is that it’s just not possible to lose money by working.  These people either went to an economics class taught by Rush Limbaugh, or by the same people who are convinced that you can lose money by going up a tax bracket (and it’s possible Rush is selling that snake oil as well).  So, for those who are curious, here’s the breakdown of the numbers.

Let’s say the average woman in Montgomery County, Maryland is 35 years old making $50,000 annually before taxes, and getting a 5% raise every year.  She has two small children in full-time daycare at $350 per child per week, and pays for the family health insurance out of her paycheck.  She also contributes the maximum to her 401(k) and receives a company match.  This woman is married, and as her husband makes enough to support the household she does not “have” to work, but enjoys work and wants to continue.  Then, someone points out that for what she pays in daycare costs and taxes out of her paycheck, she is losing money by working and she should quit.  Should she?

The daycare costs for this family are $36,400 annually.  That’s probably about equal to this woman’s annual net income.  There’s a tax benefit to contributing  to the 401(k), paying healthcare premiums, and paying for dependent care, so at least she will not be taxed on the total amount.  But still, she’s definitely spending more than she’s making.

Look at the bigger picture.  Each year this woman is putting the maximum into her 401(k).  For 2007 that is $15,500.  There is an employer match.  Let’s say it’s 100% of the first 3% of salary.  That would be a extra $1,500 of benefit, for a total contribution of $17,000.  As our woman is 35, this will grow tax free for up to 35 more years.  In that time, $17,000 will be worth well over $200,000 assuming an 8% annual return.  Additionally, this woman gets an average of a 5% raise every year.  At that rate, in the (approximately) eight years it takes to raise two kids, spaced two to three years apart from birth to kindergarten, this woman will now earn $73,800.  And each of those years can easily be worth another $200,000 in her retirement account if she continues to contribute the maximum.  So, daycare for two children for eight years  costs $291,200.  Leaving the workforce costs $1,600,000 in retirement income plus the $23,800 difference in annual income assuming that this woman could return to the workforce at the same rate of pay she once had, and the compounding salary growth every year to come.  And, as someone who does hiring, I can tell you that there’s very little chance that this woman will be able to get $50,000 a year in eight years, even with cost of living adjustments taken into consideration.  The technology will have changed, the laws that influence her industry will have changed, and she will be out of practice at dealing with the every day demands of office work, which, although not harder than motherhood are just different.  If you want to stay home because that’s what you want, then stay home.  Just don’t try to convince me you’re making more money by not having a job.

I won’t go the whole way down the road towards the other problem with the quitting work model.  Even though I think it’s the biggest problem, it’s harder to show mathematically.  It is that without any economic power in a marriage you lose not only some of your power in the push and pull of everyday compromise, but ALL of your ability to know why you stay in your marriage.  If you are not economically viable as a single person, then your ability to leave, or even to insist on counseling, if the marriage goes into the crapper is zero.  So even if I could find a way to lose money by working, I’d still work every day of my life for the comfort of waking up knowing that I’m married because I want to be, and that I can change my mind at any time, even if I never do.  That peace of mind is worth millions.

There is an article in today’s Washington Post about the strengths and weaknesses of food banking.  It opens with a discussion of holiday turkeys.  This triggered a memory.  I wish I had more details.  I did not know this happened until years later, so I did not experience this first hand.  I am, instead, relying on my mother’s memory which tends to exaggerate for dramatic effect and leave out anything that might embarrass her.  Here it is the way she tells it:

I started at Kent Place School, a small and snotty all-girls day school in New Jersey, in March 1989.  I had just left boarding school on a “medical withdrawal” minutes before I would have been ejected out for bad grades and worse behavior.  Kent Place met with me, and was willing to give me a probationary chance, dependent on the final semester of the school year.  I did well enough to warrant admission, and I was invited to return the following year.

I was heavily into the goth scene at that time, and the grunge movement was just on the rise.  Everything I wore was out of a thrift shop.  I’d put aged and battered men’s suit jackets on top of tattered rock t-shirts, with torn jeans and lace-up boots.  My face make-up was too pale, and my lipstick and nail polish was the blackest purple I could find.  My mother kept trying to trick me into buying new clothes and new makeup.  Unfortunately she only had one “trick” and I already knew what it was.  She would say, for example “you know, I hear they have this great new face make-up at Bloomingdale’s.  They mix it for you personally, and it makes your skin look great.  I was thinking I would get some for myself.  Do you want to just come along - maybe while we’re there they can put some on you too?”  Now, aside from all the other glaringly obvious manipulations in this dialogue, anyone who knows my mother also knows that she’s the queen of drug store cosmetics.  Until her 50’s set in, she had never spent more than $10 on a purchase.  Yet she still can’t get how I figured that lie out.

Anyway, I’m walking around looking like a kid who lives in a bus station.  It’s a few weeks before Thanksgiving.  My mother gets a phone call from the Head Mistress of the school, Mrs. Faber.  Mrs. Faber explains that the school would like to donate a Thanksgiving turkey to my family as an act of generosity at the holiday season.  My mother counters by saying that she appreciates the thought, but that really we don’t need it.  Insistence ensues.  My mother points out that my father is a surgeon.  Mrs. Faber insists on her generosity, but my mother finds a way to get her point across.  My mom must have been pretty pissed off about this, as she didn’t tell me about it until I was in college.

I’m hoping they gave that bird to someone who was really in need.  I guess this means that my attempt to “look poor” really worked.  I don’t know if I’m counting that as a victory.

There was a guy I met on JDate who seemed interesting.  It was fall of 2002.  I had just taken off a lot of weight, and was looking forward to having a broader section of the male population physically attracted to me.  I chatted online with Foreign Service guy for a while, and then we talked on the phone.  He asked me out to dinner, to Lebanese Taverna, after telling me he had worked in the Arab world with the State Department.  I wondered if he wanted to go to a Lebanese place so that he’d feel confident ordering, or so that he could show off his knowledge, but I figured that either way on a first date I could tolerate a little male insecurity, and Lebanese Taverna has good food, so it wasn’t an all bad outcome.

I took metro to the restaurant, and when I got there he was already at the bar.  His face was okay cute, but he was hippy.  (Note, when I told this story to my friend Leslie she said “Well, I dated that hippie a few years ago, and that was fun.”  So, for clarity, he was “hippy” not “a hippie”.  The man had woman hips.)  I decided to look past the hips, and focus on the nice smile, warm demeanor, and intelligent conversation.

We waited at the bar for a table, and then sat down.  By the time we ordered I felt really comfortable, and so I violated one of my “rules” and ordered a drink on a first date.  Just a glass of wine, but as I have no tolerance wine always goes to my head.  I figured it would allow me to relax and enjoy the fun a little.

After dinner we got in his car, and drove to a bar about a mile from my apartment.  We had another drink there.  I was really enjoying myself.  This guy was truly charming, and easy to be with.  We had similar opinions on politics, and got each others sense of humor.  So, when he leaned in to kiss me, I was excited.  Kissing on a romantic first date is pretty high up there in the range of possible outcomes when you email a guy on JDate.  Excellent result.  Then he leans in and says “come on, let’s get out of here.”

Now, anyone who knows me also knows that I was grateful DC is a transient city so that every two years or so the men I’ve already slept with rotate out, and a whole new crop rotate in.  But, you know, I really wanted to date this guy.  I “liked him” liked him.  I held, and still do hold, the belief that sex on the first date interferes with objective “getting to know you” time.  I wasn’t planning on waiting long, but figured any guy who “liked me” liked me back would want to get to know me before taking that jump too, and was probably capable of holding out til the third date as much as I was.  Being 28 years old, I knew what “get out of here” meant, but figured I’d make him spell it out.

I told him that if he meant “get out of here” as in go back to my place and have sex, then I wasn’t interested, and I would get a cab home.  But if he meant “get out of here” as in he wanted to give me a ride, then that would be fine.  He said that he had meant the latter, had not meant to imply anything, only wanted to be polite because it was getting late.  I knew this was a lie, but I let him get away with it figuring that he knew he had overstepped my boundary and was now backing away.  I could live with that.

Then we got in his car.  A few moments later he made a hand motion meant to mimic putting his hand into a woman’s vulva.  I asked what he thought he was doing, and he said that he could do that for me if I wanted.  I said I thought I had been perfectly clear, and to please just take me home.  That was when I knew that this was a disaster.  Would I had just gotten out of the car and walked home from there, but apparently I was a glutton for punishment.

When we pulled up to my building, he kissed me goodnight.  I kissed him back.  Then he suggests that if I’m enjoying the kissing, he can come upstairs and we can lie in bed together and just kiss.  It doesn’t have to go any further than kissing, and I must be okay with kissing as I’m doing that already.  Huh, is he kidding?  “This is not a negotiation.  And I am not a sixteen year old cheerleader.  If I invite a man to my bed, it is with the intention of having sex.  If I don’t want to have sex with you, then you’re not invited to my bed.  That simple.”

“But come on, you’ve got me all turned on with all that kissing.  How can you not invite me up now?”  Let me see…because you work for the state department yet stink at negotiation?  Because you’re trying to guilt me into sex, and that doesn’t work because, once again, I am not a sixteen year old cheerleader.  Because I’m an adult, and I’ve told you what I want.  Because by saying that I turned you on and then left you with nothing else you’re admitting that you lied when you said all you wanted to do is kiss.  If you want something different, then thanks for dinner and goodbye.

Funny that he never called me again.

I’ve been on a baking spree lately.  First I made marshmallows.  Then I made cookies from the recipe on the back of the Ghirardelli chips bag.  THEN I made cookies from Alton Brown’s chewy cookie recipe.  Now we’re cookie free, and I’m trying to keep it that way.  I still feel the need for comfort through food, but I’m trying to find non-dessert comfort.  Last night I did a big bowl of macaroni and cheese using fat-free evaporated milk and low-fat cheese.  Not quite the same as the original, but a reasonable compromise anyway.  The weather, and the sly approach of longer darkness is definitely a factor.  The bigger factor is that I’m on my last pack of birth control pills.

We won’t “try” right away, and as I don’t have accidents I’m sure any “good news” as the yenta crowd calls it will be a long way off.  Still, this makes it real.  I’m a wife.  Josh is my family.  It’s a big adjustment.  Saturday night is when it shows the most.  This week we went out for Salvadorean food.  We went when the restaurant is packed with children and it’s still appropriate.  I had one weak mojito.  We went home and nuzzled in front of the television.  It’s comfortable and warm.  There’s understanding and partnership.  That’s the most excitement I’ve ever had.

 The second year of law school, when my only vision of myself was as someone who would always drink and dance and go to clubs, I threw a pre-Yom Kippur dinner at my apartment.  I cooked for several days so that all the traditional foods would be there.  I wanted to pluck the good part of “home” from my parent’s house and bring it to where I lived.  That was the first time most people saw that side of me.  A few months later, I suggested to my friend Katie that I wasn’t marriage material.  I said that I was “fuckable” and maybe “dateable” but not marriage material.  She disagreed.  We asked our friend James to be an objective male opinion.  He said “well, I would have said that you weren’t marriage material until I went to your apartment for that Jewish holiday”.

 So that’s me.  Party girl to bubbeh in one kugel.

I went to a lecture at National Geographic last night.  Two Maya archaeologists, a father and son team, spoke.  They possessed an overwhelming level of experience and scholarship, and it’s an honor to have heard them speak.  Apparently NG agreed with my assessment of the speakers, and so they taped the lecture.  They did not make clear the specific intentions for the taping, but instead posted in the corridors, and handed out to everyone on slips of paper, the following:

“National Geographic will be filming this program, including behind-the-scenes activities.  Your use of this ticket and attendance at this event indicates your consent to be filmed and to the use of your image, without payment of any kind, for use in programs and for other promotional/editorial activities related to the program for use in any and all media, now known or hereafter created, throughout the universe forever.”

What team of lawyers worked that out, and do they do weddings?

One of the things I think about a lot is near misses.  Those times in my life when things very nearly took one path, and then suddenly took another.  I’m most interested in the times that what I thought I wanted became completely out of synch with what worked well for my life.  That tension is much more interested than purposeful changes in course.  I think about the man I thought I wanted to marry.  Who, if he had asked, I would have married on the spot.  All the lies I told myself to make him the man he said he was.

The Wanderer came into my life suddenly and slowly at the same time.  I had talked to him for about two months online in the JDate ”chat”.  The chat is a public forum, but we had a few side conversations, and we started to IM each other.  From the first time I chatted with him online, he was planning a cross-country trip.  He lived outside San Francisco but had moved out, sold off some things and stored others.  The plan was to drive around the country in his Honda Civic, see the states he had not already been to, visit friends and family, and then wind up in either San Francisco or New York where he would start his own business.  He had an idea for a new mathematical model for a hedge fund.  That was the plan.

Once we started talking on the telephone, our conversations quickly went from flirtatious to sexual.  It was decided that he would drive out to DC and visit me along with his cousins who lived nearby.  So, the last week of October, The Wanderer showed up at my apartment.  He wanted to fool around right away.  Afterall, we’d spent several weeks building up to that moment.  My friends were a little, or a lot, apprehensive about this man who just showed up and was going to spend the night.  So, we went out to a club and met up with my friends to show them that he was “normal”.  They never believed that he was.

When we got back to my place that night we fooled around.  It was sloppy.  Not drunk sloppy.  Disorganized.  He was very focused on getting me off.  This became a problem as the relationship went on.  There was a lot of focus on the orgasm itself and not so much on the process.  But at this time I thought it was because we were new to each other, and so getting me off was the only goal he could come up with.  He got me off, and then I did the same for him.  Then back to me again, and then we fell asleep.  That was Friday night.

One of the first things TW did when he came to DC was find out the best restaurants in the area.  The very best, and most expensive, is The Inn at Little Washington.  He called, and was able to get a Monday night reservation for two.  Next thing I knew I was leaving work early Monday to go to the Inn for a meal that cost more than a week’s worth of minimum wage pay - before taxes.  The waiters and staff at the Inn are some of the best trained you will find anywhere.  They are very good at “reading” the table to see whether you want to chat, or want to be alone.  Correctly judging that we were a friendly table, one of the staff made conversation.  He asked us where we were from.  I quickly answered “Arlington, VA” figuring that would suffice for the both of us.  TW felt the need to make a point of the fact that he had dislocated himself from the world, and declared himself homeless.  As we had not yet paid the bill, there was a look of panicked confusion on the man’s face.  After a pregnant pause he declared that it was wonderful to see how far the homeless had come up in the world.  I thought it was funny, because it was.  I noted but failed to process the joy that TW took in the interaction.

It was an amazing meal, and no one could resist the romance of such an evening.  When we got back to my apartment, there was more of the same type of physical intimacy.  Then there was pillowtalk.  Then there was silence.  TW broke the silence and said “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I love you.”  All I heard was “I love you.”

There is a lot I still don’t understand about marriage.  Dating I got completely.  Casual dating is like baking - artistry means nothing if the cake doesn’t rise and the science means nothing if the frosting isn’t pretty.  You can’t explain to someone who has never been there why you know that one guy will call again and another won’t.  Or why you go out with a guy who’s not that interesting or cute, but you think to yourself that he’s worth another shot, that you’ll go out with him again when he calls, and then he doesn’t.  Why sex on the first date with one guy makes him never call again, and sex on the first date with another guy makes him want to adopt a cat together.  You have to truly understand people.  When they lie and why.  That liars will quickly become cowards - most would rather never call again than admit the lie.  The most difficult lesson to learn is that it is art and science - it’s not personal - YOU are rarely part of the equation.

Let’s take a typical scenario.  A woman goes to a bar and meets a man.  She has some passionate drunk kisses with him, and although she wants to invite him up to her apartment, she doesn’t because she thinks there is a greater chance of this turning into a real relationship if she holds out just a little longer.  A week goes by, and the man doesn’t call.  Now the woman is second guessing herself.  Maybe he only calls women who put out.  Perhaps she missed her chance.  What if this guy was the one.  They had such a connection.

Six weeks later, Saturday at 2AM he calls.  Says he’s been thinking about her the whole time, but between work and family obligations he hasn’t been able to get free.  Work took him out to Los Angeles for a week, and then his father’s heart acted up so he needed to go to Michigan to take care of him.  Now he’s back and can’t wait to get together.  Woman is so relieved to hear from him - it confirms that the connection she felt wasn’t just in her head - so she gets in a cab at 2:30AM and goes to his apartment.  This time, she has sex with him, expecting that will make him call for sure.  Afterall, he’ll want more sex now that he knows he can get it from her, and it’s not inappropriate to have sex with him because she’s known him for six weeks!  Man never calls woman again.  They bump into each other fourteen months later at Black Cat and he does an awkward head bob and run away move.

If the story above sounds familiar, it’s because it is an amalgam of dozens of scenarios that have happened to me and every woman I know.  If the story doesn’t sound familiar, you are either a virgin, or uniquely unaware.

 When this sort of thing happened to me, my analysis was pretty simple.  The guy clearly wasn’t worthy, at least I had some fun with him, and it’s just not a big deal.  Some women see it the same way.  Others would think it’s a big deal because they are more protective of their sexual selves, but realize that was their issue, and they should have thought of that earlier if it was important to them.

The women who suffer do so for a variety of reasons.  Some violate their sexual morality in the hopes of attracting a man.  Some really do believe that the man was their soul mate, and failure to marry him dooms them to a life of spinsterhood.  Most suffer because they take it personally.  Taking it personally is the worst.  It leaves you with the feeling that everything bad that happens to you is your fault.  Self-esteem withers as every evil in your path is absorbed.  The man didn’t call because you were a slut.  Or because you were a prude.  Or because you didn’t shave that day.  Or because you shaved too much?  Maybe he didn’t call because you said the wrong thing.  What was it you said again?  On your way out?  Was that laugh he gave you a real laugh, or was it sarcastic?  Now I, your friend, have spent two hours on the phone trying to convince you that nothing this guy has ever done is because of you.

The reasons, as far as I can tell, that men do not call are very rarely about the women in question.  Sometimes they’ll make excuses, but I think it’s more like they don’t want to commit, they already have a girlfriend, they’re selfish people who don’t think about anyone else’s feelings, they’re going through a breakup, someone else came along, they’re jerks who just don’t care, or any other reason that is all about where they are in their own lives.

Does it hurt more or less to know that there was nothing you could do to make this guy be with you?  Would it make it easier if you could pinpoint something in yourself?  If you could just lose eight pounds, or play with his balls while giving a blowjob, and yield a different outcome would that be better?  Better than knowing that you never entered into the equation at all?