Pancakes Taste Like Poverty: And Other Post-Divorce Revelations

by Jessica Vivian

  He came on Friday night with some cash for us and cooked dinner and snuggled the kids and threw them around like dads do and it worked.

  In a bizarre and only-in-a-TV-movie way when our court date for the official divorce was assigned it was identical to that of his parents who had since split also.

  When D-day arrived neither of us bothered to get very dressed. He wore jeans and flip flops. My wardrobe consisted of jeans and two or three shirts so I had no choice but to wear them.

  We arrived early to be met a few minutes later by his parents – separately – each with a friend for moral support. With sad eyes they gave us “understanding” hugs and pats while we, in our flip-flops, giggled and chit-chatted.

  Finally we were called in to the room with half a dozen other non-contested, quick-divorce couples. They were called up one by one to swear the marriage was irreparable, sign the papers and leave.

  My husband, being named after his father and his father and his father, was called up with me. We swore and signed – eagerly.

  The judge, confused, called up his father with the same name.

  “Wait a second,” he halted us, “you're getting divorced today and your parents are getting divorced today?”

  We nodded.

  “You can't make that up. What a tragic day.”

  But it wasn't a tragic day for us. For me, it was one of the best days. It was maybe the first authentic thing I'd ever done. And he was free. Not of his responsibility but of the role of husband. He was not ready and he knew it. And I was tired. We'd tried for ten years. It didn't feel like a failure.

  We waited outside the courtroom to say goodbye to his parents.

  “What are you guys doing now?” His father asked.

  “We're going to go eat pancakes at the IHOP where we met,” my ex answered cheerfully.

  And with that we high-fived (literally) and skipped (literally) down the hallway to our new uncertain future.

  I wish I could say everything has been as smooth and amicable as the day we got divorced. But, for what it's worth, it was a shockingly pleasant day.

  Spencer and Maya

  Spencer and Maya are the two jackasses who live in the downstairs apartment.

  Spencer is twenty-two. He is one of those guys who is simultaneously hot and repulsive. Like he's hot, no doubt. He looks like Josh Hartnett (hot) but if Hartnett had been raised in a really dodgy trailer park and had been in and out of prison on various drug charges (repulsive).

  His uniform is a white tank top and baggy sweatpants with his boxers showing. He almost always has a cellphone in one hand a cigarette in the other. He sits on the third from bottom step, talking loudly either to women or his friends to whom he complains about the aforementioned women being “jealous bitches who love drama.”

  While he does this, he spits his smoker-phlegm onto the bottom step leaving a slippery sheen of gray-yellow mucus for myself and Other Single Mom next door to hop over every time we go up and down the stairs because it is that slippery. When we're lucky, it rains and washes the phlegm away, leaving the bottom stair splatter-bleached by whatever strange chemical composition Spencer's phlegm possesses. The step now resembles a concrete version of acid wash.

  Despite being gross, he is dangerously aware of how narrow and gray the gross/hot delineation is and he lives right in the middle of it.

  After his louder fights with his live-in girlfriend, when I have my eyebrows fixed and I am ready to confront him, he leans in close and smoothly apologizes with the most charismatic husky whisper. And I remember that one day I might need his help moving furniture (or he could, like, punch me in the face) and I wave him off with a lackluster finger-wag and return to minding my business.

  As for his girlfriend, Maya, she is nineteen. She looks like a black Snookie when Snookie was doing the hair bump and leopard print, only Maya's hair bump is made of that plastic-looking weave that looks like Barbie hair. She wears big hoop earrings and her vapid nature comes through when she speaks. You know, like she speaks in gravelly whisper-giggle with plenty of upspeak thrown in, just in case you thought there was promise for a decent conversation.

  I know she works somewhere, so I assume she pays most of the bills. She tends to keep to herself until it's time for a throwdown.

  Almost weekly, Maya confronts Spencer about the other girls he is talking to, or his drug use, or the abortion he talked her into which we know about because Spencer talks about it loudly on the phone at midnight to whomever. Almost weekly, Spencer reacts by getting loud. Maya throws things. She runs outside, threatening to get in the car and leave, but never does. She gets on the phone with people telling them to come get her for real this time, that she'll text them when she's packed, that there is no going back. Spencer gets on his phone and sits on the step smoking and complaining about how crazy she is, taking breaks to spit, take a drag from his ever-present cigarette or yell at her about how crazy she is.

  I usually stay out of it because I want to be neither ally nor enemy to either of these kids.

  Other Single Mom, however, is ten years older than me and clearly gives fewer fucks. She steps outside and threatens to call the police.

  I can hear through my bedroom window, because this weekly ordeal is just a few feet from it, as Spencer sex-whispers his usual apologies and tries to gather support from Other Single Mom by explaining, literally, the entire nature of their fight and their drama.

  Other Single Mom takes the bait, just as I always do.

  Or maybe she calculates, as I do, that Spencer looks like the kind of guy who knows people who don't mind breaking and entering and assault and just wags her finger and shushes them and goes back to bed.

  At this point, Spencer sex-whispers black Snookie into cooperation and the two go back inside to talk it out. A few hours later I am treated to the sounds of loud, rough makeup sex.

  They are my ex-husband and I ten years ago. Exactly. And so I both pity them and hate them.

  I'm the One For Me

  Well, I will be, soon.

  See, one of my dearest friends bestowed a nugget of wisdom upon me about a year back:

  BE the man you want to date.

  About a year ago, I was working at a hotel as a concierge. There was a guy there who I was very attracted to, and being "separated" I figured a little workplace fling was fair game.

  We were teetering right on the edge of Friendship, about to dive right into More Than Friendship when I gushed to my friend, The One Who Usually Has Relationship Issues.

  "Girl, he is amazing," I swooned, "We laugh all time. He likes astrophysics just like me. And he is tall. And has a degree and…"

  "Jessica. You don't have time for this."

  Um...excuse me?

  At that point was thinking I needed to find a new friend. I had indulged This Particular Friend through every one of her giddy crushes and relationship roller coasters since we were fifteen and now she can't return the favor? I retorted.

  "But girl, I haven't slept with him or anything. Do you hear me? I am attracted to him and I have not had sex with him. For me, that's kind of big deal!"

  "I can't even believe you. You are going on about wanting to date this guy. You need to date yourself! Get dressed up for YOU. Get sexy for YOU. Find out what turns YOU on, not HIM! You have never, ever, ever just ...just been...just you."

  WHAAAAAAAAAAAAT!?!?!?

  Am I being schooled by The-One-Who-Usually-Has-Relationship-Issues?

  Is this some sort of 5th dimension alternate Universe?

  She was right.

  Holy shit, she was completely right.

  I had never been just me. At least not since I got boobs.

  Ever since I was twelve or thirteen I always had a boyfriend. And later, when I started having sex I always had a guy I was having sex with who I referred to as my boyfriend.

  Then I married the aforementioned guy.

  I was barely separated from my
husband and I was already trying to latch myself onto another poor fool. What was wrong with me?

  What was wrong with me? Why didn't I just date myself?

  I spent a few days rolling it around in my head.

  Why Didn't I Date Myself?

  Well, I think the first problem is I would NEVER date someone like me!

  Oops.

  But seriously...

  I sat down and started listing the must-haves for the next man I decide to let into my world.

  He must be fit and attractive. He must be educated, or ambitious or both. He must be stylish. He must be creatively talented.

  Hmm....

  I am none of the above.

  How exactly did I think I was going to land this fit, sexy, stylish, ambitious creative man when we would, clearly, have nothing in common?

  And then another revelation.

  I can just be the man I want to date. Why, in the name of All That Is Holy, am I expecting some dream man to come complete me? My lazy ass don't got that much time! Why the hell not just do it myself??

  I took over ten years of French and can't hold a conversation in French. Unacceptable. I was the Student Director of my school's show choir and the SGA Vice President of Fine Arts. I can read music. But I can't play guitar or piano. Unacceptable.

  You can only fall back on the old "my Dad wasn't around" schtick for so long before you just look like a lazy-ass whiner.

  I had become a lazy-ass whiner, waiting for Mr. Awesome to swoop in and teach me all the things Daddy didn't.

  Unacceptable.

  I finished my list of everything I wanted in a man. Then next to it, I made a list of how I could develop those traits in myself. Then, in a third column, I added some oddball traits just for me:

  I want to be a chick who is good at poker. I want to be more versatile with my hair. I want to speak five languages - at least. I pick them up easily, why the hell not? I want to wear red lipstick, like, every day. I want to learn how to drive a stick, just in case.

  However, due to my staggering poverty I was not quite sure how I was going to afford five copies of Rosetta Stone software so I turned to the interweb and Voila! I found everything I needed to learn everything I want!

  Free Guitar lessons on YouTube, free language buddies via Skype. You can literally learn anything.

  But all of those things, while neat party tricks, are topical. What this conversation with my friend really did was force me to deal with my Self.

  With everything upended and so logistically difficult I have become near-obsessed with figuring out what in my soul was so parched that I chose that man, chose to marry him, chose to stay as long as I did and now find myself single with three kids with no education and no job.

  About a year ago when I first moved into the apartment, my stepmom offered me the chance to go to one of those spiritual, deal-with-your-issues kind of retreats. I went and did more healing, crying in a room with strangers, than I had in the span of my life. Issues I'd had for as far back as I could remember vanished from my spirit. The whole experience was painful and intense but I loved it because it’s so satisfying on the other side and it makes me feel like an emotional archaeologist.

  I really like analogies and I thought of this one last night:

  Digging deep into your subconscious mind and heart is like digging for bones.

  You see something jutting out from somewhere deep, curiously dust it off to reveal it. You didn't know it was there before...and now you do. So you keep digging, looking for clues. You know you'll find more.

  Eventually you unearth the whole monstrous thing. It’s the skeleton of a T-Rex. It's massive but it's not whole so now you have to reassemble it.

  You take your time, painstakingly recreating the monster it once was. Only now it is not a terrifying, menacing monster. It is inanimate. It is just a shadow of its formerly life-threatening self. There’s nothing scary about it. It is not alive now. You are not in danger. You can stand there, with your head right inside the jaws of this once bone-crushing dinosaur – and feel absolutely no threat. You can intellectually respect its former potential to kill but time has destroyed this monster's power.

  That is exactly how emotional archeology works.

  Things happen in life. Bad Things. If you experience those Bad Things first hand, there is a good chance you have to adopt some sort of emotional shield to protect yourself from complete annihilation. Then you bury the Bad Thing and still carry the shield just in case.

  The only way we can drop the shield is to dig and find the bad thing – reassemble it, name it, examine it – and only then we realize that it is no longer a threat. It can no longer hurt us. It’s friggin’ dead. As a matter of fact, they are all dead. The threat is in the past. And I am here, in the present, safe and alive. I can take the armor off. I can drop the spears. I can drop the shield.

  That is why I love doing this emotional work. It’s amazing how placid and static your issues can seem when you realize they are no longer doing you harm in the present...except in your own head.

  The Hole In The Wall – March 2011

  A year later there is still a hole in the wall. One day when he came over, he was doing some sort of goofy zombie walk to make the kids laugh and he tripped over his own limbs and fell into the wall, his shoulder leaving a massive hole.

  The kids scolded him, exasperated that we'd just moved in and our space was already soiled. He promised he'd come back and fix it.

  But as time passed I no longer saw it. It was just the state of the wall. The kids stopped caring. And it never got fixed.

  That's the way it is, isn't it?

  He is destructive and we adjust to the chaos until it's so normal we don't even see it.

  Red Lipstick

  I'd always wanted to be one of those women who wore red lipstick. It seemed powerful and brave and bold and like you didn't have to do much else to be “put together.” When I decided I was going to “reinvent” myself after my divorce I made a lot of noise about how I was going to start wearing red lipstick.

  Now that I have publicly declared that I am going to start wearing red lipstick all the time, the pressure is on. Many people are curious about my feelings, assuming I am sporting my red lips, and I hate to admit – I have yet to start wearing makeup.

  I KNOW! It should be the easiest resolution, right? And yet, I have attached a mountain of excuses not to do it.

  “I need to get my eyebrows done first.”

  “I can’t wake up early enough.”

  Those are my two favorites.

  But the strange thing is that I am completely terrified and I am not exactly sure why.

  Let me explain my Red Lipstick Theory.

  Red lips are synonymous with a lot of things: glamour, power, sex, classic beauty, elegance, Gwen Stefani, Dita Von Teese…

  I’d have to say that lately my Self as “Mrs. ______” is not synonymous with any of those things.

  However, “Jessica Vivian” apparently was.

  Case and point, my senior year quote, under my thin and beautiful and glowing and hopeful eighteen-year-old face was:

  “When in haste, walk slowly and make sure everyone can see you.” —Marilyn Monroe

  I. Shit. You. Not.

  Seriously NOT the kind of thing a pudgy, mom of three would say but a sexy ass eighteen year old with an ego the size of Kazakhstan? You bet!

  But here’s the deal:

  I’m divorced. My name is no longer hyphenated. I am just “Jessica Vivian” again.

  So why don’t I feel Jessica Viviany? How do I get that ballsiness back?

  I’m gonna start with the Red Lipstick. I capitalize it because it deserves that much reverence.

  So here’s how it goes, in my head at least:

  Red lips are slightly high maintenance and I am trying to dive into the I-give-a-damn-how-I-present-myself-to-the-world lake head first. When one is wearing perfect
ly lined Red Lipstick, one cannot also wear one’s pajamas and house slippers to CVS pharmacy – like I did this afternoon – without looking slightly unstable.

  Taking the time to make your lips pretty, means you have to make your face pretty and if you’ve gone that far, you might as well pick out a decent outfit.

  See how that works?

  Now, makeup and I have a really spotty past. I wore it to the prom. I wore it at my wedding. I had to wear it when I worked at the shady “modeling school” I was working at when I first met him. I stopped working there about seven years ago.

  Since then I have worn it sporadically to work. I usually avoid it because when some well-meaning member of my family happens upon me with my face done they usually make such a big, ridiculous deal about it and fawn over me like I’m an effing show dog with their high-pitched “Oooooooo, don’t you look pretty?!”

  Gag me.

  A few of my friends have said that for them makeup is a mask from the world. I wish I felt that kind of solace and safety in it. I feel the exact, polar opposite when I’m wearing makeup. I feel like I am under a spotlight. I feel seen and exposed and vulnerable. I feel like everyone is looking at me, and not in the way I like.

  How odd.

  I am a hammy stage-hog and I don't mind being the center of attention if I’m cracking jokes but not when people are noticing the way I look. I wonder what that’s all about…

  Anyway, I feel like I have to push through this blockage.

  Nowadays I am beginning to feel that nothing is as simple as “I’m lazy” especially when there is this much resistance. You know how much I love emotional archeology.

  So I think Red Lipstick is the key to examining my unwillingness to be seen, my fear of vulnerability, my disdain for being told I’m pretty. And to put even more pressure on myself, I am hereby declaring that once I throw on said Red Lipstick, I will make it my Facebook and Twitter profile pic.