Blush Factor

For some unknown and strange reason, I have an extremely sensitive blush reflex, or as I like to call it: Blush Factor. The barista that I see every couple of days at the coffee shop I frequent just asked me: “What are you doing today? Just studying?” He doesn’t know me that well, I tend to stick with the light conversation stuff if I don’t know somebody (weather, coffee and such) so I decided to tell him that I’m actually there to get some writing done. He, like so many in the customer service industry, doesn’t really pay attention so when he hands me my drink, he says: “Have fun studying!” and I, for whatever reason I’m feeling a bit more talkative, say: “Oh, I’m not studying, I’m writing a book actually.” I think that I’m trying to be more vocal and not so push-over-like (it’s something I’ve been working on for a few years now) and his response is: “Haha, that’s so cliché!” Enter: Blush Factor! Cheeks turn red for no good reason, perhaps it’s because I’m mildly annoyed that he made my café experience a little less fun, or that he reduced me to an inch tall by telling me my choice of activity plus location was basically what everyone else in the world is doing (which, I assure you, isn’t true). He then sees my furiously red cheeks and timid smile and says: “*giggle* I mean that sounds cool, though.” Riiiiiiiiiiiiight. So as I’m walking away, blush becoming even more furious, I say, “Thanks!” and go sit down to write this.

I’m nothing like my roommate when people annoy me or piss me off. Instead of throwing something snarky (on the verge of rude sometimes) back in their face, I internalize it and then write about it (or if I’m at work, I bitch about it over the headset for two minutes and then forget about it). I don’t know what’s better: Throwing back verbal barbs that may or may not be warranted, or walking away semi-embarrassed and annoyed that someone was so rude, and then doing nothing about it. I thought his jibe was a little uncalled for, and it almost made me leave. Almost. Then I Facebooked it. Oh my, what has the world come to? The technological outlets we have access to is almost too much, but now that I am involved with them I couldn’t imagine my life without them. It’s a crazy, vicious circle that I sort of happen to love.

Anyway, about this blushing thing… My mom tells me that she used to blush when she was younger, and that I’ll miss it when I no longer can. I call BULLSHIT, MAMA! If I happened to stop blushing tomorrow, I promise it would never bother me again. It almost holds me back sometimes because I can never keep up with a joke, I just start turning red and then the joke is ruined because they know I’m not telling the truth. If there was no blushing, I would speak my mind a lot more…. so maybe there’s a reason after all…meh, no. Some of my friends call it endearing, but I call it LAME. I blush when I’m embarrassed (which happens the most) I blush when I’m upset/angry/startled/extremely excited (no joke, started blushing at work the other day because I got overly excited about a movie I had just seen and then realized that I was talking too much and blushed even more because I got embarrassed. DOUBLE WHAMMY). When I’m talking in front of a large group of people (large being three or more) I blush… I even blush when I’m embarrassed for someone else. Yes, I blush for you, too, as if my own personal Blush Factor wasn’t enough. Nice. Oh man, the worst is when a customer comes in and I think he’s cute because I can keep the interest off of my features, but the blush gives me away each and every time. Oh, wow. Ridiculous, isn’t it?

I’ve been told that the reason we blush is because our heart speeds up a little and the rush of blood flows directly to the face, and then continues on to the rest of the body. Lucky me, it seems to linger in my face. My heart must work overtime with all the red in my cheeks. I wish there was a way to turn it off, a little button to push that would at least reduce the redness level or intensity. It’s not a mild spot of pink on my cheeks, oh no, it’s a full-on red of my entire face, and if I’m nervous it continues to my neck. So not fair. For all of you out there that wish you could blush, I’m telling you it’s not as good as it sounds. Stick to the powders and crèmes because a natural blush is absolutely not flattering. Something I wonder, though, is why it seems to happen to women more than men… I saw a coworker blush for the first time a few weeks ago, and that was hilarious (he got a taste of his own medicine for making me blush all the time) but he says that he never (very rarely) blushes… is it something in the chemical makeup of the male figure that doesn’t allow the Blush Factor to show? Is it their thick skin (no joke, ladies, we actually do have thinner skin) or is it simply that guys just don’t give a shit and whatever happens happens and blushing simply doesn’t occur to them?? I’m at a loss, I truly don’t know. Perhaps some research would put me at ease...perhaps there is no answer.

 Oh, and I turn red when I even think about being embarrassed.

I’m embarrassed for my embarrassment. Classic me.

Where did you go, Daddy? Oh, there you are!

First of all, I do not call my dad ‘daddy’, but for the sake of the title, I decided to swallow the bile rising in my throat and just go for it. As you can probably guess, my relationship with my father isn’t a good one. In fact, it doesn’t exist at all. I haven’t spoken to my dad since my 21^st birthday (which was almost five years ago. Don’t call me old, I’ll kick you), just before he stepped off the edge of the planet we call Earth and fell into the deepest, darkest pit imaginable. When I tell people what happened to my dad, some feel sorry for me, and others stare blankly in disbelief. Please don’t do the former because I might punch you in the face, and if you do the latter then I’ll still punch you for not believing me. Here’s the ugly truth (and no, I did not steal that from Gerard Butler’s movie, I came up with it first. No, that’s a lie, I didn’t come up with it, but I heard it somewhere else. Swear.) My dad became a drug addict, ruined his life, and disappeared. In a nutshell.

Alright, that’s not a very satisfying explanation. I can feel you throwing your hands in the air and saying, “That’s it?” So here’s the story: My dad was always a dick. A psychological mind-fuck who was bipolar as hell and never thought his actions needed any justification. He was ‘the-man-of-the-house’ and anything he said went. Right. At a very young age (I don’t know exactly, but my mom told me that I’d said this) I asked my mom why she didn’t leave him and get a divorce. Nearly thirty years after getting married, I know she looked back and asked herself the same question. He wasn’t abusive physically or anything, but he was definitely crazy and unstable. My friends were terrified of him, and some never came back to my house after seeing one of his explosive tantrums. Yeah, I didn’t have a lot of friends until middle school.

Naturally, if someone refuses to seek help with their issues, they deteriorate until they become a shell of their former selves and are so unrecognizable to friends and family that they no longer exist as that person. This was (is?) my dad. For whatever reason, he chose to drown his demons instead of facing them, and he allowed himself to become addicted to drugs. Addiction was not a new concept to him at that point, he had been addicted to food up until then. He was always a large guy at over 6’3” and 300+ pounds, but when he started dropping weight, it was a raised eyebrow that I threw in his direction instead of a congratulations. There was something odd about that situation, and I accidentally found out why when I was in the garage and happened to see a bag of pills he had forgotten to put away in his motorcycle purse, I mean bag (he always had that damn man-purse with him, and before then it was an embarrassingly expensive fanny pack. UGH). There were little blue pills, not the fun kind that older adult men use, but the kind that wreck homes, and also larger white ones with numbers on them (don’t remember the number, but my dad wasn’t a cheap man). I recognized them to be Valium and Oxycontin. I grew up in a small town and had seen some drug use (although not to the extent my father did) and so I knew what they were, and all of a sudden the reason why my dad had fallen asleep sitting up at the dinner table made perfect sense. No fucking wonder he’d basically passed out! Alongside the pills were a straw and a pill chopper. Oh, wow, classy, father, very classy. He snorted them! What? I took the bag to my mom and told her what they were and she sat there stonily staring, putting together the pieces in her brain, too.  But for whatever reason, she didn’t kick him out or scream or yell. My mom believed to her core that she could help him and that the thirty years of marriage had to mean something since she’d stuck with him for so long. Do I ever wish she had just dropped him then.

That next year was some crazy shit. He went in and out of rehab, and he always found an excuse to leave early or, this one time (wish I could follow that up with ‘At band camp…’) he even pretended to be a visitor and hitched a ride with another patient’s visitor out of there. Only my father would do such a thing. For a few months after his mom died, he seemed to stabilize himself a little until his motorcycle accident… oh man. The doctors put him on, yeah, you guessed it, Oxycontin. Dun dun dunnnnnn. After that, it was all downhill, and he’s still falling (seven years later). He started messing around on my mom with one of her friends (I will not speak ill of her because her husband just recently died) and then he went on a drug buying binge-those pills are fucking expensive-and spent their entire life savings on drugs for himself and the other woman. The really fucked up thing was my mom didn’t kick him out, he left on his own accord! She must be pissed, looking back on that now, because she doesn’t even have the satisfaction to say that she kicked the loser out. Sucks.

He tried to stick around for a little bit (about eight months or so) but then he just became so consumed by his craziness that he disappeared. My mom would get the random phone call, I’m not really certain what he was saying during those brief calls because I was out of the house by then, but it wasn’t until last week that I found out where he was. I imagined him to be homeless in Seattle somewhere, begging on the street because of the burning of his connections to family and friends and sanity, but he’s actually not. To be honest, I’m a little disappointed. He’s actually…. Living with his drug dealer’s father.

Bahahahahahaha! I don’t know which is more pathetic, really, the fact that he’s living with his drug dealer’s dad, or the fact that his drug dealer’s dad is the same age as mine… I wasn’t fazed when I heard this tiny tidbit. The thought crossed my mind at how original that was, and I was surprised that he wasn’t an enormous cliché. He hadn’t married the woman who he cheated on my mom with and started a newer, younger family, or he sold everything he owned and moved to another country to become more spiritual and less empty person. Nope, he took the classier route. I think I laughed when I heard it. Yeah, I definitely laughed.

Square table? Yup, that's right.

The idea of Guinevere’s Square Table stems from a long night of drinking and hanging out with my mom and her friends. I’m a writer, I pride myself on observation, and this particular night, I noticed how they all acted around my mom. It was weird, almost like she was the leader of this amazing band of women and they all went to her for advice and to have her listen to their problems because, if anything, my mom is a fantastic listener (perhaps that’s where I get it from). They surrounded her, a number of them likely wouldn’t be friends if it wasn’t for the glue that is my mom, and they sat around her square table and looked to her each time someone said something or brought an issue to the table, and it distinctly reminded me of King Arthur and his round table. I don’t even know if they noticed they were doing it, or if they’ve seen it since that night, but they look to her in a way that resembles a queen to her vassals. Maybe it was the cloud of cigarette smoke surrounding me, or the haziness of alcohol running through my system, but I had an epiphany at that point, and Guinevere’s Square Table (as a title at least) came into existence. It wasn’t until a year and a half later that I actually started writing this, but I wrote down the title that night and it stuck with me.

Guinevere’s Square Table is a place for me to be honest with everyone. If anything, I like to point out the truth in matters, and I like to be right (and I am most of the time. No, seriously.) My voice seems to be muted when I’m talking, but when I’m writing, I bring it all out. There is very little I won’t say when I’m writing because I like to shove it in people’s faces and make them see truth, sense, and the absolute ridiculousness that is the general human population. I’m sort of a cynic, and can be a pessimist, but that only adds to my charm. Not everything I write is worth reading, but the things I post mean something to me, whether it’s bitching about the stupid driver riding my ass, or covering a subject on family or daddy issues, or boyfriends, I think there’s always something that can be learned from every situation. I hate to say that I’ve had a tough life because I didn’t grow up without basic necessities, and I always had a roof over my head, but the situations that I’ve been through are surreal and surprisingly ridiculous. If my friends didn’t know me as well as they do, they’d think I was lying because of the amount of crazy things that I’ve experienced. But, those are for another day, likely tomorrow, or the next. For now, I’m going to end with a motto I live by, and something I often like to remind people no matter how bad it gets: things happen for a reason. They truly do.