My Inner Bitch is coming out in this entry. I hope you are all OK with that. It’s a cute li’l Inner Bitch though and underneath her gin-swilling, foulmouthed exterior cowers a small, kitten-like soul of docility who just wants to be loved.
So anyway, today I got royally ass-fucked and I owe it all to The Rules particular to the all-female social arenas of groups, group organization, martyrdom, and responsibility. My error is due in part to the last couple years’ experimentation with being straightforward in drawing boundaries. You know, simply saying, “No” without a long explanation as to why. After all, one of my least-favorite female litanies is the, “Oh-I’m-so-busy-I-couldn’t-possibly” blahdy-blah-blah speech many women launch into if you ask them to do something like, oh I don’t know, pick up a pencil off the floor. And by the way, these aren’t women living in the Sudan who have to walk 2 miles to get water a day and have six children. These are SUV moms, middle- to upper-middle class, and they are talking about stuff like baking pies for the Unitarian potluck or planning toddler birthday parties. If you are in the room with me and you hear someone start in on the, “Oh my God I’m so busy…” you will hear clicking sounds as my eyeballs roll back in my head.
Enough of that for now. (This whole pet peeve of mine needs to be filed under my massive category of “Weird Hangups I Attribute To My Mother” [Mom, you know it’s all in fun – I WUV WOO!”]). On to what I am now calling The Ass-Fucking Incident. A few days ago a leader of a group was announcing her intention to pass the torch and, because I’d offered to help on two specific administrative duties for said group, asked if I “wouldn’t mind taking over”. I said, “Yes, I would mind. No, I don’t want to.” She had that moment of vertigo when my answer didn’t match what it should have been, and then we got past it and moved on. I gave no reason for not wanting to do it. I also – and this might make me different than other women I know – don’t give a good goddamn if the effort all goes into the toilet for lack of a leader. I’m not going to be that leader just because, gosh-dang-it, someone should be. I felt peace about my decision and a vague curiosity about who might be the next to take over.
Well, you can guess what happened. Much like my, “I knocked over an entire Mexican family on the bus today, with my ass by the way” story I’ve been telling recently – I don’t really need to say more than a couple sentences for you to get the drift. But yes, today amongst mixed company this ex-leader outed me as being “next in charge” and detailed group members to refer to me. Wowza. I am very confused as to how exactly my, “No, I am not willing to do that” became a “Yeah, sure, sign me up! My God, I have been DYING to do that! The only reason I didn’t do it, Mabel, is because you were doing it and I didn’t want to steal your thunder!” or something to that effect.
BOHICA.
Let me just say for the record before I offend exactly 62 readers who think this story is about them asking me to do things for them – a list from today alone would include babysitting a boy this morning (bad Jen!), a girl this the evening (saucy, impertinent Abbi!), helping friends sew (Elin! Stephanie! Naughty monkeys!), and finishing our latest zine (Amber, you troll!) – don’t even waste brain cells wondering if I’m pissed or resentful. I’m not. And I plan to move into the leadership role of this group and do a bang-up job. I guess when I started this story I planned to make some big point about women and their weird setups and betrayals, but you know, I’m getting a little sleepy and will probably sign off instead.
I also, today, heard the funniest story ever involving one of those car breathalyzer units. To say any more would be rampant gossip about a pillar in our community. But GodDAMN sometimes I wish I had anony-blog.