The Authentic Life: real housewives

There is a pause, a sigh and then a question.

“Can I be honest with you?”

“Of course,” I reply.

“You’re not extreme enough,” she says, putting an emphasis on the word “extreme” that makes it sound like this is the holy grail of behavior. I envision her, this TV producer, on the other end of the phone marking a big red X over a picture of our faces, scribbling “Pussies” and then underlining this three times in a huff.

She is right, of course.

When she asked how we disciplined our children, I might have said “Oh, we make them drink hot sauce,” but opted for the cheery, sugary truth, “With plenty of love!” I could sense her mentally vomiting in my face.

When she asked if we controlled their dating I might have said “We chose spouses for them before they were born,” but instead said “We just want them to be happy.” I’m certain she was making a gun shape with her index finger and thumb while pointing it at her forehead.

“But we are two gay fathers with five children,” I maw.

“You’re one short of the Gaydy bunch,” she replies and then adds “Can you adopt another child?”

“I—uh—“

“I’m just kidding!” she laughs maniacally.

It is a funny little producer joke.

“Good luck,” she says before hanging up. There is a tiger Mom on the prowl, or a helicopter parent

circling somewhere to be discovered.

That evening I stand in the kitchen and whine, while Paul cooks turkey burgers on our George Foreman grill.

“We’re not going to be reality TV stars. She said we’re not extreme enough.”

“That Bitch!” Paul replies, hands me a plate and then adds, “Come on. Let’s go sit down on the sofa. Jeopardy is on!” He claps his hands like a small child excited for recess.

He takes a bite of his burger and then struck by an epiphany says “Extreme? She hasn’t seen you in the bedroom!” He snaps his fingers over his head for emphasis while shouting “Johannesburg!” at the TV.

I mentally reconstruct the scene from last night’s bedroom episode. We lay side by side on our bed, Paul is on his back and I am facing him on my side. I gently place my hand on Paul’s shoulder. I press my lips close to his ear and softly whisper “Roll over.” And then I say, “You’re snoring.”

“We are pussies,” I say.

There was a time when we lived a life on the edge. We hobnobbed with a group of reality TV stars in West Hollywood on vacation.

“Remember how Jax sucked at making those drinks?” I ask Paul.

“What a douche,” Paul commiserates and then says “But you kept on drinking them.”

“Stassi and Kirsten were normal. They could have been our daughters,” I say and then add “Stassi is from Detroit for God sakes!”

Paul places his plate on the end table and looks at me.

“Is Willy having a little melt-down?”

He is patronizing me.

“When did we become so normal?” I ask him.

“Honey, you’re anything but normal,” he scoffs.

If a TV camera were to capture the scene at this moment, I might pick up my drink and throw it in Paul’s face. He would pick up my plate, throw it against the wall and call me a thankless bitch. But, here is the scene as it plays out.

“Do you really think I’m not normal?”

“You’re Abbie Normal,” he replies.

We kiss. We yell answers at the TV. The camera zooms out, and I thank God for every minute of our extremely normal life.

I received a very special e-mail today. It was addressed quite formally, “Dear William Dameron”. There are few people who refer to me using my first name and last name; mostly it is my Nigerian friends seeking assistance with cashing a check. But this e-mail was not from them. It was from a publisher. Had the e-mail been addressed as “Dear Bill” or “Dear Mr. Dameron”, I might have thought oh, yay! But because it was addressed as “Dear William Dameron” I thought oh shit, because anyone who addresses me this way is not human. They are robots. Robots send rejection e-mails.

Because I am not a robot, I take rejection personally. Somewhere along the lines of my nature and nurture programming, I was wired to accept rejection as a wholesale approach as opposed to a piecemeal thing. If you reject a part of me, I’ll just go ahead and throw the baby out with the bathwater and assume that I am not partially inept, but completely inept.

You might ask why not just learn from this experience? Irrational thoughts are by definition not rational thoughts. The funny thing is that when you are thinking irrationally, you do not know this. And by funny, I do not mean humorous. I mean strange. Immediately following the rejection, little annoyances and inconveniences became major hassles. On my drive home I drove around my condo twenty times looking for a parking spot. Psychologists say that I could have turned this into a positive. I could have viewed the hike to my condo from my parking spot as a lovely little walk.

I say fuck Psychologists.

But I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt. I chose to go to the gym in order to work out some of my negative thoughts and stress; a healthy approach to battling my demons. But those demons were one step ahead of me.

My demon thoughts manifested themselves as young fitness models. They posed and pumped iron. They grunted and said “look at me. Look at what you are not. Look at what you will never be, you fat little man. Even if we are dumb and cannot write, we look like brick shit-houses.”

They followed me into the locker room where they paraded their youth and firmness.

On my walk home from the gym I bought cookie dough.

Now, there is normally not a day so fine that it could not be brightened by a package of chocolate chip cookie dough, a bottle of red wine and some “Real Housewives”. But today, I found the relative fame and fortune of the Atlanta belles irritating. Take away the makeup, the hair and the mansions and you are left with some bitchy women with little discernible talent. Well, except for Kandi, she can write songs, but she sings like a smurf. If these women could make something of themselves, how un-talented was I? That question called for another bottle of wine.

And then, it all faded back to black.

“Oi, wake up!”

I’m not sure if it was the wine, the cookie dough or the despondent feelings that brought her to me, but when Amy Winehouse appears to you in a dream/vision, you’d best be listening.

“You feeling sorry for your-self?”

“That I am, Amy, that I am.”

“Ah, yeah, I know that feelin’ well, I do. But look ‘ere, you won’t find what you’re looking for in that bottle of wine. No, no, no, it’s in ‘ere.” She said pointing to her chest.

“Your bra?”

“Nah, you dolt! Not litra-lee; it’s in your ‘eart.”

After deciphering her cockney accent I began to think it was mostly BS.

“No it ain’t! Yeah, I can read minds, it comes with the terra-tory. Look, they gave me this beehive hairdo, Egyptian eyes and compared me to Ronnie Spector, but I was always me. The music was me. You think I just popped up on stage and became famous straight away? No, no, no. I paid my dues, I did and them was heavy dues. You be yourself because there ain’t no one else like you. Not them pretty boys, or them robot rejection letter writers that ain’t got no feelings. You write from your ‘eart and stay true to voice. It’s painful but it’ll happen.”

She looked down, adjusted her bra strap, made a quick sniffling sound and placed her hands on her hips. Then she looked directly at me. “You got a man?”

“Yes I do.”

“He’s a good man?”

“To know him is to love him.”

“Someone’s been listenin’ to my bonus tracks.” She smiled at my reference and then started to fade away. “You’re lucky to ‘ave a man like that Dear Mr. William Dameron, you must be somethin’ special.”

“Wait, before you go. Why you? Why me?” I asked her.

“I’m the fuckin’ tooth fairy in reverse. You place an empty bottle under your pillow and I leave you one of my teeth.”

She smiled to reveal more holes than a pair of her fishnet stockings. I couldn’t help thinking that there were too many empty bottles in this world and not enough teeth. Somewhere between a robot and Amy Winehouse is the sweet spot of emotions.

The morning sun splashed its light like cold water on my face. I sat up and reached under my pillow. No tooth, no bottle. I opened my notebook computer, smiled, and began to draw a picture.