If I could begin again, I would change the setting. But not the sentiment. The sentiment was perfect.

We were in line at Jack in the Box when I first said “I love you.” Young, broke, and decades from cholesterol issues, we had diddled away the morning in bed and were hunting for affordable, at-the-ready gut-fill. I stood behind you with my arms around your waist, deliriously inhaling the scent of your shirt, when the words tumbled clumsily from my mouth.

I love … you.

The sound of it was electric; it shocked me. It crackled and buzzed with the gravity of the future. I wanted to retract it, to bang the oral “delete” key like a maniac. I also wanted to shout it until I was hoarse, and to tattoo it across my chest in ornate purple letters.

The phrase was so leaden with significance that I thought it might fall crashing to the ground before it rose to your ears. In just three stunted syllables, it quashed my protective cool, exposed my secret notions of what’s worth loving, and declared my reasonless allegiance to all that you stood for, and did, and said.

And then it was time to order. Two sourdough burgers, a side of fries, one marriage, a mortgage, and two kids. To go …

Continue reading The muffling of 'I love you'

Kristy McNichol has come out as a lesbian — in order to help people.

Do me a favor and read that sentence again. In a rational world, that string of words would make no sense whatsoever. In a reasonable society, the apropos-of-nothing proclamations of a 1970s child star and all-but-forgotten TV actress wouldn’t even be interesting, much less beneficial. In the universe I’d like to one day inhabit, no one would care about the sexual preferences of a woman whose face you probably can’t even picture.

I have nothing against Kristy McNichol. As a girl, I had a poster of her and her brother Jimmy, whose feathered mane, hairless chest, gold chain necklace, and loving proximity to his all-American tomboy sister made him precisely effeminate enough to be irresistibly, nonthreateningly attractive to a 7-year-old girl. (Oh, the ironies.)

But it disappoints me that Kristy can release a statement a third of a century later saying she’s a lady lover and it makes the damned news cycle. Who cares if Kristy McNichol is into girls? Who cares if the Osmond brothers like to dress up in women’s clothing (I made that up, don’t sue me) or if a young Danny Bonaduce ran a prostitution ring out of his Partridge Family trailer (I made that up, too, but would you be surprised if it were true?).

Continue reading Kristy McNichol is Gay

It’s been 30-some years since my last confession, and as you well know, I’ve done some hard time on the naughty list. But I’ve been thinking a lot about you this week. After spending a month shopping, hauling, wrapping, schlepping, baking, trimming, toasting, and cleaning endless candy sprinkles off the floor from a gingerbread-decorating fiasco, I’m depleted. My kids’ holiday season has been as magical and memorable as the Target ads insist it should be, but damn if I’m not out of money, out of energy, and — can this even be right? — out of eggnog.

What about me, Nick? Aren’t I entitled to a little magic? Don’t I deserve more than a morning of wielding the camera and serving up sweet rolls followed by a week of cleaning up gift wrap, boxing up ornaments, and coiling up yards and yards and still more tangled yards of twinkle lights? Who’s gonna jingle my bells, man?

Blame the scotch I’ve been splashing into my cider all evening, or the heady Spruce It Up!™ PlugIn® I bought to rectify the dispiriting odorless-ness of my fake tree. But I took the liberty of scratching out a last-minute wish list, on the off chance that you care.

Here’s what I’d really like this year. Or any year, really:

Continue reading Dear Santa

(I’d like to point out some unusual formatting in this week’s column. Every time you see an asterisk [*] in the text below, I want you to squeeze the muscles of your pelvic floor. I’ll explain later; just do it. Every time.)

Being the mother of a teenager brings an undeniable sense of accomplishment. By the time our kids are a decade-plus out-tha-womb, we’re masters at soothing bee-stung toes and sleepover anxieties. We can produce perfect potluck side dishes and create a Shutterfly holiday card in 20 minutes flat.

We’re competent. We’re confident. But … we’re not especially continent.*

Let me paint you a picture: I’m the cool mom who buys my kids a trampoline, relinquishes half of my backyard to the unsightly contraption, and then — excellent sport that I am — scrambles onto the bouncy spring pad with my boys to have a go on the thing.

Yes, good times. Look at us, cavorting together. Get a load of me, the fun mom, launching into the air, cackling with glee, and flopping around like a middle-aged rag doll until — excuse me?

What* just* happened?*

It seems I sprung a wee leak. And being neither a potty-oblivious infant nor a nursing-home resident, I’m confused. It’s as unexpected as if my eyes had just popped out of my head — things that have no business leaving my body without my say-so.

Continue reading Urine for a Treat

If you’re ever strolling past my house at night, I hope you’ll stop and admire the view through my living room’s picture window. You’ll spy fresh flowers and flickering candles. You’ll see throw pillows and artfully arranged bookshelves. You’ll notice a rainbow of gleaming produce in the fruit bowl.

And I hope you’ll delight in the sight. I hope you’ll think to yourself, “What a charming, welcoming, and tastefully appointed domicile.”

And above all, I hope you’ll do us both the favor of never — I mean not ever — coming inside.

When it comes to domestic polish, you see, I put up a good front. Flick at its fragile veneer, though — peek behind a shower curtain or peer under a sofa cushion — and you let loose a veritable geyser of chaos. It’s a chaos I confront daily and manage to ignore just as often. But the holidays bring the promise of visitors whose very merry presence forces me to face the profound mess that is my home. And on a deeper level, I suppose, my life.

They’re coming, these people: friends, neighbors, family members. I know they’re coming. And when they arrive, they’ll do the unthinkable: They’ll help themselves to the half-and-half in (gulp) the refrigerator and then visibly recoil from the chocolate fingerprints on the door handle, the milky rings on the shelves, and the sticky jars of condiments that no one ever ate and — let’s all pray — no one ever will.

Continue reading My Pantry's in a Bunch

What I know about soccer couldn’t fill a paragraph. It couldn’t even pad a run-on sentence. In fact, it can be summed up in two simple words: Hands off.

That’s a sad commentary considering the number of years I’ve spent watching my kids play the game. But if I don’t know what a goal kick is and couldn’t pick a sweeper from a team photo, it’s because I don’t spend my sideline time watching fútbol.

I spend it ogling hot daddy coaches.

That’s right. Plopped in my polyester folding chair, clutching my travel mug of strongly brewed, Coffeemate-saturated java juice, I hoot and yelp at random intervals so I’ll look and sound like the other parents on my sons’ teams. The “better parents,” some might call them. Where they’re actually watching our brightly clad, sweaty-headed children scramble across the field in earnest if mildly confused clumps, I’m scanning the surrounding fields for a glimpse at a species of dude that I find utterly irresistible — a brand of man candy that I’d like to slide tackle with a one-touch pass to his technical area, if you know what I mean. (Note: I have no idea what I mean. I saw those terms in an online soccer glossary and found them delightful. Don’t write to tell me I used them incorrectly. I don’t care.)

Continue reading Coach Charming

There are few things that scare me in this world. Ghosts? Meh. Vampires? Yawn. Zombies? Bring it. But this Halloween, something truly terrifying will take place. On October 31, the world population is expected to hit 7 billion. Seven BILLION humans will walk, crawl, and limp across this Earth — many of them doing the “Thriller” dance, actually — before the night is over.

The planet’s population has nearly doubled in my own lifetime, and experts say it will reach 10 billion (for visual learners, that’s one zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero) by century’s end.

When you read that, does your stomach knot? Does your chest tighten as you fight the urge to panic? I had that reaction yesterday in my bathroom. In the morning, I noticed an ant on the floor and barely took notice. A few hours later, three ants were circling the sink; I was concerned. By nightfall, a swarm of black specks was scurrying across the counter. Maybe 100 of them, maybe 1,000. I didn’t know where they had come from or why they were suddenly crowding my very personal space. But I freaked the flip out.

It’s too many, my mind shrieked. They’re after my stuff. It’s kill or be crawled on …. BLECHH! I howled for the man of the house to bring a bottle of blue Windex (has to be the blue kind) and stop the madness with a few well-aimed squirts.

Continue reading Population Seriously Scary