alyssa milano’s boobs

On my way home from bathing suit shopping for Ani this evening (pure hell – we went to five stores before I finally found one that I can alter to fit her. I REALLY need a sewing machine, I wish I could afford one!) I caught the tail end of a local talk show discussing “bikini season”. The host, a man, was talking about how, with the onset of bikini season, men are gearing up to check out all of the girls with their summer tans in their itsy bitsy polka dot gear and how all the women are gearing up to get pissed at the men for looking. “Let’s face it: women, you know the men are going to be looking. The men know that the women know they are looking. So WHY all the hubbub? Because women want to suck every bit of pleasure from a man’s life and turn him into a personalityless automaton.”

I understand that this….gentleman is probably exaggerating how he views the situation – or perhaps he’s just gone through a nasty divorce or is one of those wonderful woman haters that populate the earth. He isn’t speaking for every guy I know that. But do men really think that way? That women are only trying to squelch the joy out of life for a man when they get upset with them over something “trivial” like looking at other women?

And what is it about other women that cause such problems?

Let’s put aside the adulteress, the much younger secretary at your husband’s work who never manages to wear a skirt long enough to cover her entire ass, your one friend that for whatever reason always throws herself at your boyfriends – barring all of those and focusing only on the rest of the population, the less snarky of of the female gender out there who are only walking past your table at a restaurant or make friends with your man without realizing he’s your  man. The “innocent” of us.

What is so terrifying about our counterparts of the same sex?

We’re catty and vicious – that’s a fact. Every boss I’ve ever hated has been a woman. When there’s a problem with backstabbing and gossip at a workplace – who is behind it, back there making sure the knife is shoved in real good and hard in between the shoulderblades? That’s right – a female. And puh-lease we don’t know what we’re doing when we slither into jeans that need pliers to zip them and curling and painting our eyelashes to give them just the right barbie doll laquer, yeah right. We do it for one reason and one reason only - to look good. We want guys to look. We want them to watch us walk past. Hell, I’m guilty of dressing the part from time to time, although much less so than some of my friends. I’m more likely to dress like  a librarian than the vixen they can’t resist. And the minute they find out my name is Betty? 85% of the time the reaction is: “Wow, that was my grandma’s name!”. Forgeddaboutit. I’m instantly chalked up as “cute” and thrown to the wayside for the inebriated sorioriety sister with a whale tale showing above her jeans and that delicious glow about her face that could only mean one thing : one night stand for the taking. I’m always amazed when someone does flirt with me. Hello? Did you not notice my dress reaches my ankles, I’m not showing any cleavage, And my name is synonymous with the woman who smelled like camphor and mothballs and baked ex-lax brownies for you when you were “stopped up” as a kid? And you STILL want to flirt with me?….do you have some sort of granny fetish?

I’ve never gotten along well with other women. They are a mystery to me. The little packs they travel in, the buddy bathroom system, the bitchy comments behind their best friends’ backs, the exchanging of personal possessions, the incessant need to hug and hold hands.  What. the. fuck. For the most part, the girls I have bonded with are more like me – meaning a less hands on type, given to bouts of sarcasm, and always good buddies with most of the guys. In more recent years I have lightened up a bit. I have been known to *gasp* hug my friends when I’m drunk. I’ve also been known to tell them, “alright one hug was enough, get the fuck off” when they insist on pawing at me after. Invariably I find myself on the outside of a group. I’ll be friends with only one girl out of the ten assembled and speak to that one and look at the others as if they’ve gone off their fucking rockers when they turn to me with gossip and giggles. Don’t get me wrong. I like gossip and giggles. Interspersed heavily with wit and scathing commentary.

And, for the most part, other women hate me. Probably because they can tell I don’t like them. Most of the time, however, they seem to come to this conclusion way before I’ve decided I want to take them out back and curb ‘em. When I’m suffering through one of my depressive and more vulnerable spells, I have a hard time dealing with the instant rejection I seem to receive from women. Okay, so I’m ALWAYS overly senstive. Hello, bipolar?! (that’s an intero-bang, I learned the other day). Sales clerks that seem perfectly normal and polite to the five other customers immediately in front of me will suddenly decide to be churlish and rude when I step up – I’ve had them turn around and start gossiping and ignore me standing there with my merchandise for up to five minutes. I’ve had clerks check out a customer, who I am standing in line behind, and then walk off from the register when I step up. Again – What. the. fuck. I am unerringly polite in every situation. I don’t see the point in being rude. It takes so much more EFFORT to be rude, so much more energy and time out of your life. Plus? In the end? I’m going to be the one that handled the situation correctly.

What bothers me is when I do let these troublesome interactions irk me and bring them up to my friends or to Billiam and I always get the same response: “They’re jealous”. BULLSHIT. That’s such a canned answer. Isn’t that in the parenting guide under “What to tell your daughter if other girls are mean to her”? First of all, what the fuck do they have to be jealous of? This is Billiam’s response, “You’re a very attractive girl who is polite almost to a fault. AND you never ever suck up to make girls like you.” This is what Billiam means: you come across as cold and rude, Betty dear.

Well, I gave up trying to placate people I don’t give a shit about a long time ago. I’m not going to start now just so a pack of rabid girls will feel comfortable enough to discuss their highlights with me and Brazilian vs. natural. No thanks. I’ll stick with the boys’ side of the table where I can toss back shots of whiskey and argue the merits of Bukowski’s impact on modern poetry. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying I couldn’t have this discussion with another girl. But with a group of girls? Ain’t gonna happen. Sorry, chicas. I’m not betraying my gender, I’m only saying that we tend to talk about different things than men do when we’re in a group setting. And who says that’s all bad? Like I said before, I have a handful of girlfriends that I adore and will even hug from time to time!!

Oh boy, I sure do get sidetracked.

Back to my original subject; why women care if men look at other women. I think, fundamentally, it comes down to everything I tried in my fumbling, mumbling, meandering way to explain. It’s not so much that I think every single girl Billiam might check out he wants to sleep with or that our relationship is in danger because his eyes strayed. It’s because I know the nature of the beast (and by beast I mean woman). We are as likely to claw each others eyes out as we are to share our mascara (during a buddy trip to the bathroom, of course). It’s not the MEN we don’t trust – it’s each other.

Plus? Really? C’mon, let’s be honest, isn’t it our lack of confidence in ourselves that’s really the problem? If I thought I was a knock out and I was secure in my sexuality and knew that my boyfriend would be a moron to look elsewhere – would I care if his eyes happened to wander over to the waitress’ ass as she was bending down at the next table? Probably not. It’s those rare confident women that are able to joke and laugh about it with their boys, and those are also the relationships that could possibly survive infidelity or the hint of it.

It’s girls like me that wreck a relationship over something as benign as Alyssa Milano’s boobs.

What, you may be asking, could Alyssa Milano’s boobs possibly have to do with ANY of this?

PLENTY! Belieeeeve me.

You all may remember that Billiam and I were having some….errr…..sexual problems. Read: he wasn’t putting out. Every time I  discuss it with my girlfriends or write about it here I always have this itchy feeling at the back of my mind that somehow I am the guy in the relationship. It’s not the first time I’ve had role reversal. Some of you may have been around long enough to remember back during my Aaron-Austin-Alaska days when I refused to be in a committed relationship and I practically broke out in a rash if the guy mentioned “getting serious”. Which they invariably did. Those well meaning fuckers. It was a one way ticket to break up town (and this train ain’t making no stops, fellas, so you best use the potty before you get on, and buckle up!) once the dreaded “I love you”s slipped through a guys lips. Those days are gone – obviously. Look at me, all committed, monogomous,  and moving in with someone. Just like a real live grown up. Gee, ma and pa, ain’t you proud?

It took eight months for him to decide I was worthy again or that he felt like it or what the hellever changed – but we’re finally having sex again. Not as often as I’d like. Am I bitching though? No. Once every two weeks is still better than once every eight months.

So, can you blame  me if my self-esteem took a hit during this whole abstaining from sex even though I really didn’t want to and I was horny enough to check out Ani’s assistant principal who wore *shudder* penny loafers??? I already have enough issues without adding my boyfriends sexual apathy to it. And I may be overly sensitive still, even though we’ve resumed love making. Bipolar, remember? (dude, I’m going to start saying that after EVERY irrational action I take – sort of like Billiam’s get out of jail free “kitten” card)

Anywho, we were watching a rented DVD and I can’t for the life of me remember what it was now but the very first scene was Philip Seymour Hoffman having sex doggy style with Marisa Tomei. Actually, Marisa Tomei is pretty much topless or might as well be because her boobs are hanging so far out of her shirt that her nipples had to have been taped to the top to keep it own during the entire movie. She had about six lines, usually about fucking or while fucking. I kept joking about her nudity and rolling my eyes every time she came on screen. “More of Alyssa Milano’s boobs!” Billiam laughed when she popped up in her second scene. I raised an eyebrow and didn’t say anything. During her next nude scene he told me about how he had a picture of Alyssa Milano’s boobs hanging in his practice room at H- house years ago (the very house we’re about to move into). Erm? Okay.

Another near nude scene with Marissa Tomei’s less than impressive rack on full display (okay okay so she looked damn good for her age). “Forget ‘Charles in charge’, it’s more like ‘Alyssa Milano’s boobs in charge’.” He giggled at his own joke. I sighed and decided, with that less than witty remark, to set him straight.

“That’s not Alyssa Milano you dillhole. That’s Marisa Tomei.”

“Who?”

“Does it matter as long as it’s not Alyssa Milano? She was in …um…’My cousin Vinny’.”

“Huh. ….really? I still can’t place her.”

“Well, you didn’t have a picture of her boobs in your practice room, sorry pal.”

“Darn.”

And later, when talking about what to name the kitten (pre-Edison), “How about Alyssa?” He suggested with a wicked smile.

“How about I kick your ass?”

“How about I do this? and this?” and ticking and kissing ensued, thus distracting me from wanting to plant my size six blue doc martens squarely up his boob obsessed ass.

That night I had a dream that Billiam asked me to wear a mask of Alyssa Milano’s face during sex. I woke up to his hand on my thigh and rolled over to find him aroused and barely awake. He’s never  woke me at night for sex before. I get the feeling he didn’t really mean too….that touching me was accidental. Which completely sapped any enjoyment I could have taken from it.

This is what I’ve been told: guys will think about other women, maybe while in bed with you, maybe even during sex. You need to see it this way: it’s you they are in bed with.

Still…..I had that dream about having Alyssa Milano’s boobs for that past three nights. Obsessmuch? Hey – bipolar!!! (kitten!)