You don't have to do that to be popular

When I was 16, my mother saw me kissing a date goodnight. As I recall, there was tongue but no humping. Nevertheless, Mommie Dearest pounced on me as soon as I entered the house.

"You don't have to do that to be popular," she yelled.
"Hi, mom. I had a good time. Thanks for asking."
"Did you hear me? I said you don't have to do that to be popular."

I wanted to tell her that, au contraire, I felt I had to do exactly that--and a whole lot more--thanks to the pitiful lack of sense of self-esteem she had instilled in me.

Instead, I proceeded down the hall to my bedroom, the only place in the house I felt even remotely comfortable. Once, in group therapy, my shrink asked participants to describe the room we felt safest in as a child. I came up empty and described the back yard.

But my adventures in therapy are fodder for other blogs. So let's jump ahead 10 years to the afternoon my mother called me to see if she could stop by for a visit. First of all, this was unprecedented. Second of all, FUCK.

She arrived saying she "had something important to talk about." This never was, never is and never will be a good thing.

For the first time in my life, she wanted to apologize to me. The reason? She feared that her aforementioned comment, uttered a decade earlier, "had made me frigid." If you need to re-read that last sentence, I understand. Catch up when you can.

Besides the fact that my mother's narcissism is unparalleled, her reason for thinking I was frigid was that she didn't think I had been "seeing anyone." Oh, I'm seeing people, ma. I'm seeing A LOT of [a lot of] people. I don't tell you about it because we don't have that kind of relationship."

She blanched and exited. I smiled and made plans for that evening.