My first-ever girlfriend was Anna Smith. She moved to Fort Collins from Nebraska in the middle of ninth grade. I had two classes with her, and we found it easy to talk with one another right away. I don't recall how long it was before our multi-hour phone calls began but each ended by one of our parents picking up another phone in the house and saying they thought we had talked long enough. ...

A family friend was in town. Marty has known him since high school. He was here because his mother had taken ill. When he told his mother he had to leave for a bit to visit some friends, she asked who he was seeing. He said, Marty Walter. His mother perked up and said, “Oh, Marty. She’s the one who was dating that very handsome boy, right?” 

After Joe shared his mother’s comment with Marty and me, all three of us standing in the kitchen knew Joe’s reply to his mother was not, “Yeah, she ended up marrying that guy.” We all knew the handsome guy his mother was referring to. In fact, my Marta was on that handsome boy’s arm the night I first met her. And in retelling our origin story, I too might describe him as the handsome boy, so handsome in fact, if given the choice, I might have dated him. 

Fortunately for me, that handsome boy was also not a funny boy. If he could have made Marty laugh and smile as deftly as I could, it might have been a fair fight.

Anthony. Where to even begin in describing what it's like to exist near a now 16-year-old Anthony Walter DeArmitt.

His life mantra for the past few years has been, "it will probably be ok," and to date, he has been 100% right.

Even though academics might be one of his top skills/gifts, he has applied to a trade school where he will study the construction arts in his last two ye...

one of the larger parental debates between marty and i has revolved around bella and sex. marty's for it, and i'm against it. let me clarify that a bit. marty's open to that journey beginning in high school, and i think it has less to do with someone's age and more to do with their maturity or state of readiness if you will. marty's core argument, "what, you want to send your daughter to college w...

bella has a new beau. he recently loaned her his wrestling sweatshirt which she wore for three, maybe four days straight. after a few days i commented on it. when i did she smiled, lifted the fabric to her nose and in a completely stereotypical and squeally way said "it smells like joshua vance plus puppies."

for those who have not had the privilege, joshua vance is a dreamy and uber-cool young man we know. you can get a glimpse of him here teaching alex how to wake-board. we won't get into the nuances of her comparing the smell of this boy to the smell of another boy. those feel like dangerous waters.

but i am perfectly ok admitting that i am nearly absolutley certain no one in the history of my life has ever said, "oh my god, this smells like troy dearmitt and puppies." maybe "this smells like troy dearmitt and the week-old newspapers beneath a bunch of puppies" but never just troy and puppies.

MARTY'S BROTHER
did you see something in troy when you first met him that told you he would be successful?

MARTY
no.

MARTY'S BROTHER
really? well how did you know he would be successful? that it would work out?

MARTY
i didn't know. how could i?

MARTY'S BROTHER
so you didn't know something the rest of us didn't?

MARTY
no. not rea...

boy am i glad i'm not at the front-end of dating. it probably wasn't until my thirties before i felt like i had any kind of proper sense regarding everything i was asking for in a partner AND how to competently determine everything that was being asked of me. in recently talking to a young person (who wasn't my child) who was dejected, sad, and hurting my mind raced with where to even begin.
...

this is a picture of marty taken just weeks before i met her.

my biggest problem in knowing and dating her in those early years was my belief that every man who met her would become as deliriously struck by her presence as i had been. while she claims this was not her life, i've seen and heard enough examples to the contrary that i only half believe her. all i can claim first hand is mee ...

for school, bella (13) was asked to write an essay about a family member. this was her response. it's crazy how much she knows about my/our past. at her age, i was never that plugged into my parents, or anyone who wasn't me for that matter. i find her curiosity and empathy both impressive and humbling. if i'm ever in need of a biographer, i for sure know who i'm tapping.

to follow up marty's bit of life knowledge (here), the advice i always give to struggling folks who approach me: in the name of full disclosure, marty is the person who taught me this lesson. she taught it to me when i wasn't making our early dating years as easy as she believed they should oughta be. so in some regards i guess everyone who has ever benefitted from marty's advice has me to thank because if i didn't spend a part of our early relationship being a crotch-face, then she would have never come to this bit of inspiration.

so you're welcome.

the single piece of advice marty has dispensed more than any other: people's response to marty's counsel has varied.

marty's accuracy in her counsel has not.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. slackers need not apply

with permission, i share a portion of marty's reply to yesterday's post. you only get some of it because parts of the message made even me blush.


this worked out well since when we met i was driving a 1976 volvo station wagon and living in the basement of a friend's family home, time was just about the only asset i had to give to anyone.

and, in the name of comprehensiveness, the culminating moment.

the interested in boys switch got thrown on bella recently. both before and after the switch a few boys have shown interest in bella. obviously since the switch, bella has shown interest in a few boys. also obviously, bella has been asking when she can start dating. the short answer has been "not yet". her repeated and consistent reply has been "then when?". marty is inclined to say something like...

MARTY
that stove is going to look bare one day without your kettle on it.

TROY
where's my kettle going?

MARTY
when you die.

TROY
that's a lovely morning thought to get my day off to a booming start.

MARTY
i do what i can.

shortly after marty and i began dating, in one of those early relationship questions, i asked marty if i died how long she thought it would be before she would date someone else. she thought for a few moments before saying, in a fully seriously tone, "i'm sure it would be at least a week."

a week! a week! now i'd be the first to admit the three years i wished she would say might have been a touch ambitious but a week. in seeing my startled response she quickly adjusted, saying, "not a week -- longer than a week" and then as if bracing for a firecracker to pop added probingly, "like a month -- three months". marty is pragmatic even in matters of the heart, even in matters of new love. but without this cut to the bone approach, marty wouldn't be marty.

she did pay for her cruel offense by shouldering six months of jokes about trying to pick up guys at my funeral and if it would be gauche to invite cute fellas who didn't know me to the funeral just so she could get a jump on the replacement relationship.

several years later when our path together looked a bit more certain, in a quiet moment marty said out of the blue, "ok. so maybe i'd need more than a week before taking up with some new guy." nicer words were never said to my young, longing heart.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. boyfriend

i was once at a dinner with friends and the topic of earliest memories came up. some people, like my wife, had crazy early memories going back as far as pre-school. my first memories started way later than most the pack, solidly picking up in mid-elementary. every now and then i'd get a glimpse of something hazy but after further contemplation the flash was just as likely to be a scene from an old...

as of today, i am married to a 40 year old woman.

i remember when i was young and i'd hear old guys say they thought their wives were as beautiful as when they first met them. i'd look at their wives and think they must have been some haggard looking eighteen year olds. but now i'm that old guy and can honestly say that marty looks every bit as radiant and winsome as when she threw that door open in 88 and i got my first ever glimpse of the girl i'd go on to spend my life with.

and, i've now known her for more than half her life (which means i've know her more than my life as well).

crazy how that clock on the wall ticks away so. i hope we're all taking care of the business we hope to be taking care of.


click to enlarge

excerpt from Jim Harrison's novella The Man Who Gave Up His Name

excerpt from the shadow of the wind by carlos ruiz zafon

while walking by bella's room, i heard bella say in a flat, conversational tone to a visiting neighbor girl, "my mom said when i get married i can do the french kiss."

this comment stopped me dead in my tracks. if i were one to say hail marys i imagine i would have uttered one right there, complete with waving the sign of the cross but since i'm not a formally religious fellow i instead closed my eyes reverently, considered how unprepared i am for my future and continued on down the stairs.

shortly before i stopped being a corporate whore, i had an unusual-ish lunch. two things made it odd. first off, i went with five guys, colleagues, i didn't know all that well, only one of which would have even rated as an acquaintance (i usually eat lunch alone or with one or two people i like pretty well). the second curiosity was the conversation itself. it dealt with, of all things, male grooming. when the topic was first floated, and it was not raised by me because such matters aren't even on my radar, i scanned the table thinking in a group of people who push ones and zeros around for a living this subject might have a life-span of 36 seconds. but as i studied the five expressions i didn't see disdain and disinterest but instead mild intrigue and readiness. i almost yelled at the whole lot of them saying they can either like network gaming parties or shaving their genitals but not both.

seeing the subject had legs i turned my attentions to the conversation's sponsor. you groom? down there? unabashedly he said he did. he then asked me. you don't? at all? unabashedly i said i didn't. he asked me why i cut the hair on my head. i said because it would be unprofessional not to. he asked why i shaved my face. i admitted that even though i was still as of yet unable to grow cheek hair if i could i would still shave because i felt face pelts were also unprofessional. he then started asking about marty. and if she shaved and groomed. i said she did but certainly not at my demand. and frankly, i could care less if she did or not. the whole table groaned loudly and recoiled like slugs to salt. what's the big deal i asked. are they afraid of a natural woman? it seems they were afraid of the potential. a few of them had seen movies and were witness to what was in fact possible.

seeing i was getting nowhere with the first guy, i sought support from the rest of the table. one by one i asked them if they owned a male epilady or some such device and one by one they confessed they did, my acquaintance included. i saved my sure bet for last, a contractor straight from the india homeland, arranged marriage country and all. he said to me in the most classic and quintessential accent, "i am sorry troy, but i am unable to help you here." even the indian guy was sitting on the closed-lid toilet, with his knees flayed apart, tweezing groin hairs with his free time. does he know how to tie a slip-knot? has he read the the count of monte christo? can he spin a pencil in crazy ways on his hand? no, but he doesn't have a body hair on the outside of the elastic leg band of his underwear. how admirable is that? as weak as it may appear, that last guy really took the wind out of my sails and in the end, i quit the fight. there were too many of them and they proved immune to any powers of persuasion i thought i may have had. sad to find myself spending time with such a lot, i became morose.

perhaps my despondency drove the guy who started the whole preening debate to share the following story about a friend of his who was uber-manic about his hair removal. it seems this guy's appearance was a real house of cards given his hirsute genes and required more routine care than a fertilized lawn in portland. after he moved in with a girl he'd been dating, he was finding it difficult to find enough private time to keep the hedges at bay. he was having to go to work late or come home for lunch to get his primping time in (sheesh!). one day his girlfriend wasn't feeling well and left work early. after walking in the door and setting her keys and purse down she heard something coming from the bedroom. she moved to the door, listened for a moment and then opened it. she saw her boyfriend lying on the floor, on his back, naked, and with his legs pulled over his head. he had an electronic thing in his hand but she didn't have time to make out what it was or what he was doing with it before he sprang forward into a sitting position, and started yelling at her through bugged-out eyes to get out of the room. she slammed the door shut and stood there with one hand still on the knob and the other covering her mouth. some minutes later he came out of the room fully clothed and aside from a huffiness about him, acting like nothing had happened. seeing that he wasn't going to volunteer an explanation she asked him what he was doing in there. he exploded saying it was none of her business and she should learn to knock on closed doors before entering rooms (her own bedroom included it seems). he never told her he was shaving the hair from between his buttocks and she never recovered from not being told that he was shaving the hair from between his buttocks so they broke up shortly after the incident. if i recall the story correctly, she let him keep the apartment.

i rebounded from the evil outing by imagining the guy in the story was the guy pushing the topic at my lunch table (he was reasonably hirsute). i had to do that because that meal happened four years ago and i still hold an image of a slightly overweight naked guy rolling around on plush carpeting contorting a braun razor in his hand fighting for the last, perfect angle. typically, i'm the stamper of such imagery and not the one having uninvited images pressed into the walls of my brain. call me a sore loser.

in dating you have something called hand. the notion of hand was probably best handled and described by seinfeld and team. if you haven't heard the term it pertains to the battle for influence between a dating couple. i believe it is an abbreviated phrase for 'having the upper hand'.

in the world of parenting, hand is replaced by something called currency. as a parent it is always your job to know what your child's currency is. currency in this context refers to any object or event your child especially loves. with this knowledge, the theory goes, you're able to influence your child's behavior instead of beating them with a switch.

but, children also have their own currency. a child's currency is what they can do to sway the behavior of their parent. such currencies for children include looking cute, acting sad, throwing a tantrum, making lofty promises, embarrassing their parent or saying they hate the parent. these are all antics done in the hopes of causing a parent to buckle. as an aside, all child-currency has an inflated value in public. and the more public, the greater its rate. children who understand this principle of micro-macro-economics can often be a handful and are known as children who wield their currency with great expertise, getting the absolute most for their money.

the other night alex and i got into a row at bedtime. i wanted him to go to sleep. he wanted to invent things to delay his going to sleep. after threatening his currency he stood for a few moments and then turned to me and shouted, "FINE. THEN I WILL GO TO BED WITH NO STRAWBERRIES AND NO BOOKS!" after this outburst he scaled his ladder and threw himself into his bed and was asleep moments later. this would be an example of me using my currency with greater alacrity than he used his. while one may be inclined to gloat, i suggest your do not because we all have the occasional weak outing. like the time i threatened to take bella's play horses from her for a week. without a hint of emotion she suggested i take them for two weeks and offered to throw in all of her dolls for added measure. that was a solid counter-move on bella's part and easily trumped my dated notion of her currency. then there was this time when alex got me all twisted up:

TROY
alex if you don't put that stuff away like i've asked i'm going to take away your transformers toy.

ALEX
i have a transformers toy?

TROY
uhhm. well yes. i mean, i thought you did?

ALEX
can i see it?

TROY
i don't know. i'm not sure where it is right now.

ALEX
what does it look like?

TROY
i don't think i know that either. maybe we should pick another toy.

ALEX
ok. but if you see my transformers toy, can you show it to me?

TROY
uhhm. yeah. sure.

in reproduction, there are two kinds of impotence. there's the physical kind that doesn't allow you to have children and then there's the emotional kind that happens after you have children. the research isn't entirely conclusive as to which of the two is more psychologically crippling to the male esteem.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. once upon a time

there is this interesting book called the five love languages. in it its author, gary chapman, theorizes there are five ways people show love to one another. they are; physical touch, quality time, words of affirmation, gifts, and acts of service. chapman believes that everyone leans towards one of these categories and what that means is that this is how they express their love to an intimate part...