Confession: I like to be in control

Turns out, I have Control Issues. My therapist told me so.


I announced this, in my own little express-everything-verbal-processing way one night during a dinner party. The responses were various versions of 'no shit, sherlock'. John asked Stuart exactly HOW much I was paying a therapist to be told what anyone who has spent more than 5 minutes in my general vicinity knows.

My response was to ask John if HE wants to have to listen to me for one, un-interrupted, hour a week. He looked appropriately horrified and agreed I should totally go to therapy.

Laura's response, as a fellow Psychology major and verbal processor was, "I LOVE therapy!".

I do, too. Dr. Clowers' entire job is to listen to whatever I feel like talking about. He HAS to. He can't walk away, hang up or divert the conversation to be about himself. For my 50-minute hour, it is ALL ABOUT ME.

Me, and my control issues.

That's the part of therapy that kinda sucks...somewhere in that 50 minutes, HE gets to tell ME all about me.

Sometimes, that part's not so fun.

Especially since it took the good Dr approximately the same 5 minutes it takes anyone else to diagnose me: Controlling Type-A intuitive Feeling Extrovert with neurotic tendencies and a predilection for drama.

Part of me was a little disappointed. Not that I wanted to be Schizophrenic or suddenly discover I have Daddy Issues or anything, but it is a little embarrassing to admit how boring I am.

At our first appointment, Dr. Clowers (who looks like a mix between Dr. Niles Crane from Frazier and George Costanza from Seinfield), did the traditional interview, searching for some past traumatic experience or biological cause for my visit. I have nothing. The only cause for my koo-koo-bird behavior is me. Sadly, they don't have a pill for that.

Instead, I'm supposed to accept the fact that I can't control everything and embrace what life brings me. Ugh. Sometimes I don't LIKE what life brings me.

I had signed up for therapy when Stuart had 2 weeks left of his 17-week Police Academy Training. This training meant that he wasn't really home for those 17 weeks. He DID have weekends off and sometimes made it home for dinner, but basically life was up to me. That wasn't the problem. I LIKE life to be up to me. What I didn't like was that his Academy schedule and future schedule were NOT up to me. We control freaks don't like that. If I don't know his schedule, how am I supposed to schedule his life? When do doctor and dentist appointments happen? When can I get my nails done? How am I supposed to sign him up for the Dad's Dance during the girl's Dance Recital if I don't know if he can attend?

But my Issues didn't start with Academy. It just brought about a flare-up, the way too many margaritas on the rocks with salt will give me a canker sore on my tongue. Oh no, the Control Issues aspect of my Type-Aness go way, way back. I--and those who have the dubious fortune of being a part of my life--have tried to 'cure' (which Dr. Clowers has informed me is just another aspect of my trying to 'control' things) them using a variety of methods.

Let's take a look at college; a time when I was both rewarded for my Controlling nature (I ALWAYS managed my time and assignments adeptly) and discovered my penchant for drama. I was a double Major: Psychology and English Literature. I minored in Crew and earned a third Major in a hot fellow rower named Stuart. Being a Psych/English major allowed me to spend college immersing myself in my two favorite pastimes; reading about and studying the causes of drama. By studying them, I figured I could cure them...ie, CONTROL them for others. Nothing makes me and my fellow control-freaks happier than controlling the lives of others.

Some people really need a little dose of control. Like the guy on my internship caseload who had a true love for fish. Not the catching of fish, but the actual physical love of fish. Yup, he had sexual relations with Salmon. He was picky, too; he'd only engage in these acts with Copper River Salmon, who only run once a year, so his affair was severely limited by time. This was actually the reason he sought therapy. The man saw nothing wrong with getting off with a scaly creature of the sea but was deeply grieving the fact that his fishy-love was only available for 4 weeks in August.

Fish Guy and the discovery that I, like John, don't actually LIKE being required to listen to other people's problems all day long is the reason I didn't pursue my counseling degree. Instead, I found a different outlet for control. I now spend my days being paid to control the lives of high schoolers. I'm a popular teacher. I like to think this is due to my great lesson plans, supplemented by my keen fashion sense. I have a suspicion my popularity has more to do with my tendency to fall off my stool at least once a class period and the fact that I tell great stories. Either way, my students do exactly what I tell them, how I tell them, when I tell them. All teachers are control freaks. Well, the good ones. The rest just wander around in various stages of PTSD wondering which student programmed the class computer to only open Youtube clips.

My professional life was not the reason I sought therapy. It was the fact that my personal life seemed to be totally out of my control. I found myself crying randomly at stop signs when I didn't know if Stu would make it home for dinner. I would lose hours staring forlornly at the kitchen calendar, sharpie in hand, wishing I could fill in future events I was unable to schedule because Cop "schedules" are merely guidelines. The final straw was when I hurled my phone at the wall because the calendar option beeped to tell me that my day was, "stu at academy".

A month into therapy, I was cured. Not by Dr. Clowers, whose appointments I still enjoy, but by a brush with one of my minor psychological problems.

I have a strong phobia of pool drains.

This is not an unreasonable phobia. So many people have died by being sucked down into pool drains, some Federal Agency actually mandated that all public pools have an Emergency Shut-Off switch for their drains so the dumb-ass swimmer who gets too close to them can be rescued before the Vortex of Death caused by the drain can suck their intestines out their asshole.

See, now you're afraid of pool drains too, aren't you?

This does not hinder my life. I simply control my environment so that I do not come in contact with pool drains. This is easy to do. One, I try to avoid going in swimming pools. Two, if I must, I simply avoid the area of the drain. This is easy to do at a resort as the drain is never placed by the waterslide where my children congregate or the swim-up bar where my friends and I gather.

Drains are harder to avoid in hot tubs. Especially those nasty filter-drain things placed right above the seats where they can suck up an unsuspecting bather's hair.

My friends all know of my problem with drains. My friends are also all jackasses.

Recently, while hot-tubbing at John and Caryn's house, I got up to refill the drinks and returned to discover that they had all shifted positions. The only seat left was by the filter. This was unacceptable so I sat on John. This was not a reward for him as I have, as Brook likes to describe it, a Jamaican Ghetto Booty, which means I actually HAVE an ass, unlike all my white-girl girlfriends who have cute little no-ass asses. My ass is a result of my bone structure...meaning it's not particularly comfortable for me to sit on your lap. I ground my Jamaican booty assbones right into John's thighs--all while withholding his fresh vodka-redbull and threatening to pee on him. He quickly deposited me in the non-filter seat, retrieved his drink, and took the hair-and-gut-sucking filter/drain spot.

See, I can control grown men, too.

Except Navy SEALs. Can't control them. They're trained to resist torture, evade capture and frustrate the living fuck out of control freaks like me. Chris, my BBF (Best Boy Friend) is a Navy SEAL. I'd tell you where and how and what he's accomplished, except that then "Chris" (NOT his real name) would have to come do some Navy SEAL shit on your ass; meaning you'd be dead. Or wish you were.

Trust me. He tortured me once. It was his torture that cured me.

I was in San Diego with my girlfriend, Vern, for a Geek Fest Conference (Advanced Placement teachers; we're the Geeks who teach all those high school Geeks you made fun of back in high school. That makes us the Super Geeks who control the rest...and by the rest, I mean the 'dorks' who are now Bill Gates-type billionaires running the world while you sit around and pick lint out of your bellybutton and wonder what the hell happened to the Good Old Days when you were cool and popular.). After a long day of learning how to influence and control future world leader Geeks, V and I visited Chris.

Chris loves me. He has to. We've known each other since we were awkward teens fumbling in the backseat of his mom's car, trying to figure out what the hell to do with all our newly grown body parts and raging hormones. Such experiences either scar or bond you for life. After several discovery sessions in various dark parking lots in the Lake Tahoe Basin, we decided we were forever meant to be...friends. Our love has flourished platonically ever since.

People don't understand platonic love between two attractive members of the opposite sex. My mother thinks we're having an affair. My husband, ironically, does not. I asked once why he's not jealous of Chris (who is hot and built and has a license to kill--and the uniform to go with it). Stu's response was, "Babe, Chris knows you too well to want to sleep with you and all your issues." Huh. Not flattering. True. But not flattering.

Anyway, we visit each other often. Well, as often as our schedules co-incide. Naturally, when I found out that I would be attending a Geek Fest just 5 miles from his swanky downtown San Diego apartment, I immediately called him. He then promptly re-scheduled some massive joint-forces military training exercise in the desert and commandeered a Navy helicopter to get home in time for us to hang.

Is that love or what?

Chris has only three flaws. One is his predilection for 22-year-old blonde Twinkies. The second is his refusal to allow me to wallow in any of my issues. The other is his obsession with working out. True, it's pretty much his job to be the most physically fit, efficient killer on the planet, but that's not MY job. My job is to teach snot-nosed teenage brats--a job that takes endless stamina but has few fitness requirements beyond the ability to speed-walk to the staff lounge in time to score the free Friday donuts before the PE department scarffs them all. Still, if I want to see Chris, it has to involve some sort of physical activity. And since our early back-seat adventures proved that my favorite method of getting my heart rate up was not great for us, I'm stuck doing actual work outs with him. We compromise. I go to his gym with him and he ignores my pansy-ass workouts while we're there.

This is no run-of-the-mill gym filled with old men in tube socks and saggy women in too-tight spandex. This is the Beautiful People's fitness club where everyone wears designer fitness clothing over their spray-tanned and perfectly toned bodies. I always feel a bit like an asshole when I show up at Chris' club in my mismatched outfits from Walmart that show my actual-tan tan lines--earned while watching little league baseball and drinking too much at backyard bbqs around above-ground pools and rusted swing sets. The people at Chris' Fitness Club look like they stepped off the pages of "Shape" or "Men's Fitness". I look like I fell off the pages of "US Weekly's" Don't Section.

The best part of Chris' club is the roof. After working out, we adjourn to the club's rooftop spa/pool/hottub/bar where we soak, drink vodka martinis and watch the Padres (yes, you can look right into the Padres' stadium from the rooftop of his gym. All you see from my gym is the high school football field.) My fellow Geek Fest attendee, Vern, known as V once you've gotten 2 drinks in her, gamely attended the requisite exercise session for the fantastic reward of rooftop bliss.

I love Vern. She is a study in contradictions. For example, she teaches high school, which is about the most germ-infested environment you can find outside a middle-eastern airport bathroom, yet she's a complete germaphobe who washes her hands so often the knuckles are permanently raw. She's an actual chemist but can't mix a drink to save her life. And she has the body of a high class Vegas escort girl yet dresses like a midwestern nun. But she's quirky and funny and always willing to play straight-man to my one-woman comedy show, so we travel well.

On this evening, Chris was showing off his miraculous body and multiple tattoos in board shorts that hung precariously off his hips. I was displaying my perky silicone breasts in a tiny pink bikini. I had mixed V a few drinks already and then forced her into a little black bikini. She was looking sexy and hot. She was also drunk. For a girl who attended 4 years of undergrad and 2 separate grad schools, she can't hold her liquor any better than a freshman girl at her first frat party.

I, seasoned lush that I am, was not in any way drunk. I wasn't even buzzed, although I was working very hard to achieve some form of intoxicated state because Chris had also brought along his Twinkie Du Jour who was wearing a black thong. Her name was Crystal and she had been that month's Playboy Centerfold. She had perfect tits, a perfect ass, concave tummy and long blonde hair. I Karma-cursed this creature of perfection that the Universe would benevolently knock her up. With twins.

As we were sitting in the hot tub drinking, talking, and staring at Crystal's truly amazing cleavage, I kept scooting closer to Chris. The first time, he assumed I needed a fresh drink to help cope with being a 30-ish mother of two stuck in a hot tub with a 20-ish Bunny. He was right. Smart man bought me a double and my attitude toward Crystal greatly improved (unfortunately for her, this was after I had already Karma-cursed her. oopsies.)

The next time I scooted over to him, he asked if I was trying to hold his hand. I grabbed it and sucked on his fingers for a minute, just to see if I could make Bunny Girl jealous. That backfired when she invited me home with them for some 3-some love. I went back to sucking down my drink.

The third time I sloshed over, he grabbed my waist and plopped me on his lap, only to dump me unceremoniously back into the tub when he remembered my bony ass. This caused drunken V to squirt vodka out her nose and blurt out the reason behind my desire to be close to him. "She's afraid of the hot tub filter!!!". I shoulda Karma-cursed V too, but the vodka nose-hair burn was probably punishment enough.

Chris was appalled. Navy SEALs are not afraid of anything. Navy SEALs cannot comprehend fear. Theirs, or anyone else's.

When I very calmly and logically explained the rationale for my fear of asshole-sucking vortexes of death, his face instantly took on his 'go' look. He got in front of me, leaned in nose-to-nose and treated me to his best Commander-of-the-United-States-Special-Forces voice, "YOU CANNOT HAVE FEAR! FEAR HOLDS YOU BACK! WE WILL KILL THIS FEAR! HOOAH!"

I am a very talented woman. I can drive while applying mascara, supervise fractions while cooking dinner and choose my shoes in a dark closet. I can also remain perfectly calm in the face of an intense, drunken Navy SEAL barking orders. If I were a man, I'd ace BUDS training in record time.

I calmly sipped my drink, repositioned my boobs (to his credit, Chris' focus never wavered despite me massaging my rather fabulous, wet breasts two inches from him), and replied, "What in the world is this fear holding me back from? My dreams of becoming an Olympic Swimmer?"

This response baffled Chris. I'm certain no one has ever dared say NO to him. He leaned in closer so that we were eskimo-kissing, and barked, "WE WILL CONQUER THIS FEAR! NOW!!"

"The fuck we will," was my reply.

The sucky thing about elite soldiers--and cops, for that matter--is that they are trained to resort to violence when verbal negotiations fail.

Chris calmly took my drink, handed it to V (bitch slurped it on down and completely ignored my distress) and grabbed me around the waist. I sprang into action. I may only be 5 feet tall and 110 pounds, but I am scrappy. Added to that, I have been trained in physical resistance by someone even better than the special forces; I have been trained by toddlers.

I countered his first move with The Octopus; a frantic squirming and flailing of all limbs. A particularly strategic move since I was all wet and slippery at the time. He countered this by pinioning my arms to my sides. I went Dead Weight. While this freed me to sink back into the water, it also freed my bikini top. This momentarily distracted him--truly, my breasts ARE fabulous--enabling me to seek reinforcements.

Although Crystal looked very tempting, I felt that V was the sturdier of the two so I scooted behind her and grabbed her arms for support. I chose poorly. V dumped our drinks in the hot tub and clutched her bikini top in fear that she too may be wantonly exposed. Chris calmly lifted her aside, seized me and tossed me unceremoniously over his well-muscled shoulder. He then hauled me, topless and ass in the air, out of the hot tub.

If we had only re-kindled our high school passions at that moment, this story would have a much happier ending for me. After all, topless and ass-up is one of my favorite positions.

Instead, he marched right over to the pool and stopped at the edge. Directly by the pool drain. He set me on my feet, adroitly dodged the punch aimed at his nose and calmly instructed me to hold my breath. When I opened my mouth to tell him to fuck himself, he pinioned my arms at my sides, lifted me and jumped in.

As the water filled my gaping mouth and went up my nose, I found Zen. For the first time in my little Type-A, Control Freak life, I found acceptance for how things were. You see, I was no longer afraid we were going to be sucked down into that rectangular drain and die an agonizing death of feeling our guts be vacuumed slowly but surely out our butts. No, I did not fear we would die.

I was certain we would. And I accepted it. I embraced it. I let go of all my earthly worries and concerns. I erased my To-Do Lists and Should Lists and I Wish I Had Lists. I released my neuroses and fears and need for control.

I'm fairly certain I also released control of my bladder.

I stopped fighting, wrapped my arms and legs as tightly around Chris' body as I could and pressed my lips to his in a final farewell kiss (I didn't think I'd be seeing him in the AfterLife as he was clearly going to hell for this murder-suicide). I was, for the first time in my life, at peace.

Apparently, it takes more than a petite and phobic intoxicated woman to drown a Navy SEAL. We didn't get sucked into the drain. We didn't drown. We didn't even stay under the water long enough for drunken V and perfect-ass Crystal to pause in their conversation about the pleasure of a well-placed hot-tub jet to notice that I was having a life-altering experience. Chris simply blew air into my mouth during our final kiss, pushed off the grate on the pool drain and surfaced like a modern triumphant Poseidon with a half-naked, wet and gasping me wrapped around his body.

Again, this image would be a lot hotter if the experience had been romantic. As it was, I promptly began vomiting pool water and vodka cran onto the pool deck.

Still, I believe that this was a major learning experience for me. I learned:

1. Never trust a drunk V.

2. Navy SEALs are efficient and dirty fighters.

3. Don't cross me: I'm a mean Karma-curser: Crystal is now knocked up. With twins.

4. I should stop worrying about trying to control my emotions. The next time I feel my Control Issues flaring up, I should simply embrace them by getting drunk, naked and wet and engaging in near-death wrestling matches with hot men.