Friday, May 3, 2013

Loring Park Episode #28: Healthy Boundaries

Previously on Loring Park: Jakey told Wesley he liked him, and then his colon exploded. This episode is sponsored by Colace.

Everything has blurred together in this recent chapter of my life. I talk to my mom a lot about it lately. We didn't get along well when I was a teenager, but now that I am a 26-year-old man with the brain, mind and body of a 16-year-old girl, we have a solid mother/daughter relationship.

"You just need to establish healthy boundaries," she told me. In an episode about healthy boundaries, I am going to begin by publicly sharing on the Internet that I broke my butt.

It did not happen from sex. I have the sex life of a nun. Nevertheless, I went to my general practitioner. Fortunately -- or unfortunately, depending on your take on it -- my general practitioner is a dreamboat and looks like he could be a token husband on Army Wives. He is of the belief that my angry asshole is a combination of my IBS and anxiety, the latter of which is woefully not being treated.

After everything was, erm, examined, I sat down and he looked at me with his soft, cobalt eyes. "Has anything else been going on?" he asked.
"My job has been stressful," I said.
"Okay," he said softly. "Anything else?"

I would have elaborated, but I decided to stay silent. The man had already had to examine my booty. To tell him my novel of emotional affairs and juvenile feelings would have just been cruel.

"Do you have any questions?" he calmly asked, and I felt like a pre-teen getting a "grown-up" talk from my father or surrogate parental figure.
"Can I have sex?" I asked him. He knew what kind of sex I was talking about.
"No," he said. "If I have a broken arm, I'm not going to give you a hi-five." He laughed sheepishly. Then I wanted to ask if he wanted to practice kissing.

He gave me referrals to a psychiatrist and a gastroenterologist, and four days later I went to see a G.I. specialist, who recommended I get a colonoscopy. I have never had sex with the same person more than once, but I will have had two colonoscopies at the age of 26. Maybe colonoscopies and I should go steady.

Later, at my mom's house, we watched about four hours of Judge Judy. My mom DVR's it and then waits for the library to be full, and then she sits and has a Judge Judy marathon with her cats. The woman is living the dream! If you've seen one episode of Judge Judy, you have seen them all. There is always a young woman who is ostensibly intelligent and has her shit together, but she meets a man and then her mind turns into Play-doh. She either co-signs a lease, or a vehicle, or sells a vehicle, or lets a man drive her car without a title, or lets a man move in without paying rent and then he damages things so she has to forfeit her security deposit, et cetera. She never sues him until they break up and she realizes that she was blindly in love and needs the money. There was even a lady from Duluth who gave her boyfriend four thousand dollars to buy a race car, and then he did one race and decided it was not going to be his passion. Judge Judy rarely rules in favor of these women, save for the one who legitimately sold a $6,000 car to this scrub in expectation of being paid with his tax refund, and Judge Judy refused to buy his claim that she was giving him a deal on the car and only expected a grand for it.

"These women!" I cried to my mother. "They meet these men and they lose their brain cells!"
"Hmm," my mother said. "That sounds like someone else I know."
"That's different," I pouted.
"Really?" my mother asked. "How is that?"
"You haven't seen Wesley in a T-shirt," I pouted.
"Well!" my mother cried. "That must explain everything."