Parental Expectations and Joseph

Dad comments to me while he's on the phone with his mother, "Are you still taking the dog's meds?"

"Yes," I state defiantly.

In another conversation, yesterday, my mother and I are relaxing in the recliners in the front room, watching TV, after cleaning the house for a few hours. I'm still in my PJ's, refusing to shower that morning or change my clothes just to do housework.

I mention a stray sentence from my conversation with Joseph.

"Are you talking to my favorite son-in-law again?" My mother says brightly.

I admit this is so. I know my mother only wants someone to be there for me financially, to support me while I'm lingering in the hospital, but I'm still mildly insulted. While Joseph is a very intelligent person and a talented musician, he dropped out of law school because it was too difficult for him to go to school and work full time. He said he was "too stressed." He quit playing in his band, which toured internationally, because his then-girlfriend complained that they couldn't be in a relationship because they were in separate time zones. Joseph plainly responds that he quit so he could have that relationship--or any. It's sort of sexist of me (or maybe a lot, I don't know) to assume that a man would always place his vocation, especially one depending on one's talent, ahead of his personal bonds with people (and is it also sexist of me to say that women don't have this luxury as they are the primary caregivers of the children?).

And another thought, what kind of creature would ask someone to give up their greatest asset to this world, something as moving as creating and playing music?

My parents are always telling me to run in better circles, that I'm not going to get far in life if I keep hanging out with the mentally deficient (and if my classmates used that phrase, I would flip out), instead of people who are going places and doing great deeds like making millions.

Unfortunately for me, I'm a little past my prime when it comes down to being material for a trophy wife status, not to mention I could stand to lose 40 pounds--and wear hair extensions--and make up--and dress up tastefully. Even then, there's always someone who is prettier, taller, blonder, and, of course, thinner.

I saw a woman in the urgent care center today, who's thighs were roughly the size of my arms.

A thought that does haunt me at various points during the day is the idea that perhaps Joseph is the best I can do. It's in everyone that no matter what class you're from, you're always looking to climb up. And I can judge--Joseph will always be middleclass--as my current trajectory is staying in this lower class prison of shitty health care and shopping at Food-4-Less (which I haven't done recently, but it is always there).

 But Joseph is responsible (although he does not own a dog or cat, something I find to be highly disturbing), and he calls and TXT-messages when he says he's going to or at least within an hour of my messaging. He takes me out in public and holds my hand. He talks too much, but that's not an aberrant because then I don't have to talk much about myself (at least while working as a whore, another word that I would flip out if my classmates used, I learned to listen politely to people's personal woes).

Probably most people, besides the readers of Dan Savage, would be surprised to learn that the sole reason why I won't date Joseph is because the sex with him is boring.

So, even if he lived in a mansion on the cliffs overlooking the ocean, I doubt I would stay with him.