Al & Tipper

So my shrink asked last week how the Al and Tipper break-up made me feel. Isn't it just so New York City that a perverted, bow tie wearing, seersucker be-suited, subbie-lawyer guy talks to his gay shrink about the Al and Tipper Gore bust-up and can relate it directly to his life? Al and Tipper comfort me. For real. On the outside didn't they just seem so perfect? A little oh-so-sacchrine sweet, but a picture of somebody's form of the ideal, don'cha think?

And today's Styles section article about long-term marriage? I was once talking to a way-uptight colleague at a professional cocktail function about Sunday Times reading habits and confessed to going straight for Styles. I fear I was immediately written off as a total lightweight. Anyway, the article talked about what makes long term marriages survive. The author posits that one of the hallmarks is an active involvement in each other's lives. Trying new things together cements the history of the past with an excitement about the future.

Made me think that the decision my wife and I have made to try a life apart is fundementally sound. We really have grown apart. We do very little together and her dreams for the future and mine do not spark with the entangled balm of mutuality. And yet this Friday we viewed each other's new apartments together. His in the West Village/Meatpacking District and hers on the Upper West Side. I'm jealous of her back yard. Always wanted private, urban, outdoor space. She said I could come over and smoke cigars - outside.

But as we walked together from my place in the neighborhood that raises my "cool factor" with its mere mention, we passed the Louboutin boutique just a scant two blocks away. All I said was, "Gotta love Christian!" when we passed a window display that makes this fetishist's heart race.

"I'm sure you'll meet some bimbo who will just love those things," she spat. "But you'll have to buy them for her as well as pay her hourly rate."

It was hot, humid, and hazy on Horatio. I was tired and ill-advisedly shot back.

"Why don't you just keep all your negative crap to yourself? Really, that's just totally disrespectful."

Now I begrudge nobody a hard-earned hourly rate and have happily paid my money down on more occassions than I care to add up in these challenging times of fiscal frustration. But I thought the moment captured where I am these days.

I really do look forward to a future where I'll stop at a window like that with a woman who will drag me from the street into the store and try on pair after pair whether we buy any or not because she loves them too. I mean you don't even have to want to lick a length of skyscraper heel to love Mr. Louboutin.

In the end, what's most reassuring about Al and Tipper is not that they are paddling the misery boat along with me in a river of broken dreams, but that they are optimistic enough to separate in their sixties after forty years of seemingly picture perfect marital bliss. Like my pal Aarkey, I choose optimism, baby.

You watch. One day I'll write about how I got dragged into CL's little corner shop by my way cool dommy girlfriend who just has to have the Frutti Fruttis in black python, with the black flowered lace. We may not run into Tipper, but we'll sure be havin' a party.

Oooo...maybe Veronica will yell at me for not using Sam...