The Name Game

            The only kink was in the naming. Mine, his and the lack of ours.

            The day after he proposed, Adam was the model progressive fiancé. He knew I wasn't going to change my name—or at least that's what he said. I was a professional, I'd been published, I'd gotten a Ph.D., worn the poofy hat and everything. I took it as one more way the man got me.

             Later that night, I told him that keeping my name was also an identity thing. I knew there was no neat old wives' equation, no easy long or short division in which she who takes her husband's name believes in marriage the woman deserves erasure. But symbols could and did have meaning, and once a thought was thought there was no unthinking it. I was the girl who dreamed about the White House, not the white dress; my feminism wasn't something I just dusted off for cocktail conversation. Besides, I was old, almost forty. I'd gotten used to being me. He laughed, said "You're not old!" predictably. I was amazed to have made it through so smoothly.

            By the end of the week, there were questions kindling. At a sports bar, two or three drinks in, with a pack of friends due to charge in any minute, Adam turned to me and said, way too casually: "I know you're not changing your name legally. But at the wedding ... We'll get introduced as Mr. and Mrs. Adam Wattstein, right?"

            My mind started spinning: Here we go! Other shoe? Dropping. Poor man has no idea who he's marrying ... What I squeaked was: "I don't even get a Jodi in there?"

            His face fell. Clearly, I had offended the very core of his being. "Of course you get a Jodi in there! Are you kidding me?"

            I burst into tears, relieved to have found this tiny pebble of non-agreement to stand on. My voice was fluttery, so I clammed up, happy to shelve it, hoping he'd get lost in less emotionally-fraught wedding minutiae.

            Such wishful thinking seldom delivers. Months later, armed with the calligrapher's style sheet, where even the vaguely egalitarian "Mr. and Mrs. Adam and Jodi Wattstein" had no business being, I took it upon myself to inform my intended, Mr. Sudden Cro Magnon, what standard etiquette had to say on the matter. In formal address, the person with the highest rank was ceded priority. This made us "Dr. Jodi Lustig and Mr. Adam Wattstein." My plan was to lead with this snake before talking him into some compromise wording.

             The snake-leading stunk. My chirpy get-along groom was gone. In his place, a purpling stranger: "It's my wedding, too!" the rant began. "You can't have everything your way. Why is it so terrible that for once in my life I want to hear you called, "Mrs. Wattstein?"  

            Somehow I kept my grip on a few higher functions while the rest of me drowned in fight-or-flight adrenalin. What had gotten him this hinky? Why did he care about what was said at the wedding when on the real life front we were copacetic? Was it his family? His friends? Or did he deep down hope instead of me he was getting a little missus?

            The last voice did it. The adrenalin started winning. It was one moment in time. Why not do it, if it made him happy? Weren't there a million wedding decisions I made without him? Worse, I started wondering what holding out might mean in the scheme of things. Maybe I wasn't ready. So I caved, or compromised. I'm still not sure which. It was a blip, a millisecond—not ever after.

            I wrote something fun for the band leader, an addendum that would make us both happy. Or at least not fire-breathing ...

            At the reception, we were introduced his way: "Mr. and Mrs. Adam and Jodi Wattstein"—the only bride's name mentioned in a year's worth of Metro-New York weddings, according to our bandleader. (Yes, we were that revolutionary.) Before the first dance, we went my way: "Dr. Jodi Lustig and Mr. Adam Wattstein" took the floor along with a joke about how long it took me to get the  degree to soften the blow.            

            It didn't fly. I can count the number of people who remember I've kept my name on one wedding-ringed hand. Sometimes I wish I'd taken a friend's advice: "Ask Adam to pee on your leg and be done with it!" That might have at least made the case clear. But it's not Adam I hate or the institution, it's the men and women who are married to it. Most people assume I made the same decision that they made; and however gently I correct them, I'm treated to a flustered defense of that decision far more often than I receive any affirmation of mine.

            I take solace in the fact that time seems to be on my side. I'll let others fret about our increasingly casual culture. For me, the fewer formal introductions made is that many less times I'll be called, "Mrs. Married Lady." Birthday cards and holiday greetings come only once a year. The state and the phone company and American Express, having no emotions in and of themselves, will call me whatever I want as long I'm paying. My last best hope, however, is in the courts and the hearts and minds of everyday people, as they say. Once same-sex marriage is legalized, the tide may turn once and for all. The window will narrow on lazy arguments like, "It's just the way it is," and "It's a guy thing." I do not doubt that there are women who change their names without any of my handwringing; and I would never be foolish enough to claim marriage didn't involve a lifetime of compromises from both sides of the aisle. But if men weren't attached to their surnames, the debate would have ended any one of the times we thought it had long ago.

Citifield Gets It Right

This weekend my husband and I did part II of our subway series games at Citifield. I'm the Yankees' fan of the family. He's the Mets' fan with the snotty nickname for every guy on the Yanks' roster.

Now there's very little that could change my allegiance. But the Yanks are trying my patience. At the new stadium I had to practically run a gauntlet to get a dixie cup of wine. And then I wasn't allowed to take it back to my seat. Adam, on the other hand, could not only buy at least thirty different brews, bottled or on tap, he could drink any of these beers anywhere!

I don't have to creep out too far on a limb to suppose that more women drink wine than beer. In the real word, for all intents and purposes, beer and wine are treated as equals. For one to be banned from the seats while the other's being sold with glee may not be discrimination, but it sure is stupid!

If only the Yankees' brass had confabbed with the folks in the other borough. They designed their stadium with the fans in mind--young and old, male and female. At Citifield, most concession stands offer a red and a white wine alongside the requisite basic American beers. The wine comes in a cute Mets' cup. This cup can be carried anywhere. For a wider variety of wine and beer, drinkers have to venture into one of the bars; but winos and beer bellies both can get their food and beverage in one shot.

In the Citifield fan zone, they do wine drinkers one better. In between two beer bars there's a wine bar.  Again, with only one red and one white wine to choose, but that matches up just fine with the Bud and Bud Light available at the beer bar.

It all seems so ridiculously simple that it's hard not to see the situation at Yankee Stadium as a double standard at worst and an easily avoided oversight at best.

Now I love my Derek and my Jorge and I still miss my Jason; and I surely don't expect to hear anyone barking, "Chardonnay, hee-ah!" to folks in the bleacher seats. But is a little shpritz of wine in a non-flute-shaped plastic cup going to make the Babe spin around in his grave? Whatever else can be said about the man, he did love women. Right now, I'm not sure the Yanks can say the same.

Boys and their Favorite Toy

My gripe of the day was with Joe Scarborough, my second-favorite conservative, (the first being my father, who in his older age has moved to the right of Genghis Khan) and Mike Barnicle. They missed the mark about Mark Sanford. Yes, they are right, commentators may indeed be inordinately gleeful about Mark Sanford's self-immolation. And yes, as Willie Geist managed to point out, perhaps much of that glee comes from the irony and hypocrisy in yet another Values Voters poster child's inability to do as he would have the rest of us mere mortals do.

But the excerpt cited from one of Morning Joe's "Must-Read" Op-Eds, apparently meant to exemplify this collective cackle from the left, actually judges Sanford by the same standards Joe uses when Mika gets hinky about having to suffer the post-scandal Eliot Spitzer gladly. Joe's a pragmatist. He thinks Eliot's smart. He wants to hear what the man knows about finance. Remember once upon a time he took down those Wall Street muckity-mucks.

It's the good old, tried-and-true public/private divide: private blunders are supposed to have no bearing on public judgment—except when they do.

This seems to me exactly what Gail Collins is saying in her patented wry and dry and unsurprised way:

       The peculiar thing about the apologies was that    Sanford seemed to be under the impression that his worst dereliction of duty involved womanizing. I      think I speak for us all when I say that if a governor        wants to fly off for a rendezvous with his mistress,      the first rule should be: leave a phone number. If      you must flee to a love nest, make sure it’s one with    an Internet connection.

                                  "The Love Party," June 24, 2009

Now we can, of course, argue about whether Spitzer's shenanigans impinged upon his professional performance. We can always draw the line where Mika does when she gets tired of being painted as a prig: Spitzer broke the law. Governor Sanford did not, as far as we know. (Reporters are looking into this as I write.) President Clinton did not.

The problem with the parsing of this argument is that in Sanford's case the dichotomies do not hold—neither the one between the private and public spheres or that between legal and illegal acts. As academic types might say, there's some serious "slippage" going on.

Collins' riff on extramarital affair etiquette maps out where the private road to Argentina and the public road to political hell converge. It may be, that, as Mike Barnicle opined in his unfortunate homage to the patron saint of inappropriate and unmanageable male desire, Governor Sanford's heart wants what it wants. But when those wants compel a grown-up man with a grown-up job and grown-up responsibilities to behave like a teenybopper blowing off study hall, it is more than fair to question whether he possesses the minimum basic skills this grown-up job requires.

More than anything else, though, I would like to roll the tape of Sanford's press conference the next time I hear the tiniest peep about how women's hormonal excesses and emotional outbursts make them unfit for public service.

Lesson Learned. Again.

Just wrote a ridiculously long piece on Mark Sanford and zapped it into the cyber-abyss. Why does that "Save on Word" lesson always have to be relearned?

The Jodi Bloggeth

Okay, loving this already! Soon I will have actual exciting-like words here, but in the meantime I must take advantage of the five minute respite between torrential downpours to run some errands.

Thanks for the warm welcome!