HeyChristine.com

Wednesday, January 17th

Dinner with Joann...

Joann and I caught up last night at the same time and the same place in Taipei that we always meet. She is such a trip, THE most animated person I know. The facial expressions she makes just cracks me up. She can't help herself. We don't get together nearly as much as we should but every time we do it feels like we just saw each other yesterday. Some photos for the record, including one of our food. She and I always get the same darn thing.

I could really make this entry a long one as we had such a terrific time together but because I'm terribly crunched for time today, I need to summarize a very important revelation that she helped me to realize about Little Joe Dinero. It changes everything.

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I finally understood.

It's not so much that I'm DYING to tell people what happened every time I see them. While it has most certainly been entertaining these past few weeks and funny as #&*%! to see people's reactions -- CHRISTINE IT'S LIKE THE FREAKIN' MOVIES -- it's getting old. I need to make a decision but I need the time to do so and quite frankly, I just haven't had a spare moment to really sit down and think about it thoroughly. It's a very complex situation with consequences that I too will have to own, depending on how I handle it, even if I choose to do nothing. So until I can focus on it 110%, I've just been getting people's reactions and listening to what they have to say, which in itself has been quite interesting.

Joann for one, thinks I should seek what she calls "punitive damages". At first that made me laugh. Like yeah right, I'm going to blackmail a once very close friend whom I still care about DESPITE his pathetic shortcomings, for money.

While I won't deny that the thought DID cross my mind several times (cough cough), that is a course of action that I would not feel comfortable with in the long run, as somehow it crosses the line of personal integrity on my part. But Joann is all about money. And it's always good to have friends like that.

But then the topic moved to the question of why Little Joe wrote me AGAIN, ten days AFTER the "big bang" blowout, with the very same message he had written to me earlier, to two of my email accounts. Obviously, I made him nervous by not responding to any of his messages, but why would he be THAT nervous?

Little Joe knows exactly what I did when my last boyfriend crossed the line (though of a very different nature that entailed abuse). Instead of losing it, yelling at him, calling him names and sticking around hoping he'd one day change, I simply walked away. Little Joe, as a matter of fact, and without sounding horribly tacky by saying so, was my pillar of strength during those trying moments, as I was REALLY shaken up by what had happened.

Most people would have said, ah, he's a jerk! Dump him ass! You deserve better! But not Little Joe. He sincerely but firmly stood by my decision and my actions with such grace and insight that I could not help but see him in a very different light. Up until then he was just a goofy fellow. To be able to recognize the degree of strength within me (because it took a *LOT* of it to walk away from that particular incident) and to respect me all the more for it, meant that he too has such qualities within him. That is human nature.

The point I'm making here is that with THIS situation, Little Joe pretty much knew how I would handle it, and that is to just walk away. That I never responded to his wife's email nor his was a pretty good indicator of my chosen course of action, and yet he STILL felt it necessary to write me again to make SURE he was covering his tracks? What for? What in the world does he have to lose?

And then Joann and I had this conversation:

She said: "Christine, didn't you say that he has a lot of money?"

I said: "TONS. His businesses are EXTREMELY profitable. So?"

She said: "He's not protecting his marriage because he loves his
wife. He's doing it to protect his money!"

I said: "HUH?"

She said: "Don't you KNOW that California laws are one of the
                best when it comes to the financial rights of divorced
                women?! If she divorces him because of his infidelity,
                she walks away with HALF. And you have all the evi-
                dence with the emails and ICQs that you've saved..."

But of course. Dinero. Little Joe Dinero. I finally understood the entire story, all the way back to the loss of a loved one, to his struggling days back in Boston and L.A., to the unexpected turning point of his career which not only catapulted him into an entirely new lifestyle but one of immense notoriety as well. That's when I came into the picture, which lead us to where we find ourselves today.

I now know what I want to do. This is no longer funny.

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The other thing that isn't funny...

While I was trying to complete my VERY INTENSE THOUGHTS (see above), everyone and their MOMMA kept interrupting me!! What am I, Grand Central?! First I get a ton of phone calls, one from a friend who just took the AsiaWorks program and decided that NOW was the time to tell me how much she appreciated me, and then later, unexpected visits by Acer Ginny who wouldn't let me take a picture of her today and then Ginny!! Guys while I LOVE you people to DEATH, I really need to CONCENTRATE! HELP!

A little promotional while I'm at it: Ginny's shoes are also on her site, Brand-Zero. She was so very cute today, complaining about how she was trying to "connect the dots" about this one particular goofhead who Tommy and I are convinced is asexual.

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