Tales from the Crypt: Underworld Spy Roxy Brings You the Second Intriguing Installment of Instructions to the Double

In celebration of the Roxiticus Desperate Housewives 3rd Blogiversary coming up on August 5th, last weekend I posted the New York Times article and my first excerpt from Instructions to the Double, the blog that inspired Roxy to blog.

Now, on Friday night, here I am back at our beach house in Bay Head, New Jersey, in bed with my Instructions to the Double archives...since last weekend, I've three-hole punched them and fit them into a binder so the stacks of pages are no longer flapping in the sea breeze.

**NOTE TO "TESS": Hey, if you're reading this post and you'd rather I didn't dredge up your past by posting from my printouts of your blog archives, please shoot me an e-mail (Bree at Roxiticus Desperate Housewives dot com) or leave a comment here. As you can see if you follow the whole story here, I'm an admirer who's just wondering what happened to you after you took your blogging private**

Now, where did we leave off with our heroine? We had just reviewed her "Inexcusable Crush Post" about wanting to do "dirty dirty things" to Tucker Carlson. Moving on to the sleeping pills:

"As for the sleeping pills. Yep, I take them. But before any addicts come banging down my door looking for prescription Ambien or the like, again, I am sorry to disappoint you. I do take over the counter, Target brand sleep aids. I have a sleeping disorder that causes me to wake up repeatedly through the night due to fluxes in my body temperature. I basically deal with this by making sure I actually go to bed early so I will get enough sleep. I haven't had a cup of coffee in years, crack a window in the heart of winter, and blare an air conditioner in the summer. But sometimes, I take sleep aids as well, in case I need to ensure rest. Also, funny fact about me that I have blogged about, I can't even swallow pills. Yep, I have to crush them and put them in applesauce or pudding. So, imagine me, in my sweats, before bed, crushing sleep aids and putting them in pudding. It's a lot less glamorous, isn't it?

My Boyfriend once told me that I do touch my breasts when I read. I never realized this and I made an off comment about it on my blog. I mention it once and I think its odd she opens with it as if it was a defining characteristic.

Ms. Olen also says there are things on my blog she would rather not know. Um, then stop reading it. Very simple.

Instead of revealing me as an uncaring and insensitive woman, Ms. Olen actually reveals her own pathologies. In the next section where she talks about the "sexual shenanigans" of her former employees, she does so to appear "superior." I find this really disheartening considering she discusses an unplanned pregnancy and infidelity. Why are these very common, rather serious problems that women face, reduced to "shenanigans?" And why is she more comfortable when she can feel "superior?" Its a sad comment on who Ms. Olen is as a person.

And her essay only gets more insidious. I take serious issue with her accusations that I stay out too late, drink too much, and have "semi promiscuous couplingS."

One, on my blog I discuss drinking. I never say how much. I think strange readers who visit this page, who aren't personal friends who know me in the flesh, should know that I am about 5' 1" and weigh about 105 pounds. Two drinks and I am already tipsy. If you come to this blog looking for "and then I pounded 5 shots of tequila and drank half a bottle of wine" you won't find it. Sorry. I go out for drinks with friends, I often, though never daily, have a drink when I come home from work. That is pretty normal consumption. Two, she portrays me as a party girl who never stays home. Check for yourself. I blog about what TV I am watching so often that I must seem like the dorkiest 20 something in all of Brooklyn. Gilmore Girls, OC, and Reality Trash I Should Be Really Embarrassed to Watch. Absolutely. And three, the promiscuous sex part is so ridiculous. In fact during my 5-month employ at Ms. Olen's, I spent two and a half months celibate. Yep. Celibate. And I even blog about my reasons for being celibate, here. [Roxy interruptus: since all I have are Tessy's printed archives, I can't give you a link to click through and I'll have to keep reading on the beach to find you the specific post]

MMM? And then my blog documents the beginning of a monogamous relationship. However, in the early stages of my current relationship, I did sleep with a former boyfriend who came and visited me. I blogged about it. My Boyfriend was furious. It seriously tested our relationship. We survived. When I discussed her use of the word "promiscuous" with an editor at the New York Times, he said that one incident could be construed as "promiscuous." I countered; saying then that the plural should be removed. I may not be a "journalist" published in a national newspaper, but I am a fairly well educated woman about to pursue an advanced degree in literature and I know that the use of the plural suggests a pattern of behavior, a pattern of behavior that is not reflected on this blog. So, in case you were looking for a nanny who hits the bars to pick up men every night, again, sorry to disappoint you. I am in a monogamous relationship, so since January, and I am very very happy.

Oh, and the Jennifer Ehle comment? I make it in regards to her performance as Elizabeth Bennet in AE's adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. See a theme developing? Are you shocked that I think an actress in 19th century garb is "hot?" It's supposed to be an ironic comment because everyone always talks about Colin Firth as the smoldering Darcy. I think Ms. Ehle does a fabulous job of showing how sensuality isn't about revealing a lot of skin or having gratuitous sex; it's about an energy she exudes under her very conservative costume. Still riveted?

Roxy's wrap-up:

That's all I have for you tonight, gentle readers. As I was posting this excerpt from "Tess," I had a few thoughts and questions I'd like to share with all of you:

With whom and how do you "share" your blog? Back in October 2004, Tess wrote: "So, I sent out a mass e-mail from my oversized address book to advertise my blog and the obligatory post of www.friendster.com." As I've mentioned before, I tend to keep my "real life" and my "blog life" somewhat separate (yes, Henson, these are our real names). The real life Roxiticus Desperate Housewives rarely read my blog, but if they did, they wouldn't find anything I wouldn't tell them to their faces. I post a great deal about the goings on in the Roxiticus Valley and in our lives -- school events, concerts, what Rex cooked for dinner, where we shop -- but my goal here is community-oriented, helping other local moms find great Bernardsville and Mendham restaurants or toddler gymnastics classes. Tess' blog reads more like my hard-copy Roxiticus Desperate Memoir, most of which will never appear online.

Next, and I think this applies to Helaine Olen's article in the New York Times as well, Tess posted on October 27, 2004: "Are there ethical considerations when one blogs? I just read bitchphd's post about her relationship with her mother and it reveals a great deal to her readers about someone they do not know who will never be able to present her side of the issue to them. These sites started to interest me because of their level of personal detail, though the medium, a website of sorts, public, though I suppose self-selected, is very impersonal. I know when I started reading I felt like a voyeur (though that might have had more to do with the narcissistic semi-public masturbatory quality of the first blog I read). I mean, when you know people will be reading, when the blog is more than just a personal journal, what should you say or not say? I think this is more than a silly question of decorum. Though I think decorum is under valued." If only Helaine Olen had given her former nanny as much consideration before putting her out there in the New York Times with no chance to present her side of the story in a national newspaper. Of course, then I'd never have found Tess' blog, and Roxiticus Desperate Housewives probably wouldn't exist!

One last note before bedtime. Many of my readers have enjoyed these excerpts from Instructions to the Double so much that I've decided to try to find, with your help, excerpts from the archives of my favorite blogs and post them over on Roxiticus Best Blogs. So, if you'd like to nominate yourself or another deserving blogger, please leave a comment here or over on Roxiticus Best Blogs, linking to not just the blog itself but the post(s) that most intrigued you. Oh, and don't forget....start with "Once upon a time..."

The New York Times Article That Launched Roxiticus Desperate Housewives: "The New Nanny Diaries Are Online" by Helaine Olen

As part of my ongoing Roxiticus Desperate Housewives 3rd Blogiversary tribute to Instructions to the Double, the blog that inspired Roxy to blog, I'd like to present the July 17, 2005 Sunday New York Times article that started it all...

The New Nanny Diaries Are Online -- by Helaine Olen

[image above by David Chelsea]

"Our former nanny, a 26-year-old former teacher with excellent references, liked to touch her breasts while reading The New Yorker and often woke her lovers in the night by biting them. She took sleeping pills, joked about offbeat erotic fantasies involving Tucker Carlson and determined she'd had more female sexual partners than her boyfriend.

How do I know these things? I read her blog.

She hadn't been with us long when we found out about her online diary. All she'd revealed previously about her private life were the bare-bones details of the occasional date or argument with her landlord and her hopes of attending graduate school in the fall.

Yet within two months of my starting to read her entries our entire relationship unraveled. Not only were there things I didn't want to know about the person who was watching my children, it turned out her online revelations brought feelings of mine to the surface I'd just as soon not have to face as well.

I hadn't exactly been a stranger to the sexual shenanigans of our previous baby sitters. One got pregnant accidentally by her longtime boyfriend and asked me for advice. Another was involved in a mostly off-again relationship with a fidelity-challenged college football player. Yet those were problems I could feel superior to and that made me grateful for the steady routine of marriage and children.

This was something else entirely.

It all began one day late last fall when we were tending to my toddler and she murmured to me: "I've started a blog. I'll give you the link."

I wrote the address in my appointment book but didn't rush off to my computer to look up her site. It wasn't until a month later, after she told me she'd post the Sharon Olds poem "Life With Sick Kids" on a day when both of the boys were ill, that I decided to be polite and take a look.

I read the poem, then I scrolled down to the next entry. And the next. Amid the musings on poetry and fanatical analysis of the "Gilmore Girls" was a sweet scene of sex with a new boyfriend, accounts of semi-promiscuous couplings and tales of too much drinking for my comfort.

My husband thought her writing precociously talented but wanted to fire her nonetheless. "This is inappropriate," he said. "We don't need to know that Jennifer Ehle makes her hot."

I defended her - at first. Didn't she have a right to free expression? It wasn't as though she was quaffing Scotch or bedding guys, or the occasional girl, while on the job. Besides, weren't all recent college graduates keeping Web logs?

But there was more to my advocacy. Suddenly, with her in my employ, I felt I was young and hip by proxy. I might be a boring mother of two, but my nanny, why, she dined in the hippest Williamsburg restaurants and rated the sexual energy of men and women she met. I was amused - and more than a bit envious.

I was about to turn 40. I'd been married almost 15 years. My ability to attend literary readings and art gallery openings was hampered by two children, and my party life was relegated to the toddler birthday circuit. I imagined the snoozefest that would ensue if I were to post:

Spent the morning at the Garfield Temple playroom. Tried to read Paul Krugman while other parents gave me dirty looks as my younger son attempted to filch their kids' dump trucks.

I told my friends about the blog, and even my childless acquaintances were riveted. They called, begging for more details. "Did she wear the rose negligee, the pink see-through slip or the purple Empire-waisted gown?" demanded one after perusing a post on the proper outfit for first-time sex. "She didn't say."

But I was not as comfortable with the situation as I pretended. The blog had brought odd similarities to the fore. I don't want to overstate the case: I was not bisexual, and I did not come from a strictly religious background, as my nanny did.

Yet we had enough in common - if I took her statements at face value - to make me uneasy. In my 20's I, too, felt passionately about 19th-century English literature but had long since let it go, barely able to concentrate on The New York Times, let alone Henry James. I, too, had an abortion back then. And trouble with depression? Check. Self-righteousness and inflated self-regard? Affirmative.

When our nanny asked permission to take her laptop to work so she could work on her graduate school applications while the baby napped, I said yes. Then I wondered if she was whiling away time with flirtatious e-mail messages - something she revealed on her blog she sometimes did. And when she came down with a stomach virus twice during a period when the rest of us were sick only once, I wondered about her confessions of boozy nights out followed by coming to work hungover. Paranoia, perhaps, but reading the blog seemed to encourage such thoughts.

Yet I did not confront her. In part I felt empathy and sadness for this younger version of myself. But I also feared she would judge my life and find it wanting.

As I read her words I was transported back to my own youth and those feelings of awkwardness, fear, false bravado and self-importance. I could have told her that I understood her life more than she realized, that I had not always been the boring hausfrau she must see. I could say that I, too, once stayed out late, drank too much and slept with the wrong people. I, too, once found my work obligations a tedious distraction from creative pursuits and thought myself superior to my surroundings, just as she appeared to.

Yet my awareness of this prior life and my knowledge that I'd outgrown it didn't spare me from feelings of intense doubt about my current life, times when I was convinced I'd made the wrong choices, days when my husband and I would spend hours tearing into each other over who should clean the tub after a child mistook it for the potty. On the other hand I also got to revel in days when I loved my life and children so much that it hurt.

But there was another element of her posts that unnerved me. Most parents don't like to think the person watching their children is there for a salary. We often build up a mythology of friendship with our nannies, pretending the nanny admires us and loves our children so much that she would continue to visit even without pay.

When our nanny referred to our house on her blog as work in a seemingly sarcastic fashion, she broke the covenant. The more she posted, the more life in our household deteriorated. It almost seemed that as she created the persona of a do-me feminist with an academic bent, it began to affect her performance. The woman who was loving if a bit strict toward the children became in our view short and impatient, slamming doors and bashing pans when my toddler wouldn't sleep and sighing heavily if asked to run an errand.

Instead of opening a dialogue, I monitored her online life almost obsessively. I would log on upstairs to see if she was simultaneously posting entries below me on her laptop while the baby was napping. Too often she was.

Looking at archived entries one afternoon, I read her reactions to an argument my husband and I had when she was in the house. "I heard a couple fighting within the confines of couples therapy-speak," she wrote. "I wanted to say, smack him, bite her."

It went on like that for three ghastly pages.

"I seethed," she added.

Well so did I. But mostly I felt hurt. My issues, my problems, my compromises, my entire being seemed to be viewed by her as so much waste.

Mortified into silence, I didn't tell my husband about the post. Nor could I tell her how disturbed the situation was becoming. I was beginning to realize either her employment or the blog would have to come to an end.

A few days later her anger boiled over. "I am having the type of workweek that makes me think being an evil corporate lawyer would be O.K.," she wrote. "Seriously. Contemplated sterilizing myself yesterday."

Whatever her reasons, whatever her frustrations, this was unacceptable. She had finally crossed my threshold of tolerance.

MY husband let her go the following Monday while my younger son and I were attending a Music for Aardvarks class. Even though she had posted entries about how discontented she was with our house and children and must have known there was a pretty good chance I'd read them, she appeared shocked. My husband didn't bring up the blog with her and instead cited other factors for her dismissal. He did not, he told me, care to find himself a character online.

She did not write that we had fired her. Instead she posted an entry about her "day of bad news," including a graduate school rejection, adding that her worst fears about other people were confirmed.

As for why she ever told me about her blog in the first place, I suppose I'll never know. Sometimes I suspect she was unhappy in my house and hoped our seemingly bourgeois souls would be so shocked we'd let her go, exactly as we did. Other times I believe she wanted me to assume a more maternal role, and I failed her. But perhaps that is self-aggrandizement.

I still read her blog, though not as frequently. Her life has settled down. She writes of domestic nights with her significant other and posts less often about coitus. (Well, O.K., they did have sex on the floor of his new abode, a Williamsburg loft.) She'll soon be leaving New York to attend graduate school. It's a life of passion and uncertainty, in which chance meetings can lead to the as-yet-unimagined.

In many ways it used to be my life. I miss it still. And I don't."

-- The New Nanny Diaries Are Online -- by Helaine Olen, The New York Times, July 17, 2005

While I frequently read the "Modern Love" article in the Sunday Styles section of The New York Times, I believe it was Rex who handed it to me and said "this looks like it would be right up your alley." It took me about three weeks to read the article, develop a reaction, write about it in my print journal, Google "Helaine Olen's nanny's blog," find Tess' 8-page blog post response: "Sorry to Disappoint You,"
("If you have come to this little blog today looking for prurient details of a "nanny gone wild" and another "nanny diary" detailing the sordid life of a family she works for, I am very sorry to disappoint you"), and decide to start my own personal blog. Along with most of Tess' posts from Fall 2004 through Summer 2005, the post has since been deleted and, as the sole keeper of the complete printed archives of Instructions to the Double, I will have to type it up and post it for you here. On August 5, 2005, Roxiticus Desperate Housewives was born with the following brief post:

First Blog: The Launch of Roxiticus Desperate Housewives

I was inspired to start blogging by the recent unpleasant exchange between Helaine Olen and her former nanny, "Tessy." Helaine Olen's article "The New Nanny Diaries Are Online" appeared in the Styles section of the July 17 Sunday New York Times. Her former nanny, Tessy, countered with a well-written rebuttal (Instructions to the Double: Sorry to Disappoint You) blog for all of the NYTimes readers who came looking for nannies gone wild. As a full-time working mom who employs a nanny, I'm intrigued with both women's perspectives. And, irrespective of any unfortunate connection to Olen, Tessy's blogs are interesting.

Since last weekend, I've been reading my printed archives of Tess' Instructions to the Double on the beach as if it were a novel, perhaps another one of my shameful page-turners. I continue to marvel at how well-written and intriguing her blog is, compared to my chatty investment banker's "mommy blog" following the misadventures of the Roxiticus Desperate Housewives... and then I can relate to Helaine Olen's notional 40-something mommy blog post: "Spent the morning at the Garfield Temple playroom. Tried to read Paul Krugman while other parents gave me dirty looks as my younger son attempted to filch their kids' dump trucks."

One unique element of Tess's blog is that, unlike me and I believe unlike most of the other bloggers I follow, Tess' audience was made up of friends or people she knew in "real life," rather than "strangers" known only through the blogosphere. Perhaps it was her age, which I believe was mid-20s, just out of college, when she was blogging from Fall 2004-Summer 2005. Tess' "real-life" friends and lovers were also bloggers and they all read and commented on each other's blogs...but the huge difference is that in many cases they were reading about themselves! Which is what "got Tess in trouble" with her boss in the first place. Three years later, re-reading Tess' awe-inspiring blog, I certainly am closer to "taking Tess' side" than Helaine Olen's, but as a mother and an employer of nannies, even though I totally understand her urge to "do dirty dirty things to Tucker Carlson," I know that I'd rather not read the well-written sex and drinking and life blog posts of the women who are caring for my children.

It reminds me that I am intimidated, rather than inspired, by great writing, yet spurred on by good, solid "everyday bloggers." Since I started blogging in earnest back in February, instead of over-thinking every word of every post, striving for greatness, I think of my blog as "writing practice" (see Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones (Freeing the Writer Within)) and just let the words flow freely onto the page.

Thanks for reading...I hope you're enjoying the Road to the Roxiticus Desperate Blogiversary.

Roxy

Instructions to the Double "Sorry to Disappoint You" Part I...on Tucker Carlson

**NOTE TO "TESS": Hey, if you're reading this post and you'd rather I didn't dredge up your past by posting from my printouts of your blog archives, please shoot me an e-mail (Bree at Roxiticus Desperate Housewives dot com) or leave a comment here. As you can see if you follow the whole story here, I'm an admirer who's just wondering what happened to you after you took your blogging private**

As part of my ongoing Roxiticus Desperate Housewives 3rd Blogiversary tribute to Instructions to the Double, the blog that inspired Roxy to blog, I'd like to present "Sorry to Disappoint You," Tess' response to "The New Nanny Diaries Are Online" the July 17, 2005 Sunday New York Times article by Helaine Olen that started it all...

"If you have come to this little blog today looking for prurient details of a “nanny gone wild” and another “nanny diary” detailing the sordid life of a family she works for, I am very sorry to disappoint you. Contrary to an essay published in the Style section of the NYTIMES, I am not a pill popping alcoholic who has promiscuous sex and cares nothing for the children for whom she works with. Nope. If you look carefully through my archives, instead you will find a young woman in her mid-twenties who decided to work as a nanny for a year while she prepared to enter the next phase of her professional life; namely the life of an academic pursuing a PhD in English Literature specifically focusing on the Late Victorian novel. But for those of you who dont want to comb through the archives, I will offer a refutation of the salacious, malicious, and really quite silly essay written by Ms. Olen.

Ms. Olen opens her essay with eye-catching details designed to paint the picture of a prurient pill popper. She notes I mention biting my lovers, having sexual thoughts about Tucker Carlson, and taking sleeping pills. So, let's revisit those entries and see if they are really so titillating:"

Judge for yourself...here's a Roxy Reprint, photo of Tucker Carlson courtesy of Roxy:

Inexcusable Crush Post -- October 16, 2004

"I didn't get a chance to read http://www.wonkette.com/ on Friday because I was enjoying my day in town and not latched onto my computer pretending to work on my statement of purpose (um...I like to read novels...Please pay me to read novels and then write something about how I like to read novels)....But this morning, post-shower, and still in my yellow towel, I visited the page and was treated to delightful links of Jon Stewart on CNN's Crossfire. Not having cable, I don't get to watch this "theater" of political debate. However, NBC's Chris Matthews show introduced me to the dorky and adorable conservative pundit Tucker Carlson and I am hooked. I wish I had cable because I love to watch this man pontificate. LOVE IT. Jon Stewart actually takes them to task

And he makes some good points. I listened and appreciated his good points. But then I started to think about all the dirty dirty things I want to do to Tucker Carlson.

Why Tucker Carlson? Its not just his boyish good looks or the attempt to be fashionably subversive with the ever present bow tie. Its not just the fact that he quickly gets hot under his striped collar. Its not just the fact that I strenuously disagree with everything he says. No, its all of it together.

Disagreement and Desire are intimately connected for me.

I blame my middle school librarian. I have stopped blaming my parents for my emotional wreckage and have moved on to far more influential figures: fifth grade best friend and my middle school librarian.

This well intentioned woman knew that I was somewhat precocious and in seventh grade she handed me a nicely worn copy of Pride and Prejudice. I read it in two days and was enthralled.

What was she thinking? This is a very serious book. Not a book for a child. No.

And ever since then, tension, disagreement, misunderstanding, disapproval, foolish summary dismissals, disdain, reproachful looks, false accusations, regret, and embarrassment constitute my idea of Romance.

A completely inappropriate intellectual competitive element heightens my sexual response.

What can this lead to?

Sure, it works out for Elizabeth Bennet and Darcy (Though even Elizabeth Bennet's story ends with marriage. Just early 19th century novelistic conention or something more?)

What can this lead to?

Inexcusable crushes on pseudo intellectual political conservatives. Maybe I should have just read Sweet Valley High like the other girls and saved Austen for college."

Back to the Future (July 16, 2005): "Sorry to Disappoint You" continued:

"Yes, I mention that I want to do "dirty dirty" things to Tucker Carlson. I don't offer details. So, I am assuming that Ms. Olen's imagination ran away with her and she decided that it was very sordid. But on a closer reading of this post you will find I use Tucker Carlson, a noted conservative pundit, as an example of how opposites attract. How intellectual tensions between two people can actually fuel romantic desire. And then I do something really deviant. I compare my crush on him to the romantic tensions in Jane Austen's famous Pride and Prejudice. Yep, my version of the erotic has more to do with long walks and serious conversations. Of course, Ms. Olen does not point that out in her essay. My interest in literature and how I weave it through more common daily reflections would probably detract from her intent to show me as an irresponsible party girl. But there it is, on the blog she so strenuously objects to."

-- from Instructions to the Double, "Sorry to Disappoint You" posted by "Tessy" on July 16, 2005 --


To be continued...



Thanks for reading!



Roxy