MAIN EVENT. A Good Place to Get Started --- a.k.a "Table of Contents"
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MAIN EVENT. A Good Place to Get Started --- a.k.a "Table of Contents" |
| MY GLASS HOUSE | THE PREVIOUS EVENT | THE NEXT EVENT | THE WRITERS/GUIDELINES | |
THE DIFFICULT KIND - Put a music CD into your CD-ROM drive and rock with me on this one, please. That way you'll be in the same place I was when I wrote this.
Pick one of your favorites. Then we'll both be in similar frames of mind. I ask you to do this because I want you to wrap your mind around the same place I am at right now.
You don't mind us being a little creative, do you?
Now turn the volume of your speakers up.
Yeah, that's it.
WRAP YOUR MIND AROUND THIS:
You might have noticed how often I've quoted Sheryl Crow:
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Event # 206: ANNIVERSARY WALTZ
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"Packed up and moved out after all
"Bulldozed the house and watched it fall
"The blessed sight I still recall
"Now I can sing my song again..."The more astute of you realize that I've done so because it echoes a part of my own life. Let's go there, shall we?
I've been told before, mostly by women, that I am "the difficult kind." I was never quite sure what that meant and was too young and stupid to ask when it came up.
So, after my mother, I watched a lot of women ambush me. Not just The Succubus, Peggy.
She had a lot of power over me, Peggy did, as you know. Terry was probably right in naming her a succubus.
When I told Kevin, my assistant, how she could touch places on my face and I'd lose consciousness he said: "Could that woman have been a witch?"
Well, I've never believed in supernatural crap like that.
But she did separate me from all my friends and change my life forever. And she killed the only two children I might have ever had.
I was ambushed.
But female friends of mine ambush me all the time, I can't hold Peggy totally responsible for the behavior.
"If you could only see
"What love as made of me
"Then I'd no longer be,
"In your mind, The Difficult Kind..." - Sheryl CrowI guess what I've been trying to share with you, in MY GLASS HOUSE, and now here, is that I have had my heart broken more than once. And I'm not sure I've gotten over it.
My first lover was so wonderful and awakening and care-free that I was not ready for the pain that being in love could be.
Like I've said, I rutted carelessly for years --- as lots of people did in the late 60s and early 70s --- and it was about FUN.
So when my heart was broken I took it as hard as my childhood pains. In many ways, I guess it threw me back to all those childhood pains I had tried to submerge.
I admitted to my friend Julia that I keep waiting for my mother to do ANYTHING, show ANY sign that she loves me... But it never comes.
Julia says, wisely, that I should be used to this by now. She thinks my mother will never be capable of showing me love and that I should have accepted that after all these years.
So Julia says that I should stop frustrating myself by expecting love from my mother.
And I say, "That's easy for you to say."
So when women ambush me, I think back to my mother. You probably would, too.
The most recent ambush was from a woman I've known for years and who claims to love me and be my friend....
It happened when I went to New York, and then Connecticut, at the beginning of February. We had been e-mailing back and forth about my visit, celebrating Chinese New Year, my spending "quality time" with the family.
After all, her husband had been one of my best friends since college. He had been my housemate before I left for Egypt. So had she. Their children and I are fast friends. One of them, Dmitri, has been intimately involved with this magazine. The other, Valentin, who we all call Tino, is an excellent dancer and funny guy. I still cherish that he turned me onto the band the Propellerheads and our dancing crazily in their living room to "On Her Majesty's Secret Service." Yeah, we're both kindah nutty...
So, when I arrive at their home that Friday night, with everyone knowing I must leave Sunday afternoon, I was JUST A LITTLE surprised to hear that she had planned that she and her husband attend a dinner party on Saturday night.
She suggests that I come with.
I ask who the people are.
She says I'll like them. And then changes the subject.
I let it drop for most of dinner. As things wind down and we are talking I ask again who *exactly* will be attending this dinner party.
She describes three other married couples.
And I feel ambushed.
- We had been discussing my visit for over a month.
- She has known me for years and knows that I have problems with being thrust into a group of strangers. That's why I don't go out much.
- She had specifically encouraged my visit so that *we* --- my intimate friends --- would celebrate Chinese New Year together.
- And I could have been warned about this change in plans.
I explain that there is no way in hell I'll "come with." I'd be a ninth wheel.
Dmitri, her son, laughs. He says, "Heck, I know I wouldn't consider going to that party as the only single guy much fun!"
So we pass over it as friends will do. But I have the lingering sense of being ambushed again.
If someone else had been my mother, I might not have felt that way. But I was raised by Lucy Van Pelt.
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