Don't Be

1

In honor of love month I'll be posting stuff as I count down to the 14th. It's hokey, it's corny, but you can look at it this way: it's better than nothing when you're somewhat creatively constipated. And if in case you are the mushy type, then maybe this might be what you need.

Or not.

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I'll dispense with the metaphors as much as I can, just for today.

Don't Be My Friend

Because I can only count my normal friends with my fingers. If you want a simple, happy life uncomplicated by the burden of complex people then you seriously don't want to join my co-fraternity of misfits who include--

1. someone who has to put on an evil face over her pretty one, to make all the unpopular decisions, to take the brunt of everyone else's displeasure to shield her corporate bosses. She lives with the loss of friends who may never truly understand her. As much as she may want to be free to give her heart to someone, she is as married to her company as much as anyone else can be married to a partner.

2. someone who always has to take the moral high ground. You'd think he was the damned Pope the way he pontificates from his perch. But there's more to him than his near-unbending Chinese rigidity. I've seen his compassion. Part of his rigor comes from his desire to make the world a better place.

3. someone who takes principle so seriously that she'll puts too much stock in her word. It can't be broken, even under circumstances that scream "this is crazy." Even if her heart, the very core of her, screams against it. (No, dearest, this is not you).

4. someone who routinely stabs men (metaphorically) in the chest, the likely latest one being me. It's a scorpion's nature to sting, but it's testament to how much she can care about another person that she took so long to do it. I've seen that caring side of her, and I've always believed in it. Even when I called her an idiot, and even when everyone else was calling me an idiot for loving her.

5. someone who partially equates self esteem with the bedchamber. I can't pretend to be able to fully help her with this dysfunction-- I don't have the training and I certainly cannot be the surrogate she needs. But I've seen her at her strongest-- self possessed, capable, loving, earning more in a day than I could in a month's honest work.

6. a father who's had to plumb the depths of sleaze to feed and clothe his kids. An artist/inventor who's had to apply his genius to morally problematic causes. Love takes people on strange pathays and his has been stranger than most.

Conventional wisdom dictates that I chuck them all, because they can supposedly drag me down, despite the things within them that I find worth loving, redeeming staying around for. I've said this before: we are all such broken toys.

You're asking why I'm airing this and every other bit of dirty linen hanging on clotheslines in my head, knowing as I do that it can and probably will sabotage any chance of our being friends (or of any Human Resources Department looking at me favorably, hahaa!). You see, I know humans like the back of my hand. I'm hoping that in your case I'm reading you wrong.