Mirror, mirror

A friend of mine has entered into a romance that her circle of pals has fair cause to distrust. The man has a history of taking direct aim at women and hurting them badly. This isn't one of those "It's just not working out" break-up mo's. He's always been on the look-out for other women, sleeping around, lying blatantly.

I am alarmed -- for her but more for me.

Maybe we need friends, I was thinking as I walked Zeke on this sunny warmish blowy Friday afternoon, to hold up a mirror to us. If you'd said this to me a week ago, I would have assumed you meant that friends tell us when our labels are sticking out or someone has been putting it out that we put out, but today I can see other ways this truism works.

My first reaction to her news was exasperation. Then I began to brood about it. Why should I get my knickers in a twist about her decision? I don't have to see the guy and wonder if he's telling the truth about why he canceled coming over last night. She has offered to keep quiet about it, knowing that her friends are so opposed to the romance: I don't even have to hear about it unless I ask for details.

Further, she's obsessed about this man for so long that this is the opportunity for her to find out if he's really all that and a bag of chips. I'll go so far as to say that she has a double-load to carry in beginning this relationship. She's got to evaluate him in his own right AND police his person for that doesn't match either of their heads. It's gotta to be tense over there in Loveland these days.

My official reaction was to wish her luck and warn her to protect herself. That's the kind of reaction that's guaranteed to have her prodding for what's underneath such a staid line. What was underneath, I began to realize, isn't pretty and I warned her that my curled lip at the thought of what she's doing has more to do with me than with her, and that it's a good object lesson for us both to see how much any reaction we meet with in life is not about what she (or I or you) have said or done.

I could also say that the name of some of what I feel is wrong. I envy her, but I don't envy her getting together with this guy or for having a relationship. I envy the balls she's shown in taking on such a Lothario. I envy her ability to forgive him, or try to.

The night she told me what she'd done, I had a vivid dream of being committed to an insane asylum where I and the other inmates were hearing voices and living in alternate universes. In the audience was the man I once loved. Sitting very close to him was his current lover. Audience? I don't remember why there was an audience. It wasn't Bedlam but for some reason they were there and he was terribly eager to ask me, apparently normal among the mad people, questions. When I saw him I morphed like Bertha Mason, lunging and spitting to get at him and claw his eyes out. The next day I received an email asking me if I wanted to be someone's "friend" on a website I know he lurks on. It was a bogus invitation but of course I had to go look. He looks very happy with his new love. I thought about how I was that pretty when I was thin. I thought about what he said about why "we" didn't work out. I thought about how he wanted to be friends with me as this new relationship blossomed and how I finally said I couldn't do it. I thought about how I dropped the last opportunity to be in touch with him like a hot coal. I thought about how thinking about him still tears my throat out.

I envy my friend's opportunity at a chance with someone she knows, warts and all. I won't have that opportunity.

Distraction! I thought. Other men! But there really aren't any. And so I had to acknowledge that one man I had an ongoing email/phone relationship with point-blank refused to meet me and how I terminated it because of that, how I pushed at someone else when I felt used and he'd dropped me. I thought about all the men kindasortalmosthovering on the periphery of my life and I envied her gumption to open herself up to that world of hurt and the stores of energy it takes even to get to the part that hurts.

"I can't date until the book is done," I said to myself. Well, that's not all that distant now. "I can't date until I've lost weight," I tried not to say. But isn't that a crock of shit? I mean, I'm fat. I'll always be fat. If I'm very lucky, I might get to hide how fat I am in a thin body, but I have a fat head and fat blood and a fat history. Maybe the point is to date someone now so he'll know...the worst of it. I didn't want to write that phrase. The truth of it? The Fat Girl I also love, or who should be lovable as well as the thin one?

Something.

And that, folks, is the first layer of my reaction to my friend's news. It leaves me sad for myself and ashamed of that sadness. Look, the grown-up Frances wants to say to that snarking Francie, YOU dropped two men for being too roughshod on your heart. YOU stated in one sentence how hurt you were and that man disappeared. You've done some good housekeeping in the last year so you don't get to be all regretful about the past you tossed out for very good reasons.

But her chance has reminded me of my lost chances and informed me of how reluctant I am -- and how undeserving I feel -- to court new ones.

It's not about her. It's not even about me wishing I were in her shoes.

It's about me and the mirror she's held up for me to see the state of my heart in.

Zorro the Humbled

I knew this business of staying with a new her was a bad idea. Why do you think I whined all morning that first day? I wasn't scared -- Zorro is never scared -- I was gentlt communicating my need to return to My Den and My Humans. That the she ignored me (she even told me to calm down and be quiet) should have prepared me for the days ahead.

Every day is the same. The she gets up and drinks the vile black drink and eats fire. Then the she tells us to get off the bed so she can flip it over, thus moving me, Zorro, from the pillow nest I have created. She puts the itchy-scrtchy loop on my nose and we all go outside. The daisy gets a cookie about every other step. I know what's going on. It's called farvoritism. But I, Zorro, do not deign to look back and beg for a teat as well.

I have retained that much dignity from the Zorro the Magnificent Days.

My Magnificence has diminished. It failed me at 4.37 p.m. on Sunday, August 12th, now many years ago.

I was walking around the dog run, granting one whiff of my magnificent butt to those dogs courageous enough to seek my permission, when I looked over at the she flinging a ball across the dog run for the daisy. The daisy --

the daisy! My God, the daisy. Who would have imagined it? I'd spent two nights with the daisy. We'd eaten Milk Bones and peanut butter together, shared ginger snaps, slept in the same bed. But it wasn't until I saw the daisy break out of the weeds with the ball in her mouth and come streaking like spilled honey back to her her that I felt my heart drop and my mouth go dry.

Perhaps it's because there is honey in my ginger snaps. Perhaps the she put something in my Alpo, an aphrodaisyac, say.

Whatever. I, Zorro, watched my magnificent and regal aloofness drop like the ball the daisy spat out at the hers feet. I am in love.

I am ashamed.

What makes this daisy different from the hero or the mellie? There are plenty of females for Zorro to take without having to beg, let alone be yelled at.

Hey! the daisy said when I mounted her with my one shred of magnificence in the ready. I am my own bitch! Get. Off.

The daisy is not namby-pamby about what she needs. She does not whine. She does not give in. She does not submit. I respect this in her...up to a point.

Worse, she is a flirt, always running up to humans and pawing at them for love, and sleeping in such a way that makes me, Zorro, feel like a dog leashed three inches away from a steak. The daisy is asking for it, if you ask me.

Which, of course, if you were asking the question at all, you would come to me, Zorro, for the correct answer.

Despite my running after her (I, Zorro, do not run) and despite my magnificence at her beck and bark, she insulted me and humiliated me. There were bichons present! Papillons. Worst of all, a sharpei, with whom I share half my magnificent bloodline with.

The sharpei sniggered. Oh, he tried to hide it by sitting next to his Him and ignoring me, but I saw the curl of his right jowel.

After one or two more attempts at expressing my diminishing magnificence on the way back to the daisy's den, I gave up. I decided to play it cool. I studied up on How to Make Anyone Fall in Love with You but I did this secretly, in the bathroom and on the couch at night, disdaining the Bed of Shame where the she and the daisy slept in innocent peace. I walked around the dog run biting my lip in shame but not getting any closer to the daisy than I had to be when we're on leash. I watched the boomer try to make love to the daisy. My mouth tasted like fire but I soon saw that the daisy either ignored the boomer, sat down or snapped her usual line about not being anyone's bitch.

I watched her with the hero, however. The daisy is clearly in love with the hero. They often sleep together. But while the hero is not in love with the daisy, the hero is obsessed with the mabel, the Pomeranian across the street who looked up at me from the corner of her eye and winked. I may be little, she seemed to say, but I know the zorro is head-over-paws.

The humiliation will never end.

Today, after many years of ignoring the daisy, I made one more attempt to secure her adoration. When the izzie border collie jumped out to nip at the daisy fetching the ball, I, Zorro, stepped in to save the daisy from this annoyance. (I, Zorro, must tell the truth. Hero did it first but not effectively. I am nothing if not efficient.)

Did the daisy thank me? No. The daisy only spat the ball at her her's feet and demanded that she throw it again. Thank God the daisy didn't thank the boomer for growling at the izzie. And the daisy's she pulled the boomer off the daisy when he tried to make love to her.

Hope flared! Perhaps the she pulled the boomer off because she knows I am the only one magnificent enough for the daisy!

Hope deflated. The daisy told me to get off and the she told me "no" and then kept the mellie and the hero in between me and the delicious, beautiful daisy.

I refused the cookie the she offered me half way to the mellie's house. Whatever shreds of magnificence I have left must be preserved.

But they are only shreds and I am reduced.

I took the cookie the she offered me a mere block away.