September 16, 2011
Oh, the characters we meet along the way in life. Some are friends, some are less than that. Even when they claim to be. I think of one person specifically as I write this. I won’t mention her name as a few of you from way back might remember her. She and I haven’t spoken in years and although we were briefly Facebook friends a couple years ago, she deleted me a few months later and I didn’t really care.
Looking back, she reminded me a lot of Aesop’s fable about the Fox Who Lost His Tail. It’ll make more sense as I explain a little more. When I first met this girl in college, we got along fairly well and a friendship seemed to have been born practically overnight. We started hanging out, talking and I got to know much more about her. She and her boyfriend were living at her mom’s place. They were looking at engagement rings and planning their lives together. Hey, good for her, you know? Then a few months along the way as she started hanging out more and more with my group of friends, she seemed to have lost interest in her fiancé and was spending more and more time with my friends. Then before we all knew it, she was single and playing the field. She expressed an interest in one of my friends, who was living with his girlfriend at the time. I think if I had made any sort of move towards her, I probably could have gotten somewhere. But I didn’t. She was a friend, it just seemed awkward to even consider it. That didn’t stop her though and she went after yet another friend of mine. They were an item for a couple months over the summer and while I’m not sure who broke up with whom, it was over almost as soon as it began.
We would still hang out and talk, of course but then she really started talking nonsense which is where the analogy to Aesop comes in. Now, I’m not one to judge anyone as to what’s morally right or wrong but, at one point, she decided to declare herself as a “born-again virgin.” Huh?! Yeah, she had started reading some book about how you can control your own sexual destiny and as easy as that, she could consider herself a virgin and hold out until she met the right guy… um… ok? Mind you, just months earlier she had been with one friend, wanted to be with another and I could have been as well. But if she wants to think of herself as a virgin, ok… *shrug
It only got weirder as she went off to Cal State LA and continued her education, working towards her degree in television/film production. I distinctly remember her razzing me for not doing the same. I was already an assistant instructor at the college and we were the same age. But me not going off and getting my degree meant I was somehow not as good in the field as she was. She even reused the cliché, “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.” Interesting seeing as how her first and only job in the industry was as some director’s personal assistant. Not actually working on a set but more like a personal secretary, valet. She’d housesit for him, walk his dogs and pick up his laundry from the cleaners. Great job doing! I’ll stick to teaching, thank you very much. Last I heard, she had quit the field altogether and was in real estate before the bubble burst a few years ago.
Another highlight in my weary friendship with her was that after she moved to LA and was enjoying the single life, she swore up and down that she’d never get married because she’d never find anyone she could be happy with. She got into the whole B&D scene and would happily tell me about some of the clients she would entertain. So imagine my surprise when she literally quit the lifestyle, turned around and found a guy and got married within a year after that. And of course, now my biggest fault was with being single. She would tell me how much happier I could be if I found somebody to settle down with like she had with her guy. What?!
Apparently, whatever I did wasn’t the right thing to do unless it was something she was doing. Sorry, I could never get into the B&D lifestyle. My skin’s too sensitive to vinyl.
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