“Pretty women out walking with gorillas down my street….”
Joe Jackson, “Is She Really Going Out with Him?”)
A long long, time ago in a galaxy far far away, I left a movie theater having just seen the latest rendition of one of the oldest fairy tale plot devices. The movie was Roxanne, a modern re-telling of the Cyrano be Bergerac story. While I found the Steve Martin-Darryl Hannah vehicle to be somewhat charming, as I joined the après-movie queue [1] outside the women’s restroom I was also frustrated by the sameness of it all.
Why aren’t the roles ever reversed? I groused to myself – ah, timing – just as a Sweet Young Thing ® standing in line behind me began gushing to her companion about the movie’s “uplifting” message:
“It’s like, you know, how true beauty is what’s inside a person, and when people, like, look beyond the physical stuff and people are, like, transformed, and so people shouldn’t, like, judge a book by its cover, because the one with the lousy cover might have some really good stuff inside…”
SYT’s commentary went on for some time, increasing in both volume and vapidity, to the point that I finally reached my WTF point. We were standing in a piss line; I’d never see her again. I turned around and addressed SYT.
BTW and yes, I am One Of Those People ® who will sometimes speak to a Stranger when we are both standing in the same line, particularly when a Stranger makes inane comments loud enough to intrude upon the brain waves of bystanders. Dream scenario for this situation: the Marshall McLuhan scene in Annie Hall.
Ah, but I digress.
“Actually,” I smiled at SYT, “the point of that movie, and other stories like, is a bit more specific. The underlying message is not that beautiful people can learn to appreciate homely people. The message is that, if you are a man who is unattractive, even ugly or deformed, you can pursue the pretty princess; you the man-troll can make a beautiful woman look beyond your physical deficiencies to appreciate the goodness within you. Think about it: that storybook train runs only one way: ugly man to pretty woman.” [2]
She did not respond, unless you count her open mouthed, frog-like gaping. Hmm. If she’d been a guy frog, some hot babe could have kissed her and transformed her into…. Nah.
Cyrano be Bergerac. The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Beauty and the Beast. The Princess and the Frog. Shrek. Ninety-nine percent of Woody Allen movies starring Woody Allen.
Art and literature teem with images and stories of unattractive schmucks who pursue and win (and are portrayed as ultimately deserving of) the hearts, minds (and bodies) of beautiful women. The homely, rejected but deep-down-decent protagonists know what it’s like to be judged and ignored for their inadequate exteriors, even though they have so much “inner beauty” to offer. Why then do the stories not have these men seek out their homely but decent, kind and wise female counterparts – kindred spirits with whom they could find simpatico, and mutually beneficial relationships?
When was the last (or first) time you had the opportunity to read your children the bedtime fable of the devastatingly handsome prince who finds happiness with the wall-eyed but kind-hearted, intelligent princess? [3]
What sparked this particular intellectual excursion, I cannot say. Perhaps the OBFD (stay tuned for acronym explanation) has something to do with it.
* * *
Department of Awwwwww…..
Dateline: last week, after enjoying a sushi lunch with friend SCM and her seven year old daughter P, we three womenfolk got ourselves to the Streets of Tanasbourne, an outdoor mall, to attend to a serious errand. SCM was in need of new lady undergarments, and while she shopped for them [4], P and I played at the mall’s fountain. That is, P and I attempted to play, as much as the fountain’s numerous warning signs would allow us to act in any way that might resemble frolicking.
“No wading in the fountain, no walking along the rim, no sitting on the edge…no furtive glances in the direction of the fountain, no no no no…”
The signs did not say NONONO re using the fountain as a wishing well, and P pointed out to me the plethora of pennies that previous well-wisher had left. I doled out a handful of pennies, one by one, to P, who tossed them in the fountain one by one, and one by one [5] told me who and what she’d wished for.
For her mother, P wished for – surprise! – new underwear. For her father, new trousers. For her various friends, a puppy, a pet, a puppy, a pet, another puppy. For my daughter Belle, a black kitten.
“This is for K,” P told me, as she tossed the last penny into the fountain.
I found it touching her last penny was used to make a wish for my son. “And what is your wish for K?” I asked her.
P paused for a moment. “Someone to keep him company.”
* * *
Department of Ahhhhh…crap.
Readers of this blog may remember my post from last week, wherein I mentioned daughter Belle’s plan to take the train home for a visit – along with seven of her dorm friends who wanted an adventure/escape from college for a few days – this weekend. The visit is still on…in a different scale.
Belle’s friend MGN has been given a final countdown in her long battle with renal failure. Assuming MGN makes it to the weekend, Belle will be spending most of her time “home” in the hospital, visiting MGN. Belle’s college friends, once they heard the news, kindly and graciously backed out of the trip (“I won’t be any fun to be around,” Belle warned them), and Belle will be coming home alone.
MH and I were in Astoria when Belle texted me with the news. We drove up the steep, winding, road to the Astoria Column and climbed the 164 steps to the top of the column. I launched a small balsawood glider [6] from the column’s observation deck, in honor of MGN. It was a windy, pre-rainstormy day, and the flimsy glider rode the drafts like a tiny raptor, circling downward until it came to rest in a grove of fir trees.
Best wishes for MGN…and for her grieving friends, like Belle. The mortality of your peers in your face is just not something we imagine our children facing at age eighteen.
* * *
The Return of the Old Boyfriends Dream
Scene: A university lecture hall. Standing at the dais is a man who is much too young to be James Watson, [7] yet that is who we lecture attendees are supposed to think he is.
Looking around the crowded venue, I spot another young man. This one, I know. He is standing off to the side, leaning against the lecture room wall, exchanging glances and smirks with his younger sibling, both of them trying to look professorial….
Old [8] Boyfriend Dreams ® . They’re baaaaaaaaaaaaaack.
I’ve had them before, and have noticed a pattern. An old BF’s appearances in my dreams – typically in supporting roles, sometimes in brief, “walk-on” parts – coincide with times in which I am facing a current or imminent, significant, change in life circumstances.
When I wake up in the morning (or middle of the night) and my first thought it, Yo, dude, why were you (former bf) running amok in my subconscious?, my second thought is, Oh, okay…it’s this, again.
The OBFDs first made their appearance during my pregnancy with K. Those OBFDs also coincided with a desire to listen to my old Led Zeppelin albums, go figure.
A brief donning of my amateur dream interpretation hat is all it takes for me to figure it out.
Not as awesome as the Hogwarts Sorting Hat.
I understand that those dreams signify my concerns for What Is To Come vs. What Might Have Been. The old BFs represent The Road(s) Not Taken; they symboloize how every opportunity, every fork in the road, every major decision to be made, involves choosing certain paths and thus (by default if not intention) rejecting others.
The reason now for such dreams to be happening now, as in, again, is no surprise. It’s Transition time.
“Oh, no – not another learning experience!”
My husband’s workplace offers employees a period of leave every seven years. Employees may use the time for purposes at their discretion (Travel? Classes? Eight weeks of couch surfing?). As of last Saturday, “We” are currently on MH’s sabbatical. “We”as in, when MH takes his sabbatical I get one (or have to take one, depending on POV issues), too. [9]
As much as I am fortunate to be able to do this, sometimes the timing is…problematic. The previous sabbatical came at a time where I was in the middle of what would become The Mighty Quinn, and I was not in the place to be able to put that and other writing projects aside. [10]
FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS ALERT – Of course, I felt guilty for even having such resentments, and was glad I did take the opportunity to make wonderful, life-long memories of travel adventures with MH, K and Belle (and even if Belle hasn’t forgiven me for the holding-my-hand-over-the-still-steaming-pile-of-bear-shit incident, she’s got a great story to tell).
The timing of this sabbatical is more fortuitous in many ways. It comes at a time when I’ve already taken a philosophical and mental sabbatical of my own, from my work. It comes at a time when significant family concerns (including elderly parents’ health crises on both sides of the family, and K and Belle leaving our nest) are bracketing my slow-dawning realization that I have chosen to devote decades of my life to what seems to be, for me, the wrong profession.
Cliff Notes version: WTF do I do now?
Not the most convenient realization to have at my age, when my chronological peers are anticipating and planning for their retirements. Sigh. I’ve always been a late/backwards/sideways bloomer.
It’s time for Act Three. There are bound to be more rumination on his subject…or maybe I’ll just spare y’all and extend that particular sabbatical.
* * *
May your roads, taken and not, be navigable and scenic, and may you know joy that comes from hearing a seven year old’s earnest wishing well announcements, which will surely help the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
[1] Four stalls, in an eight theatre multiplex?
[2] No, that’s not quite a verbatim transcript (Roxanne came out in 1987).
[3] Cinderella doesn’t count. She is beautiful; her deficiencies are not physical but situational, in the form of poverty and an abusive step family.
[4] At a store, the name of which may or may not rhyme with Shick-gloria’s Meek-fret.
[5] I feel a theme coming on.
[6] You can purchase the gliders for $1 at the gift shop. On previous visits to the column, I always thought it a cheesy thing to do…and it probably still is.
[7] One of the two scientists credited – mistakenly – as being the “discoverers” of DNA.
[8] Old as in former, not old as in age seventy-three.
[9] His leave is paid. Mine is not.
[10] Indeed, returning from the sabbatical, I felt as if I were starting from scratch.
