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| The heart with a mind of its own.(Be present.) | The mind with a heart of its own.(It's past.) | The dream that is your waking life.(Go there now.) | |||
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The Demon Who Holds Fast to Sartre�s Definition of A Perfect Relationship
There was dinner last night with The Demon Who Always Does The Right Thing. If you recall, I was having my demon tag along for an Aisho-san viewing and consultation. (And on that consultation, I�m taking a big risk on the lesbian-to-straight translation, much less the American to Japanese-American translation.) The Demon and I met just before six, drove down to the restaurant and�wait for it�of course he wasn�t there. But we sat down and had a fabulous sushi dinner anyway and talked about, oh, random things. We talked about Stona�s upcoming wedding and how The Demon was roped into going wedding dress shopping with her. Now, no one in our little group truly seems to believe in the eternal or equal quality of marriage, and Stona�s upcoming wedding is setting off all those warning bells that all thinking women, you�d think, have. But Stona is persisting. Adamantly. And she�s taken a second job delivering pizzas so that she might be able to afford an even more elaborate day of fantasy. The Demon and I talked about this and about Stona�s having brought up the strip club that she (Stona), The Demon�s Ex-grrlfriend, Daemon, and I visited a few months after The Demon and The Ex parted ways. The Demon rather derisively told me of Stona�s assertion that she truly enjoyed the strip club visit because she got to look at women�s tits. (Try having this conversation�loudly�in a sushi bar and not getting The Look from the gathered suburban heterosexual couples who mistakenly thought they were coming out for a nice sophisticated evening of raw fish.) And this �I really enjoyed going to the strip club� confession by Stona I suppose (and The Demon does too) was foolishly meant to relate Stona�s white, lower-middle class, submerged but still heterosexist self to The Demon�s commitment to lesbianism and a life centered on the primacy of relationships with women. That led into a discussion about The Demon�s attraction to women and my attraction to men and women both. The Demon asked, �Why are you attracted to men?� And, god help me, the only thing I could think to answer was, �Because they�re aliens. They�re aliens from outer space.� She also told me about a friend of hers, Elizabeth, who had been, for a very long time, a lesbian: Had come out as a lesbian in a small town, at a time when it was not as accepted to come out as anything out of the ordinary. But after living for years as a lesbian, had suddenly realized that she was no longer gay and �came out� as a heterosexual woman. (Isn�t it odd how there isn�t a name for that? Breeder, maybe?) Anyway, The Demon was telling me that she told Elizabeth about Max�s and my marriage, how we lived together for so long, married, and then divorced after a year. Elizabeth had said, �Isn�t that amazing that they had to formalize the relationship first by getting married so that they could end it?� And when The Demon reported this comment to me, it was like, of course. Of course that�s what we did. Of course that�s what we had to do. I was amazed that a total stranger could know so much about me, could see so clearly a part of me that is at work in my life in such an important way, such a primal way, but which I am clearly unable to see in/of myself. We finished up our dinner, paid, and were leaving the restaurant. I was ahead of The Demon, and she did that thing to me. You know that thing where you keep walking and chatting away, assuming that the person to whom you are talking is right there with you, right behind you? Well, she did that. I was chatting about god knows what, pushing my way through the heavy door of the restaurant, and she had stopped at the front desk to talk to the hostess. I couldn�t even be peeved at this because she was asking when Aisho-san worked (Sundays, Mondays, and Tuesdays only, to break the other sushi chefs for their days off). We had planned to meet The Grrlfriend and Max for dessert at Flying Star, so we drove out there. The Demon ordered coffee and pie and I had coffee. She was worried that the Grrlfriend, a recovering alcoholic, would be able to smell or taste the bit of plum wine that had been on the oranges we finished dinner with. As we stood in line, I joked that she should be more worried about the fishy smell on her fingers. (Yes, more Looks from the gathered suburbanites.) That led to a lot of �No, really, do they smell?� jokes and surreptitious smelling of fingers. (And I guess it�s a bit crass, but it was funny as hell at the time, and, even better, the Grrlfriend thought it hilarious as well.) And the Grrlfriend? Whew. She showed up wearing a new push-up bra/ tight shirt combo that The Demon had warned me about. (The Grrlfriend had adventurously left a single button at the neckline undone. �I can pretend I have breasts!� she exclaimed, showing us by arching her back. �You need to take that down another button,� I suggested. And she did, leaning seductively back in the booth.) There isn�t much else to report. However, as much of the evening was spent talking about relationships and how to form them and how to maintain them, I�ll say just this one last thing: Max and I stopped at Target on the way home because he needed socks and underwear. Max picked out his stuff and we went up to the cashier. There was a couple in line just ahead of us. The girl looked about twenty. She was short and very skinny with streaky blonde hair. She was wearing blue-and-white striped pedal pushers and flip-flops (and she had the strangest feet I have probably ever seen, with three middle toes that were all the same length and large and small toes that were I suppose stunted, barely reaching the first joint of her longer middle toes). The boy looked about the same age, was taller, also skinny, and had dark, messy brown hair. They were alt, but only just so, and alt in such a way that made you know with absolute certainty that their secret-est desire in their secret-est hearts is to get married and live in a big house in the suburbs and have 2.5 kids and matching Volvo station wagons. And that�s not so unusual. You run into couples like that all the time if you�re not being careful. What was unusual was their behavior. The girl? Well, she kept skipping off to gather various kinds of candy from the checkout stands. Then she would come back to the emo boy and rub against him, touching him all over his back and running her hands down his ass. This happened over and over. At one point, she did this thing where she wrapped both her legs around one of his and rubbed her crotch against his thigh. It reminded me of a cat in heat. (A woman behind us said to her companion sotto voce, �I�ll bet that�s her brother.� A comment that got a laugh and a �That�s so wrong,� reply.) I suppose the girl thought she was turning her boy on, but he paid her not the slightest bit of attention. He wouldn�t even look at her. He paid for his milk and aluminum foil and started to walk away. He walked about ten or twelve feet away and waited as she paid for her candy, but he had forgotten one of his bags. The cashier pointed it out to the girl, who turned and said, �Neil? Neil, honey?� He said nothing, didn�t look at her or in any way acknowledge that she spoke. �Neil, you forgot your bag.� She held it out, but he didn�t budge. He gave her a look out of the corner of his eye, a look very near to contempt, and allowed her to carry the bag over to him. Then he wouldn't reach out and take the bag from her, she had to basically put the bag handles in his hand. She rubbed against him as he took the bag, and they left the store.
More lies:
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