What are we not allowed to say? As a kid were told that honesty is the best policy, and with all the court shows out there we are programmed to believe that we should always tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Its true that a good friend will tell you the truth even when it is not asked for. For instance
"Emily, don't wear that. Trust me, just don't"
"Emily, you have something in your teeth"
"hey bitch, youre skirts up, we can all see your ass"
Etc
But there are other things, that while, yes, they are the truth, and they are probably the whole truth you are not, or SHOULD not be at liberty to say. You may not speak freely on some subjects. I dare you.
Do you ever tell somebody that you 'settled' ?
That you regretted either staying with them or regretted leaving them?
Do you ever tell somebody the same tale you told somebody else while you were with them?
Even disclosing infidelity can be incredibly self serving. My many times you find that it really only relieves your conscious yet it will weigh so heavily on the others that its just crippling at times. Granted infidelity is by far the trickiest of the bunch and is all too subjective for anybody to make that call for anybody but themselves, and it really has no place in this tangent other than to serve as an example.
Where love, fondness, and favour are concerned, the truth can be just as, if not more self serving than a lie.
The word love bothers me. There are too many of them, either as nouns, or adjectives.
There are first loves, epic loves, star crossed loves, lost loves, the love of your life, comforting loves, a dangerous love, forbidden loves, and strange loves. Theres platonic love, and worst of all there are loves that never quite got to be LOVE. Those are the ones we always questioned. These are things that if realized, or even fabricated out of broken memories can haunt you.
I think that as a person we are dealt the unfortunate hand of being doomed to fall in love with love, or something that we are told to be love. We become a kennel full of strays staring out of our cages to all of the people who walk by with big hopeful eyes hoping that well be picked to be taken home, play in their yard and sleep at the foot of their bed. Sure, some of us are runts, mutts, show dogs and designer cross breeds, but a dog is a dog. A show dog doesn't give any more love to its master than a stray, both can snip at your fingers if over eager for a treat or if they feel their territory is threatened, both will occasionally take a shit on your carpet. Yet all kinds of dogs, all sizes, colors, shapes and breeds are depicted in timeless paintings of honour, nostalgia, friendship and compassion. From portraits of the wealthy to the poverty stricken resuce missions.
Sadly, not all owners are fit. Weve all been left at a doorstep, run away from our own yard, gotten things blamed on us that was never our fault, and have probably wondered if wed ever make it out of the pound alive.
Metaphors aside, I know that my dog loves me. Of course she lies to me. When shes doing something shes not supposed to be doing I hear a scurring and a knocking over of numerous things and magically find her across the room, with food on her face, or gum stuck to her ear. This does not mean that she does not love me. She has no reason to lie either. Not about the big things anyway. Hell, she could hate me, and there would still be my father, or any number of people who I know are just dying to get their hands on my dog. But after the initial excitement of a new face, and a new scent, she always comes back to sit in my lap, put her chin on my knee, and try to sneeze in my food in hopes of getting it.
You probably think that I, like every other dog owner (usually female) give my dog too much credit. And I probably do. But lola has never pretended to lick my face or snuggle up against me just for the brief pleasure of a tummy rub or a game of tag every couple of months, when her schedule allows for it or when every other pair of hands is busy playing with other dogs. Sure she whores herself out, but not like that, and not with me.
I don't expect any of these qualities really from a person. I don't expect the same exact qualities from any other dog either for that matter. All of my dogs have been very different from one another, yet the one thing that remained consistant was that they all had my best interest at heart. Even when she does misbehave, as with all loves, sometimes you need to accept that maybe they just cant help it. Nurture all you want, some things will never be able to get past their nature
Thursday, June 3, 2010
glamerican fiction
Its really only a matter of time before we pass each other in a bookstore and either pretend not to notice or force a surprised tone and feign happiness for how well the other seems to be doing, or how far they’ve come in life ;it’s the kind on emotion which one can only express if they havent listened to a word that’s been said. Its unique exclusively to repressing the memory of a person who isn’t gone.
that’s what friends are for.
They grow up and apart. They grow up, they move on. They give you a base mark. Or that’s what we all like to think.
I saw Jordan in the dressing room of a small trendy and overpriced boutique. She would go on to become a weather girl. Her forecasts and her bust line wouldn’t fool anybody in any city.
Mary Anne I would see in a gas station, buying a butterfinger and paying for gas and a diet coke. Tall, tan and gorgeous as usual. She would have an extremely buff and guido boyfriend waiting impatiently in the car for her tapping the steering wheel with an exasperated look.
Johnny would drunkenly hit on me in an after hours joint a few times before he would eventually realize who I was. Then a few more times before he remembered how much of an asshole he always to me in school. How many jokes and laughs he had at my expense. I would entertain the idea of vengeance the first few times before I deciding it wasn’t worth it.
Mr. Montfries my French teacher would sit next to me at the one and only AA meeting I would ever go to, as moral support for my sister who had woken up naked in somebody’s back yard a week before. Mr. Montfries wife was known for giving tutoring sessions that yielded notoriously slim improvements in the ability to actually conjugate verbs.
Bennett would do lines with me in the bathroom of this one club that had a good show every few weeks. She would always look like she had been up for days crying, I was never convinced it was solely due to the blow. But I’m sure that never helped the matter either.
Matt and Elliott, the twins were always fighting. Years of ’maturity’ would never change that. With some it never does. I it would rain the night that Stephen would have his gay assistant carry me out to the car when my heel broke, and we would pass the duo brawling in the parking lot. One would eventually notice and think that I looked a little like me; but not enough to say anything. Later that night and early into the next morning Stephen and I would get into a Jesus brilliant fight about me not being impressed enough with his his bank account and that he could do better. His assets were more than impressive but not why I was with him, and he would go on to do better.
Kayla's family would unknowingly hire Marcus to play bagpipes for her funeral. I would hear him tuning from outside the men’s room and never let myself ask exactly how one goes about tuning a bagpipe or how to know if its out of tune. At the time it would seem inappropriate and out of place, and I would probably never get the chance or remember to ask again. I would later when “friends” of ours went out to a sports bar for drinks. And to remember Kalya, and of course freeze with the fear that even the gymnasts, and health nuts out there aren’t in shrouded bubble wrap.
I would see Monica on the news when her family hadn’t heard from her for a few weeks after she had joined some new age movement. Her remains were identified due to her dental records, the braces that she had always been so proud of as a little girl. “Monica Shaw….” I would mutter “that the name sounds sooooooooooooooooooo familiar” to my fiance. But I just couldn’t place it. Probably because she had dyed her hair green like all the rest of them. That engagement was remarkably brief and ended quite abruptly for some reason or another. I forget why exactly.
I would see Evan out in the college town bars acting as if he was blind, quite convincingly with his dog and sunglasses. Giving folded fives or ones in lieu of the 20s or 50s that he should be paying. Even with every shadow of a doubt that he could have had e ruined when he would wink at me as her back was turned. He had always been a snake.
One day I may look back at these blips of my past and others futures. Time is a creation of man, and exists solely for the purpose of convenience. Waiting until something happens, or how long since something has. Perhaps I had mistaken one person for another, or my memory had been clouded due to the dust storms of my own life. But sitting here alone with my memories I take comfort in the fact that if I can remember things so insignificant of others that had floated languidly in and out of my life that somewhere or someday somebody else will remember me talking too loudly, crying in a booth, or helping a stray dog cross the street safely. Isnt that all we have really? The stories we have to tell, or is it the ones that we ourselves cannot tell, ones that have to be told for us?
that’s what friends are for.
They grow up and apart. They grow up, they move on. They give you a base mark. Or that’s what we all like to think.
I saw Jordan in the dressing room of a small trendy and overpriced boutique. She would go on to become a weather girl. Her forecasts and her bust line wouldn’t fool anybody in any city.
Mary Anne I would see in a gas station, buying a butterfinger and paying for gas and a diet coke. Tall, tan and gorgeous as usual. She would have an extremely buff and guido boyfriend waiting impatiently in the car for her tapping the steering wheel with an exasperated look.
Johnny would drunkenly hit on me in an after hours joint a few times before he would eventually realize who I was. Then a few more times before he remembered how much of an asshole he always to me in school. How many jokes and laughs he had at my expense. I would entertain the idea of vengeance the first few times before I deciding it wasn’t worth it.
Mr. Montfries my French teacher would sit next to me at the one and only AA meeting I would ever go to, as moral support for my sister who had woken up naked in somebody’s back yard a week before. Mr. Montfries wife was known for giving tutoring sessions that yielded notoriously slim improvements in the ability to actually conjugate verbs.
Bennett would do lines with me in the bathroom of this one club that had a good show every few weeks. She would always look like she had been up for days crying, I was never convinced it was solely due to the blow. But I’m sure that never helped the matter either.
Matt and Elliott, the twins were always fighting. Years of ’maturity’ would never change that. With some it never does. I it would rain the night that Stephen would have his gay assistant carry me out to the car when my heel broke, and we would pass the duo brawling in the parking lot. One would eventually notice and think that I looked a little like me; but not enough to say anything. Later that night and early into the next morning Stephen and I would get into a Jesus brilliant fight about me not being impressed enough with his his bank account and that he could do better. His assets were more than impressive but not why I was with him, and he would go on to do better.
Kayla's family would unknowingly hire Marcus to play bagpipes for her funeral. I would hear him tuning from outside the men’s room and never let myself ask exactly how one goes about tuning a bagpipe or how to know if its out of tune. At the time it would seem inappropriate and out of place, and I would probably never get the chance or remember to ask again. I would later when “friends” of ours went out to a sports bar for drinks. And to remember Kalya, and of course freeze with the fear that even the gymnasts, and health nuts out there aren’t in shrouded bubble wrap.
I would see Monica on the news when her family hadn’t heard from her for a few weeks after she had joined some new age movement. Her remains were identified due to her dental records, the braces that she had always been so proud of as a little girl. “Monica Shaw….” I would mutter “that the name sounds sooooooooooooooooooo familiar” to my fiance. But I just couldn’t place it. Probably because she had dyed her hair green like all the rest of them. That engagement was remarkably brief and ended quite abruptly for some reason or another. I forget why exactly.
I would see Evan out in the college town bars acting as if he was blind, quite convincingly with his dog and sunglasses. Giving folded fives or ones in lieu of the 20s or 50s that he should be paying. Even with every shadow of a doubt that he could have had e ruined when he would wink at me as her back was turned. He had always been a snake.
One day I may look back at these blips of my past and others futures. Time is a creation of man, and exists solely for the purpose of convenience. Waiting until something happens, or how long since something has. Perhaps I had mistaken one person for another, or my memory had been clouded due to the dust storms of my own life. But sitting here alone with my memories I take comfort in the fact that if I can remember things so insignificant of others that had floated languidly in and out of my life that somewhere or someday somebody else will remember me talking too loudly, crying in a booth, or helping a stray dog cross the street safely. Isnt that all we have really? The stories we have to tell, or is it the ones that we ourselves cannot tell, ones that have to be told for us?
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