I told a girl I was a manic-depressive the other day. She was what you call smoldering. Some tight-bodied Connecticut vixen with blonde hair and a habit for chain smoking. She was an artist, and she was apparently an alcoholic because she was in AA. Four months sober. She had little jewels right in the corner of her eyes, which usually gives me pause, but she was an artist an her body screamed like an orgasm. In my mind anyways because I couldn't not think of fucking her when I looked at her. Every time. In every way.
I should've listened to my instincts though because eventually the conversation would shine through, and it sounded familiar. And not in a good way. But I played along for the hell of it and for the ride. It didn't take long to realize she was a crazy. A self-absorbed crazy, which I could maybe pin on the sobriety, but still. That's not my cup of Joe no matter how hot the water is. My kind of crazy is wild and carefree, and I feel as if we'd have met four or so months ago we could've been a trainwrecked pair like Bonnie and Clyde, driving around both drunk and sex-flirting. That wasn't the case though, and as the night waned at some swag Venice house party that I didn't know anyone at, I asked her outside as we shared another cigarette. "So Kelly," I said, "what's it that you want to do to me - with me?"
She cocked her head, confused at the question. "I don't know," she said. "That's a strange question to ask. I don't know." She looked a bit put off, but hell I'd been a bit put off the whole night.
"Well, how do you see me then?" I asked. "What do you see me as?" I figured I'd already got her pegged, and I did for the most part.
"I don't know. You seemed a lot like me, I guess. Interesting. Creative. Someone cool to hang out with. I don't know. I'm not really in a place right now to be intimate." Which means she wanted a friend, and I knew that. From experience.
"Gotcha."
"That's weird. Why'd you ask that?" It made her uncomfortable. I could tell. Her cover was blown. She was sober and she didn't want to have sex with me, and I knew it for certain now. I had some inkling suspicions over the course of the night, especially when I'd tried to kiss her, but now I was positive.
"I don't like to beat around the bush," I said. "And I like to know how other's see me. Their perspectives. Because it's not always what I think. And after all, that's what defines us."
"I don't think I like that," she said. She looked it too, like she'd smelled bum piss in an alley. "Don't worry about what others think. Do what makes you happy. What matters is how you see yourself." She sounded like an AA sponsor, spouting off talking points, and she was flustered, in that annoying way.
Which usually isn't a good thing if you're trying to get into a girl's pant, but that wasn't on the menu, or even in the same restaurant, so why not rattle her foundation a little bit.
"Yeah, that matters of course," I said, "but that's not what defines us. Words don't define themselves. They need other words for that. They're defined by their peers."
To which she replied, "But I'm not a word. I'm a person."
"You're a name." I didn't say that out loud. It was in my head. A name. Which is kind of like a word in that it's a group of letters smashed together between two spaces. You may think you know how to describe yourself, but others know better. Trust me. If you don't, it'd just be like using a word in its own definition. It's a cop-out. It's for people afraid of hearing anything bad about themselves. As Mr. Wallace would say, "That's pride fuckin' with you."
