2001-11-21

Mary, Mary

Well, Miss Whitey B. actually seems to be doing better lately; she's a lot more bright-eyed and animated than she has been, and actually put up one hell of a good struggle last night when we tried to give her a "sub-Q" (a nasty bit of business involving my holding her down and cooing at her while Kev grabs her by the scruff of her neck and sticks a needle in her in order to get more fluids into her system). While it's frustrating for us, to be certain, it also makes me happy to see her so obviously bullshit at us; a few days ago, she couldn't do much else but sit on the floor, listlessly flicking her tail and looking about as pitiful a creature as I've seen in a long, long time.

I mean, she was totally pissed at us last night; you could see the smoke billowing out of her ears. It made my heart sing, it did.

I do want to thank everybody who sent emails and messages fairly bursting with well wishes. Kev doesn't buy into it, but I personally believe that all the good energy you've been sending our way has been helping.

On to other news....

So I'm involved in this completely demented Craft Fair that's coming up next month. I make these way silly mosaic thingies out of bathroom tiles, old Mardi Gras beads, and prayer cards. So I went down to the basement the other day to fetch some more tiles when I came across a box of my crap that I never bothered to unpack when we moved into our house, oh, four years ago. It was full of zines, mostly from around �94 or so, when I was still semi-starry-eyed and had all kinds of lovely ideas about "Girl Love saving the planet," back when about a third of my paycheck went into Team Dresch and Heavens to Betsy releases.

Oh, what a bitter spore I've become since then, chickens. No, I take that back; I look at the couple of years I spent forcing myself to universally like other girls as a brief respite from my natural disposition, which is to view all women of my own age with an obtuse, irrational distrust until they either prove me wrong or I wear myself out.

Before you all start playing armchair psychologist with me, let me be up-front and state that I am completely aware of how fucked-up this is. I must also say that over the past few years, my suspicious nature has garnered some of the best friends I've ever had. There's nothing more thrilling than skulking around another girl like a cat, sniffing her out, in the figurative sense, while she's doing the same to you. It's a very primal and immensely satisfying thing to kind of hate someone until you realize that she's an absolute and unconditional ally.

I'm picky like that.

I am also aware of when, and how, this seed was planted. Mary Onafrolled (kind of not her real name), the "alpha female" of my class from first through seventh grade, was the personification of sheer, unadulterated nastiness. She was a mean, nasty girl, that Mary. In later years, I would come to learn something of her family life that perhaps led her to be as evil as she was, but at eleven years old, I didn't have the maturity or sensitivity (you know, the way I do now) to process that information in such a way that I could forgive her for being such a venomous, beady-eyed little cretin.

Unfortunately, I proved to be an altogether too irresistible target: bespectacled, overweight and bookish. Mary and her little blonde coolies hounded me every single day at school and, when they found themselves gathered somewhere on a Saturday or Sunday, actually started calling me at home to harass me. Eventually my parents had to pull me out of the school.

I watch, with interest, some of the shows that have been put together to address the issue of bullying in schools. I long ago stopped playing the victim game where that's concerned. I was a dork, and therefore easy prey. I accept this.

If anything, I value the lessons I learned from Mary about friendship. I found out several years later from a former classmate that the tables were turned on Mary shortly after I left � frontier justice at the behest of a bunch of 12-year-olds. Whether my leaving had anything to do with that I can't say; I haven't seen or spoken to Mary in well over fifteen years. I used to wonder if she was ever sorry for the way she treated people back then. I used to imagine that I'd run into her, somewhere, and that she'd apologize. But that sort of fantasy is a cheat; it's too glib and sophomoric and obvious an ending. I'm confident, in fact, that she hasn't ever reflected on it even once. Somehow that thought pleases me; it's ultimately what I always wanted from Mary. I certainly never craved her friendship, or even her acceptance. Basically, I simply wanted her to ignore me.

lisamcc at 12:01 p.m.

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