Friday, January 12, 2007

Alter Egos: Reality Or Make Believe

This week's visit to the couch assigns me the nametag: Hi! My name is...Little Miss Drama.

You see, it is probably no surprise to those still on board (and you got your own name tags, don't you?) that I tend to have an overactive imagination. Along those lines, I will romanticize a guy here and there. If there is a spike to his hair - he has a pompadour! White sweat pants - he's a pervert! Serenades me with the guitar - he's a bad boy! Wears a velvet jacket, like my own - he's gay! All of those together? Whoa - Rock-and-Roll-hall-of-fame-Tom-Cruise-IS-gay-Elvis-has-not-left-the-building-and-most-certainly-did-not-die-on-the-can-while-my-guitar-gently-weeps! So a kiss on a shoulder, a gaze in the eye, karaoke with broken zippers, drunk texts, lint-rolling - it's all for romance, isn't it?

And so I might just build a guy up - perch him up on that pedestal. Because it's usually better than the reality. And then when the reality is really that - Real Pedestal Romance and sweet and tingly - then I can't go up with it. So I will find fault with the littlest thing (like, say, an accent) and if I can't find the fatal flaw I go and create a whole alter ego of an unsavory nature for the chap because my own little make-believe that I - and I alone - participate in will protect me from what I am afraid of and something that has been so alien to me for a very long time now: a real, live good-to-me man. Who is cute, funny, successful, happy, kind, and has a dog that I have been given free reign to decorate!

A Walk In The Woods (smitten!) turns into a Walk In Space (cu-cu!) turns into a Walk In The Bookstore (support for the cu-cu!) because what I am doing in my own head and sparing you the details of - is actually fodder for kiddie lit. I have recently discovered the children's SkippyJoe Jones books centered around a siamese cat whose head and ears are too big for his body (thank you Mr. Illustrator! and I have my own bone to pick with my own illustrator - does my butt really have to take up so much room on the page - really? and can't you just give me the Ashlee Simpson nose? contract negotiations are in order or I may walk to Mickey Mouse, he's offering me lots of cheese). So this mighty charming character believes that he is really a chihuahua. So he (I'm not sure, but I think with the author's help - reality-make-believe-line-blurred) creates this whole alter ego around this image in which he becomes Skipito Friskito and he fights crime or something of the sort. Banditos be damned! So charming! Sign me up for the fan club.

And so my point? If only to remind you that, no, I am not dating a crime-fighting endearingly fucked-up cat. But, I might think I am on the verge of something a little more real. So my inner dialogue leaves me to kill his alter ego off in a climactic blow-up scene that would make Quentin Tarantino proud and an endorsement from McDonalds and is really too violent for these pages anyways (gun control). (Details withheld due to: Sharing is so 2006 and 2005 Jinx and the Crazy Has Left The Building.)

Is it the Real Thing or something Make Believe?

In due time, banditos...

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