Memo to Gentlemen Over 39

Pretty Lady is delighted to confirm that the vast majority of her gentlemen friends appear to hold no quarrel with her definition of feminism, at least in theory. But as she was discussing just this weekend, over a pitcher of pseudo-margaritas with some dear colleagues from Pittsburgh (none of them could figure out what was in those 'margaritas'--half a liter of Triple Sec was anyone's best guess) understanding that Ladies are People, Too is merely the beginning. And that this fact, all unwitting, plays a major role in the Nice Guy Dilemma.

But perhaps she had better clarify.

You see, despite her reputation for dating Losers, Pretty Lady's romantic history is by no means confined to them. She has consorted with a fair number of Nice Guys as well. When she looks back on it, now, from the safe and starry-eyed comfort of present circumstances, a certain clarity emerges; a certain Pattern, if you will. And so she will share with you now, all you Nice Gentlemen, the real reason she rejected all those decent fellows.

Once upon a time, many Nice Guys of Pretty Lady's acquaintance were drawn to her. What drew these fellows (besides the obvious) were her qualities--of expressiveness, intelligence, creativity, and a simultaneously gregarious and introverted amiability. Specifically, they liked her because she was a talented, outspoken artist with a cadre of close and well-chosen friends.

The trouble arose when, after a time, it became apparent that these qualities were not only genuine, they were permanant. After a certain time-frame of halcyon acquaintanceship had passed (perhaps three months, perhaps six), Pretty Lady did not change a whit. She continued working assiduously in her studio, speaking out in public, and socializing with her friends.

It never seemed to Pretty Lady, feminist that she is, that her essential stability of character ought to create a problem, particularly when consorting with gentlemen whose Niceness veritably radiated from their stolid core. She was never deceptive about her goals, habits, or intentions; neither was she selfish or neglectful in her dealings with these splendid friends. She merely continued being exactly the same person she was before she met them.

Gradually, she came to suspect that the gentlemen suspected that her personality was All An Act. Certain comments they let drop, as well as certain assumptions they acted upon, led her to believe that they didn't believe she meant it. For example: While attending art school, at a party in San Francisco, she once met an editor from Berkeley--presentable, humorous, and Catholic. This editor took her number and asked her out. Over drinks, he inquired as to her preferred painting medium. Acrylic?

"Oil," Pretty Lady replied.

"Oh, you're serious," he responded.

Pretty Lady nearly got up and walked out. That any gentleman should assume that she would throw up any semblance of financial stability, move halfway across a continent and take up residence on Haight street, merely to dabble in an amateur endeavor, struck her as clueless in the extreme. If a man is living in California, and he asks a lady out who makes no secret of the fact that she has moved there from Texas to attend art school, he ought reasonably to expect that he is dating an artist. QED.

But it was gradually borne in upon Pretty Lady that, whatever this fine fellow thought of artists, he didn't actually expect her to be one. He assumed, that once relations between the two of them had come to a solid understanding, all her creative attentions would naturally redirect themselves toward his affairs. "I need to go to the studio" was consistently treated as a coy, trivial evasion, when it came down to a choice between this and playing hostess to his cadre of editorial friends; "artist" was all very well when it came to cocktail conversation, but the practical discipline of such struck him as superfluous.

Pretty Lady dumped him immediately after the Christmas party.

This was by no means an isolated circumstance. Verily, it seemed to Pretty Lady that every time she attempted to consort with Nice Guys her own age or older, something similar would happen. Initially attracted to her style, they ended by ferociously attempting to change it, either by main force (breaking in on best friend tete-a-tetes and demanding that she renounce the Ramones, right now) or by blithe dismissal (planning a long-term Future Together that included world travel, darling babies, and glamorous residences devoid of studio space.)

In sum, it was as if these earnest, faithful, committed swains had been taught from the cradle that charming ladies acquire their charm solely for the purposes of attracting a mate, and thence for brightening the path of that mate, forever and ever amen. They believed this so implicitly that they were honestly deaf to other interpretations, such as that lady artists make art. So when Pretty Lady revealed her inner self to be none other than Pretty Lady, as advertised, they were horribly betrayed.

Interestingly, Pretty Lady has never had this problem when consorting with gentlemen born after 1970. These darling boys accept her at face value, and love her for it. She hopes it is not an indiscretion to allow that her current G.F., born in 1971, not only accepts and applauds her for who she is, but would be seriously disconcerted if she suddenly became someone else--i.e. an agreeable Wifey who hung around his theatre, straightening his tie.

So, as advertised: Gentlemen over 39, this is a memo from the Future. The Future would like you to know, chiefly, not to be afraid. Not only is it perfectly possible to have an intimate relationship with a lady who is a fully realized peer, it is actually comfortable and functional to do so. You will find, after you adjust, that your sense of personal worth can withstand close, daily contact with a lady whose sole purpose is not to bolster it. You may find, that without the pressure to Dominate and Steer, an unwonted sense of Freedom may take hold of your soul. You may discover that your intellect becomes keener, your spirit becomes brighter, and your future more adventurous, with a lady by your side who offers you more than the dead weight of a passive Adorer.

Because the opposite of survival is not failure; it is to thrive.

How to Settle (or not)

Darlings, Pretty Lady must be quite, quite serious with you this morning. For it strikes her that in the Matrimonial Wars, a lot of people are getting away with hyperbole and half-truths, brought on, no doubt, by a lack of guidance from Experienced Elders. Pretty Lady is not quite an Elder, yet, but the one thing she does have is Experience. And so she will share it with you, in an attempt to prevent some of you from making Terrible Mistakes.

On the one hand, we have a bit of pragmatic advice from a lady who made the hyperbolic and quixotic decision to while away her wait for Prince Charming by becoming a Single Mother, on purpose, with a Sperm Donor. Thus we understand that this person's nature is already given to extremes:

My advice is this: Settle! That’s right. Don’t worry about passion or intense connection. Don’t nix a guy based on his annoying habit of yelling “Bravo!” in movie theaters. Overlook his halitosis or abysmal sense of aesthetics. Because if you want to have the infrastructure in place to have a family, settling is the way to go. Based on my observations, in fact, settling will probably make you happier in the long run, since many of those who marry with great expectations become more disillusioned with each passing year.

And then we have the predictable Idealist Backlash:

At this point, you realize the entire article is reactionary bullshit the author herself doesn’t believe. How do I know? If she really thinks that being married to a closeted gay man who exchanges housework for her willingness to pretend she doesn’t know what he does on weekend nights, then she would go husband-hunting at her local ex-gay meeting. If you want to be a beard, then there’s an easy, quick, no-nonsense solution for you. I don’t see how it couldn’t work.

Now, now, everybody. Settle down. Pretty Lady means it.

For it strikes her that here we have a classic case of ill-defined terms. Our underlying assumptions regarding these terms may be vastly different; moreover, our experience with reality may encompass similar extremes. On top of it all, Pretty Lady has noticed a distressing tendency in modern society to treat other human beings as mere shopping-mall commodities; as interchangable appendages of Image and Status, and not as the unique package-deal phenomenae that each and every one of us are.

So let us get a few things straight.

First of all, as you well know, Pretty Lady has many times experienced that passionate high, that luminous miracle, that overwhelming compulsion commonly referred to as True Love. She is intimately familiar with the instantaneous familiarity, the roseate view, the suspension of time and physics which accompanies it; she has explored its channels and vicissitudes from haloed beginning to apocalyptic end, time and again.

And she is certain of one thing: This feeling has nothing to do with actual love. It is a strong indication that the object of one's passion has triggered an unhealed Issue in one's psyche, which requires addressing in order to achieve genuine emotional maturity.

This is not to say that one should shun this feeling of True Love, or refuse to explore it. It is merely to say that things are bound to end badly. Be certain to take notes on why that should be, and how to do better next time.

Second of all: if you are the sort of person who sees no ethical problem with dumping a person with whom you have excellent conversation, compatible values, and decent chemistry, simply because you think you can do better, you are a jerk and an asshole and deserve to die alone and forgotten. See above, viz. the commodification of actual human beings. It is narcissistic and disgusting to treat another person as merely a vehicle for the aggrandizement of one's ego; it is a particularly noxious form of parasitism which states, 'well, he's fine for the time being, but I really couldn't consider marrying anyone who wasn't richer/better looking/funnier/more adventurous in bed.'

Ladies, we have a word for the fellow who tells you, "You're nice and all that, but you really need to lose a few pounds." If we expect Equal Rights, we must take equal responsibility for not being Total Pigs.

So: when a person with actual integrity is deciding whether to Settle for her current swain, or to continue trolling the deeps for her soulmate, it is PARAMOUNT to understand that you are not choosing between Mr. Present Tense and Mr. Future Perfect. You are choosing between Mr. Present Tense and being ALONE.

As Pretty Lady's friends know, she once made this painful and difficult choice. The potential partner in question was, really, a dream come true--handsome, wealthy, debonair, adventurous, and inherently monogamous. He also had a quite splendid extended family, with whom Pretty Lady fell collectively in love, and passionately wanted children, who would, of course, be raised on two or three continents simultaneously, surrounded by loving family and friends.

It is important to understand that Pretty Lady did not feel that she could do better than this man. In fact, she was quite convinced that if she left him, she would undoubtedly do worse.

However, looking ten years down the projected line, Pretty Lady saw her future self, and she did not like what she saw. She saw a frustrated, passive-aggressive person who would be unable to constrain herself from doing things which would cause herself and her family great harm. The fact is, she and her paragon were simply not compatible, and something indelible inside Pretty Lady knew it.

So, in order to spare him this travesty, Pretty Lady called it off. Remaining with him for pure social and financial advantage would have been inexcusably selfish. In fact, he found a genuinely compatible lady, and due to Pretty Lady's honest communication and heartfelt recommendation, lived happily ever after. Pretty Lady wrote him a thank-you note for being such a splendid boyfriend, and he wrote her a similar encomium.

And as it happens, having honestly dealt with her Issues, Pretty Lady didn't have to settle for eternal solitude, after all.

So it seems to Pretty Lady that there are varying degrees of Settling, and the author of this article lumps them all in together, willy-nilly. Pretty Lady will enumerate her personal list of Unacceptable Traits in a Matrimonial Partner, which obviate settling of any kind, and automatically strike the person from the lists:

1) Do not marry someone who is gay. Not even if you were molested as a child, and thus find your spouse's sexual revulsion toward yourself to be vaguely reassuring. You will be bound to feel abandoned, creeped out and despondent when he inevitably disappears into the next room with a 'friend.'

2) Do not marry an alcoholic or a drug addict.

3) Do not marry someone who is severely mentally ill.

4) Do not marry a philanderer.

5) Do not marry a compulsive gambler, or who otherwise demonstrates flagrant financial irresponsibility.

Beyond these obvious no-nos, the only necessary traits in a spouse, according to Pretty Lady's rock-bottom list, are:

1) Good conversationalist. You will be conversing with this person, if all goes well, for the rest of your life; make sure you're not bored.

2) Compatible values. This includes values regarding sex, money, and personal responsibility. It is no good marrying a chatty, engaging polyamorist if you are fundamentally monogamous.

3) Decent chemistry. Earthshattering fireworks are not required, but do not marry someone who repulses you. This sort of thing pushes normal everyday conflicts over the top, rather than assisting in resolving them.

If these three items are full and present in your relationship, you are not Settling at all. You are Sensible and Mature. Please reproduce, now.

The Bar, Revisited

Darlings, Pretty Lady has seen the light; she has finally understood the reason for those silly little label things at the bottom of Desert Cat's posts. It was borne in upon her that, even if a person is cursed with near-total recall of every conversation she has had in this lifetime, ultimately she forgets in what month this conversation occurred. And the archiving function on her new template, not to put too fine a point on it, is dreadful.

So Pretty Lady was up till the wee hours on Saturday, doing that thing ex-librarians do best.

While engaged in this desultory Cataloguing of History, Pretty Lady's mind, naturally, wandered. It occurred to her that at times in every lady's life, she has got to do what she has got to do, whether it is wise or not. Specifically, there comes a time when a lady has simply got to wander alone into a bar, order a double bourbon or ten, and challenge a stranger to a game of pool.

Why has she got to do this? One may ask. One may not receive an answer. The mysteries of the wayward heart are singular and confidential. Pretty Lady does not concern herself with Motive; she merely concerns herself with Tactics.

For it is widely understood that for a single lady, a bar with a pool table in the middle of Brooklyn is the rough equivalent of a jungle in Deepest Darkest Africa, as regards the potential for loss of life and limb. Much bemoaning of this fact has been done, in progressive circles; however, the fact remains. And it seems to Pretty Lady that the focus of this bemoaning is All Wrong, from a tactical point of view.

The most outspoken of the Progressives, you see, have a tendency to preach to the persons least likely to listen; to wit, they preach to the Creeps. Moreover, they behave as though there were more Creeps out there than not--even that the vast majority of a single gender were possessed of Creeplike characteristics. It seems to Pretty Lady that the point of bifurcation, in these people's minds, boils down to Creeps, and Women.

Whereas Pretty Lady notes that a much more practical division is between Creeps, and Decent People.

A Creep, you see, is an individual who gloms on to a diminutive, intoxicated, pool-playing lady late at night and attempts to back her into a corner, or an alleyway, or his apartment. A Decent Person is the one who stands nearby, casually making sure the Creep's agenda is frustrated.

Do you see? This Decent Person is not a predator; he is not a chauvinist; he merely perceives that the pool-playing lady needs to let off a little steam, more than she needs to keep her guard up. He does not judge her for this. He does not question her ability to take care of herself. He merely hangs around, assuring himself that everything is okay.

It is a very great pity that some potential Decent People are cowed, by idealistic notions of Progressiveness, into the idea that looking out for one's fellow citizens is an offensive thing.

For as Pretty Lady has stated in the past, it is not that ladies in bars are incapable of handing a Creep's nether regions to him on a silver platter; it is that if the lady has friends around, she shouldn't have to. It is Pretty Lady's firm opinion that peace and safety are best maintained by invoking the minimum of fuss; plus, allowing a Creep to save face in a small way may prevent that selfsame Creep from coming back with a switchblade. It is always best to look at the bigger picture, before indulging in petty victories.

How to Live Happily Ever After (or Not)

Hello, honeys! You will be shocked, shocked to learn that Pretty Lady, after decades of Loser-Addiction, has changed her ways. Discretion is always her watchword, of course, but the collected evidence of over half a year tends to suggest that her current Gentleman Friend lacks those certain, ineffable Loser qualities which have so frequently plagued her--and he is still around! In fact, Pretty Lady is feeling so sanguine about her circumstances that she is daring to make an Observation regarding Happiness, or the lack thereof, and apply those observations to an inchoate Rule for obtaining, and maintaining, such.

For indeed, darlings, it seems to her that there is only one. When a person has come through the Torrents Of Agony, has traversed the Dark Night of the Soul, has engaged with the Forces of Darkness--to include schizophrenic girlfriends, abusive boyfriends, sadistic, domineering parents, parasitic relatives, treacherous friends, rape, incest, betrayal, perversion, and bankruptcy--and emerged into the sunlight beyond, to behold one's Prince or Princess standing smiling in a field of daisies, what then?

The One and Only Rule: Do not blame Him or Her for the past actions of Them.

Really.

For how often has Pretty Lady observed it--the cherished and beloved Wife of the nicest man she knows, that stanch, calm, patient, observant, accepting, faithful, considerate gentleman who is the best listener on the block, pulls down a substantial salary and grills a mean chicken--berating this paragon year after year after year, for the actions of every Loser she ever consorted with? He is Male, and he is Here, and so he must Pay, and pay, and pay.

And how often has Pretty Lady been that paragon, that calm, faithful, patient, understanding, accepting Good Woman who listened to the rants--against dead people, against cops, against conniving businessmen and psychotic ex-girlfriends--how often has she been that Safe Haven where battering produced no opposing force, just an ever-giving Source who naturally, in her position of Atonement, must Pay, and pay, and pay.

Friends, if you find yourself doing this, please stop. That way lies madness.

For in Pretty Lady's work as a healer, she has empirically discovered that when a person is finally Safe, that is when ancient trauma emerges. The battered psyche which has, for so long, filed unacceptable insults in the To Be Dealt With Later category, finally relaxes, and disgorges the dreck onto the surface. This is a natural process; it cannot be bypassed or suppressed, at least not to good effect. And when this inevitable cycle occurs, it is PARAMOUNT that one does not turn to one's beloved partner and say, "This must be your fault."

One must guard, heavily, against such tendencies. The reflexive mind is, by definition, not given to introspection; it equates Correlation with Causation without a backward glance. It thinks: "Princess, here. Bad dream, just now. Princess+here=Bad dream; therefore Princess=Bad."

With the unhappy result that the Princess is unceremoniously jerked out of a very nice dream indeed, and subjected to the tortures of the damned.

This, darlings, is how the miseries of the past are visited perpetually upon the future, in an inexorable karmic wheel of raging flame. Do not participate! Fling aside the shackles of the past, and embrace the brighter dawn! The next time you feel an urge to Blame come upon you, punt! One punts with the all-purpose, non-judgmental phrase: "Ah. These are my Issues, coming up."

Once again. "These are my Issues, coming up."

All together: "These. Are. My. Issues. Coming. Up!"

And now we get to set those Issues free! Hallelujah!

It Does Not Matter That He Loves You

To the lady who wrote this letter, and to every other lady out there whose husband/significant other/lover regularly sleeps with other women, makes passes at your sister, declares that he Cannot Be Monogamous, will not address his drinking problem, his anger problem, his money problem, his misanthropy, or his habit of saying creatively and unwontedly cruel things to you in a casual tone of voice:

It does not matter that he loves you. Pretty Lady is certain that he does, in fact, love you, to the best of his limited ability. It does not matter. Do you hear? It does not matter.

Pretty Lady is certain that you love this man. She is certain that you are kind, and patient, and understanding, and forgiving. She is certain that you are doing the best that you can. She is certain that you are committed, and Not Being Selfish, and that you are thinking of the children, and that you were happy once upon a time. She is certain that you would do whatever it takes to help your partner heal.

She asks you to consider this: that when your partner makes a pass at your sister, does not come home, wastes your hard-earned money on a random binge, totals the car, tells you that he's not sure that he's attracted to you, screams at you for stupid reasons, neglects to do a small thing that would cost him nothing and make you happy--he's fine with that.

It does not matter that he loves you. He is fine, I say, with hurting you. Seeing your tears is an eminently endurable exercise for him. It hurts you more than it hurts him. You are committed to his healing; he is committed to your pain. He regards your misery as a necessary, if regrettable, price to pay for living. It does not matter that he loves you.

Possibly he cares that he is hurting you; he does not care enough. He has no motivation to change. It does not matter that he loves you.

Do you understand what I am saying?

There is a place where love is not misery; where you do not have to hold your breath and flinch away from the next words coming. Where you do not have to wonder--where is he? What is he doing now? When will he betray me next? How strong do I have to be?

There is a place where you can breathe, where you do not close your eyes against the awful morning, where love is all laughter and trust and silly snuggles. There is a time when the other shoe never drops. There is a world where you can look around you in joy, without watching your back.

There is a place you will be safe.

That place is not with him. It will never be with him. It does not matter that he loves you.

Pretty Lady Has a Brilliant Insight

Hello sweeties! How long has it been! Pretty Lady's life is All Chaos, but she is nevertheless bringing order to it, particularly in the corners where the dust bunnies tend to collect. She is proud to report that several areas of Stagnant Energy in her household have been well and truly Cleared, and more shall be forthcoming. She cannot tell you the peace she feels, when walking into the walk-in closet and discovering that this is, in fact, possible.

(Confidentially, she is engaged in this de-stagnification process on account of her Gentleman Friend, who is taking the gargantuan step of Moving In. As she told him, one's own personal chaos may be marginally tolerable, but Chaos Squared is not. So a new era of Orderly Adulthood is dawning in our lives.)

However, Pretty Lady had to take a break from purging closets and packing Christmas ornaments for storage in order to share with you all her groundbreaking, revolutionary, life-changing Insight. This Insight, if properly understood by the majority, could save the world; at the very least it might preserve a number of arcane friendships. Listen closely:

A boundary is not the same thing as a judgment.

Pretty Lady must pause, here, to allow the ramifications of her genius to sink in. Then she must paraphrase herself:

Setting a personal boundary in no way implies that another person is being judged.

It is possible that some few of Pretty Lady's readers may not yet fully understand the wide-ranging implications of her statement. Thus, she must illustrate:

When Pretty Lady declines your very tempting invitation to: engage in a threesome with you and your dear husband; accept you as a full partner in her fledgling business plan; vote the way you do; subscribe to a similar theological philosophy; repeat nonsense syllables over and over in her head because you told her to; or any similar activity--she is wholly and merely declaring that such activities are not for her. She is not, by any stretch of the imagination, stating that you are a Bad Person for being polyamorous, casual with money, politically extremist, theologically rigid, or Buddhist. She is merely claiming personal sovereignty over territories wherein she is the undisputed expert--her own preferences--and leaving the territories of others entirely untouched.

Pretty Lady understands that to the six well-adjusted individuals upon this planet, this statement may come across as a complete tautology. You six were obviously born wise; let Pretty Lady alone to continue enlightening the rest.

There are many well-meaning persons that take the statement, 'Judge Not Lest Ye Be Judged' a wee bit Too Far. Pretty Lady has been one of these persons in the past, which is why she knows. These persons can be spotted by their calm, understanding demeanor when their then-lover declares, "I'm going to travel through the world, leaving a trail of bastards behind me." They betray no hint of personal indignation when their desirability as a monogamous, committed mate is thus casually impugned; at least, not until they snap, and end up on the police blotter of the Post.

The trick is that these codependent little ladies are, indeed, judging someone. They are judging themselves. They are judging themselves for, deep down, not particularly liking the idea of casual abandonment by cavalier impregnator. Thus, in remaining silent, in failing to state their preference for a more reliable brand of mate, they are desecrating their own souls in the name of non-judgment.

Similarly, persons of a more rigid bent may choose to follow every Biblical law to the letter, except for the abovementioned exhortation. They, subscribing wholesale to a transcendent Moral Law, feel perfectly comfortable in excoriating others for failing to do the same. That is the definition of 'transcendent,' isn't it? 'Transcendent'='Applies to everyone'?

Pretty Lady's reply: No. Not in that way.

Because in order to transcend the individual self, one must first differentiate. That is, one must set a boundary. 'All is One' does not mean 'We are all the same.' It most particularly does not mean 'We are all the same, and if you are not the same as me, then obviously there is something incorrigibly wrong with you, which must either be immediately altered, or eliminated completely.'

Thus, in order to attain the inner Peace which passeth all understanding, it is first necessary to know oneself, and to be fine with that. Then one may begin to know others, and be fine with them, too.

Letter to YOU, dear Narcissist

The narcissist is emotionally attached to only one thing: his disorder. The narcissist loves his disorder, desires it passionately, cultivates it tenderly, is proud of its "achievements" (and in my case, I make a living off it). His emotions are misdirected. Where normal people love others and empathise with them, the narcissist loves his False Self and identifies with it to the exclusion of all else – his True Self included.

--Sam Vaknin, author of 'Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revisited'

Hi honey! Pretty Lady is writing this Special Letter to you, and only you, because you are So Special. She is aware that you may not read it, because in general you only read things that mention you By Name, but Pretty Lady knows that you are so very clever that you will eventually figure out that this letter is for you. Specially.

Confidentially, dear, this little thing called narcissism has come between the two of us. Pretty Lady loves you dearly, she always has, she always will, and you know that. But frankly, at the same time, Pretty Lady can no longer stand to be around you, which is why she cut off all communication with you--how long has it been? Years! And she has no intention of ever letting you soil her life with your presence again. That's firm, and she hopes you understand.

If you've even noticed yet...

But dear. Being the superbly clever person you are--some have even used the word 'brilliant'--it cannot have escaped your attention that you have a little Issue. Pretty Lady even recalls hearing a certain accurate self-diagnosis from your very own lips. 'Narcissist.' Such a pretty word. How beautiful it sounds, when you croon it in that seductive manner.

So Pretty Lady is sorry to tell you that 'narcissist' is not how people view you. Sadly, it is true. That scintillating word, and all of its clever, tangled, brilliant associations simply does not occur to all those inferior yahoos who have been graced with your glorious presence. The word that springs to the vast majority of minds when they think of you (when they think of you at all) is 'asshole.' A great many modifiers are variously applied to this moniker--tacky, vulgar, banal, rude, ignorant, self-absorbed, selfish, repetitive, petty, trivial, treacherous, invasive, pretentious, vain, immature, illiberal and boring, to name a few--but the word 'asshole,' Pretty Lady feels, covers the general opinion nicely.

Now, of course all these people are ignorant peons who cannot understand you. Of course. Their opinions matter less than nothing, just like they do. But honey. Just where is your superiority, if there is no-one around to recognize it? Why are you even bothering to perform all that outrageous posturing you do, if the audience does not matter? Let us face facts, dear. The mirror of others' opinions matters terribly to you, and the unanimous verdict of that mirror is 'asshole.' You are, dear, an asshole, tried and convicted by your own chosen court, and there is no appeal.

I would not be saying this if I did not clearly perceive the peril in which you find yourself. You know I love you.

So darling. Sam Vaknin, in all his expert enlightenment, says there is no hope for you. He may be right. He may also be right when he says that 'religion is the opiate of the masses, as well as a potential source of narcissistic supply.' You yourself, I seem to recall, have echoed Sam Vaknin on these particular points.

But sweetie, I would like to make a suggestion as regards this identity/mirror issue of yours. I would like to suggest a purely intellectual postulate, befitting the very high intellect that you possess. I would like to offer the notion that if there were, hypothetically, a God--an omnipotent, omnipresent, benevolent Creator--than this truly, evidently and incontrovertibly superior being would have created you. I know this notion is abhorrent to you, but hold on a minute.

If this infinitely superior Creator were responsible for your existence, then your value, dear narcissist, would come from Him. Since He is, hypothetically, Perfect, then it follows that He could not make a mistake in you. Which would mean that you, sweetie, would indubitably be as unassailably perfect as you always thought you were.

Hey!

But we must Follow, dear friend. We must approach this issue with Intellectual Rigor. If this Creator created everything, and is solely responsible for your value, which cannot be diminished or taken away, then this must be true of everybody else, too. They must be just as perfectly valuable as you are. There's no way around it.

Hard pill to swallow, I know.

So, let us review our options. On the one hand, according to your preferred method of Narcissist Accounting, your true value is that of 'asshole.' On the other, we have 'perfect child of God.' Which would you like to the be the true one, dear? You, being the ad hoc Arbiter of Value, have the power to make it so. All you have to do is pick one, and behave accordingly.

For if you are truly to be perfect, love, you must know in your bones that those pettifogging others, those peons, those sources of Narcissistic Supply, are perfect too. And you must respect them by word and deed accordingly. Just as if they mattered, in and of themselves.

So cheerio, love! See you in Hell!

The Myth of Masochism

David revisits an old, old issue:

I know a lot of nice guys and I never once heard any of them ask why women are attracted to "bad boys". What they want to know is why women stay with bad boys and why after dating one jerk a women that seems to be inteligent would move right on to another jerk.

The short answer to your question, my dear David, is that this intelligent woman is making a fundamental, existential, and institutionally supported mistake in her spiritual-emotional paradigm. She will continue to make this very same mistake until it either kills her, or she is forced by intolerable misery to question the underpinnings of her thinking. There is nothing you can say or do until then to stop her making this mistake, because, being intelligent, she thinks she's thought of everything.

The nature of this mistake has nothing to do with masochism. The lady does not enjoy being abused. It may or may not have to do with low self-esteem; such behavior is just as likely to be caused by hubris as by an excess of humility. It is certainly not caused by Low Morals; such a woman, you may be assured, is doing her utmost to adhere to a higher ethical standard than that which she applies to others.

The mistake she is making--and listen closely--is this: She is trying to heal the world by absorbing a part of its misery. She is attempting to achieve Balance. In this action she is trying quite sincerely, albeit perhaps unconsciously, to adhere to the widely-held paradigm of Atonement, as performed by one Lord Jesus Christ. She is voluntarily taking punishment for the sins of others, in order to absolve them. And she finds, to her eternal bewilderment, that it does not work that way.

Pretty Lady finds it rather ironic that the selfsame persons who condemn codependent women for being stupid, immoral, and Bad Christians are often the same ones who regard guilt and sacrifice as zero-sum equations. The only difference between them and the unhappy codependents is that the condemners try to get rid of their guilt by projection and excoriation of others, rather than by taking on more than their fair share of punishment.

The fact is, as Pretty Lady has empirically discovered, that it is not possible to heal another person by suffering abuse at their hands. The sum total of misery in the world is not reduced, but increased by this behavior. 'Forgiveness' does not mean 'allowing oneself to be perpetually martyred without complaint.' Pretty Lady doesn't think she needs to engage in any fancy rhetorical flights to convince anyone of that.

The question is, then, what does 'forgiveness' mean? What was Jesus actually doing?

Pretty Lady's current suspicion, supported by the Course in Miracles, is that by the grace of God and through the medium of the Holy Spirit, he dismissed the case against us. He freed us of any need to excoriate self or others by removing the guilt that troubles us. For if one removes the damage, forgiveness is automatic, because there is no injury left to forgive.

How to Be Low-Maintenance

Darlings, Pretty Lady humbly apologizes for neglecting you. The truth is, the time simply got away from her, what with the heat, the Memorial Day barbecue, the roses at the Botanical garden, and lazing around with her new Gentleman Friend. But from what she gathers by the sparse state of her comment threads, most of you are similarly, and she hopes happily, occupied.

Pretty Lady and her Gentleman Friend do not make careers out of slacking, however, and the stress of so much mutual lazing did threaten to set the two of them into Limbo, at one point. Especially in the early stages of a new friendship, a person tends to forget that life is not all about sitting around and engaging in witty repartee, rather like a sitcom. Once the Intense Discussions began to seem a bit forced, Pretty Lady could feel that the next words hovering in the air might well have been, 'well, this has been nice. Let's move along, now.'

Fortunately Pretty Lady came to her senses in time, and the next time the G.F. called and suggested an evening of more purposeless Hanging Out, she declared, 'I really do have to get some work done. How about you bring along those pesky tax papers or something?'

The G.F. understood at once. 'Ah, the Mutual Ignore!' he enthused. 'I'll be right along.' Twenty points were awarded to the G.F. on the spot.

This may shock a few of you, but Pretty Lady has not always had friends who were as understanding and accommodating as this. Some of the most memorable knock-down drag-out fights of her career were precipitated by the fact that she had had the temerity to fall asleep in someone's company--not in the middle of a meal or anything, but during the hours when a person normally sleeps, after working long hours, or running the Bay to Breakers. Pretty Lady puts this down, in large part, to the fact of Spoiling, and Only Children, and the notion that whenever two people are occupying proximate spaces, their attention must be focussed exclusively upon one another.

Pretty Lady suffers from no such delusion, having shared a bedroom with a most beloved sibling for all of sixteen years. Under these circumstances, if both parties are Sensitive, and if long-term harmony is to be maintained, it is utterly necessary to cultivate the tactic of erecting invisible Privacy Shields around one's person. When a person shares a bedroom, overweening self-consciousness is an unaffordable liability.

(Horrors! Pretty Lady must share with you the fact that when she just typed the word 'unaffordable,' the Blogger Spell-Check underlined it in red. Perplexed, she Googled 'unaffordable' and discovered that as she thought, it is spelled 'unaffordable' and not 'unaffordible,' as Blogger would have it. What is the world coming to!)

In latter years, Pretty Lady has found that what makes her happiest, in a sustainable daily-life sort of way, is if she knows there is somebody she is fond of in the semi-near vicinity, working happily away at a project which does not involve Pretty Lady. Then Pretty Lady can occupy herself with one of the four or five or six ongoing projects with which she is concerned, and every now and then pause in order to consume a meal, and chat in a desultory, low-pressure manner. She does not thrive on chaos; what she likes is a quiet, constant hum. This makes her feel both unisolated and undistracted; it helps her to focus, and not slack off.

That is why it has so shocked her in the past, when she got to know somebody, got fond of them, and proceeded to show her fondness by attempting to hang out with them in companionable, industrious silence--and this person responded by throwing a hissy fit. She clearly recalls several conversations with a then-boyfriend, who was on the brink of becoming a Psycho Stalker, wherein he declared, very very late at night on a work day, "It's really rude of you to go to sleep like that. And would you put down your sewing while we're talking?" Or the hostess who could not endure the fact of her friend sitting at the opposite end of the room, reading a book, while she performed her Pilates routine. 'Would you go somewhere else?' she demanded. 'I can't have anyone around while I'm working out.'

(Gracious, one would have thought that she was doing something sexually perverted or something. One wonders how she managed to endure the shame of taking all those dance lessons.)

Pretty Lady feels that such persons are setting themselves up for an exceedingly neurotic existence. It is simply not practical to run one's life under the assumption that if there are other people in the vicinity, all of you are On Stage, and must perform accordingly.

This has nothing to do with the need for Basic Courtesy; one hopes that the tenets of such are not so unendurably constricting as to absolutely require total solitude for many many hours every day, simply in order to function. And it must be stressed that Pretty Lady is not at all a fan of Gossiping, Chaotic work environments; if the person at the next desk insists upon blasting offensive music, engaging in offensive conversation, or repeatedly interrupting her work, that person must be Suppressed.

So, for those of you recovering neurotics who would like to experiment with the Mutual Ignore as a daily lifestyle, Pretty Lady has a few pointers.

1) The Mutual Ignore is mostly mental. It is not control of physical space we are after; it is the cultivation of a State of Mind.

2) This State of Mind involves two basic assumptions: a) that the other person in the vicinity does not expect anything specific of you in an ongoing way (except for the abovementioned Basic Courtesy) and b) that this non-expectation is mutual.

This may seem simple. However, a person must have a base line of inner centeredness to perform it. If a person is incapable of understanding the basic tenets of the Mutual Ignore, it is highly likely that this person likewise does not understand personal boundaries. Either they habitually make the other person's business their business, or they expect that all people around them must be consumingly occupied with their affairs.

It is Pretty Lady's draconian, experiential opinion that these sorts of people must be ejected from her life, so that she can get some work done.

The Path to Freedom

Pretty Lady, in her wild, untrammelled, Bohemian life, often meets fascinatingly Progressive Thinkers. Pretty Lady being who she is, is always charmed. There is nothing she likes better than a late-night conversation about oft-misunderstood doctrines of seventeenth-century philosophy, and the tragic results of these misinterpretations extrapolated into the present day. She can really get her teeth into a good discussion about the Problem of Evil, the glamorization of misanthropy, and the crumbling edifice that is Modern Society.

Pretty Lady's fundamental problem in forming long-term friendships with these sorts of people, however, stems most unfortunately from these same roots. A person who views the flaws in Modern Society with a clear and jaundiced eye is inclined to reject all of its conventions wholesale. And Pretty Lady is pretty darn tired of supervising serial attempts to reinvent the wheel from scratch.

Because a nearly universal hallmark of this sort of Progressive Thinker is a categorical rejection of the notion of Commitment. 'A Trap!' he naturally, progressively thinks, as soon as he shudderingly considers the hellish tangles woven by Family, Society and Culture; 'I shall avoid it, and then I shall be Free! Free to Improve the World, living by my own inner guidance and unfiltered notions of Right and Wrong!'

Oh yes, Pretty Lady has heard it dozens of times before. And she sighs, hangs her head, and continues upon her unwilling and solitary Bohemian path. For the only true entrapment is the pathological need to keep all of one's options eternally Open.

This notion is, to the Progressive Thinker, so counterintuitive as to be utterly unconsidered. But to Pretty Lady, having been a dancer, it is and always has been obvious.

For freedom is Movement; Movement is Change; and to move and to change, a person has to put one foot in front of the other. Then--and pay attention--a person has to commit her entire weight to that foot in front, in order to lift the foot in the back, and move it to another place. In other words, without commitment, no movement is possible.

Pretty Lady felt this fact most acutely during the years she was hobbling around with an injured ankle. It is very difficult to keep putting one foot in front of the other when one foot is not holding one's weight; progress is miserable and slow. During those days, Pretty Lady often thought of her unipedal condition as a metaphor, for being in relationship with a person who is permanently Undecided as to whether or not this thing is for him. Nothing could happen, nobody could go anywhere, because any new logistical situation required the re-negotiation of the entire affair.

This is not to say that a Free Thinker ought to commit her entire future on the basis of one late-night conversation, or even several. A true Progressive makes her commitments cautiously and carefully, after due consideration, plenty of time, and assembling of Facts. But then she must leap, she must spring, or she will never learn to Fly, which is the only reason anyone should ever take up dancing. A leap into the air requires trust, and a relinquishment of control. The commitment-phobic would-be Progressive never gets that far.

Furthermore, the fact of categorical commitment-avoidance does not mean that commitments are never made; it merely guarantees that such commitments are of the lesser-of-two-evils-at-gunpoint variety. For a refusal to decide is a decision in itself, and one that Pretty Lady inevitably will fly away from.

Conflict Avoidance 101

Well, Pretty Lady knew more than she thought she did:

Cops might want to put down the billy club and forget about psychology, new research suggests. An analysis of the TV show “COPS” reveals that the best way for police to calm down hysterical citizens is to look them straight in the eyes...police rely on a steady gaze to calm individuals in many situations, including getting them to cooperate during questioning and arrests, and keeping them from interfering with emergency workers.

Pretty Lady figured that one out by accident, while lunching in a Very Bad Neighborhood one afternoon. She had been reading some uplifting thing or other, and was feeling sanguine about life, and all her brothers and sisters in it.

Suddenly, an enraged and distraught individual became belligerant toward the girl behind the lunch counter. The girl, frightened, picked up a broom and brandished it. An Ugly Scene looked to be on the brink of playing out.

Pretty Lady stood up and regarded the enraged woman. The woman declared, "Whatcha gonna do? Ya gonna hit me?"

Pretty Lady replied, "I'm not going to do anything," in a friendly manner. The woman mumbled something unintelligible and wandered away. Pretty Lady resumed her lunch, and pleasant daydreams.

A few moments later, a confused and stinking older man stumbled in, agitated and shouting. Pretty Lady looked him in the eye and smiled. He relaxed, quieted down, and left.

Pretty Lady has often thought that it is not so much the eye contact specifically, which appears to have this effect; it is the recognition. In effect, her demeanor is saying, "Hey! There you are!"

This is, she feels, often the only thing any of us require.

The Perils of Projection

Crom betrays a basic ignorance as to the limits and possibilities of cyber interactions:

Statistically speaking, I would offer the idea that meeting a like-minded individual in the cliquish familiarity of cyberspace is greater than that of meeting anything remotely resembling a Real Man by your definition in the Five Boroughs.

First of all, Crom, Pretty Lady holds no truck with statistics. Statistically speaking, Pretty Lady permanently dwells at the extreme end of the bell curve; in her experience, this is rather like approaching the speed of light, in Einsteinian physics. Everything you thought you knew turns out to be not only incomplete, but inapplicable, from your asymptotic perspective. Statistics, in Pretty Lady's world, may be a decent tool for after-the-fact analysis and understanding, but as a guiding principle in her life, they are useless. Pretty Lady does what she does, and allows the Holy Spirit to take care of the steering.

This is all by the way, however.

The fact is, Pretty Lady has been meeting 'like-minded individuals' through the Internet since 1995. She is not only a pioneer in this regard, but she has been goofing around in cyberspace long enough to know that, inasmuch as it has its revelations and intoxications, it also has its Major Pitfalls. The biggest pitfall being that it is possible for a reasonably intuitive and socially skilled individual to apprehend more about a person's basic character and personality in five minutes of face-to-face interaction, than in six months of in-depth cyber correspondence.

The Internet, my dear friends, is more like one big Group Therapy session than a genuine community. It can be useful, informative, entertaining and productive. It allows for rumination, experimentation, and postulatory dress-up; it is also an excellent way of finding bargains on second-hand cars and bicycles.

However, by far the most major and unacknowledged commodity trafficked upon the Internet is Projection. When we know nothing of an individual except words on a screen, our minds creatively fill in the blanks. We fill in the blanks with whatever fantasy or animosity we have lying around in our own brains; such filling-in rarely corresponds, even remotely, to the physical actuality of another being.

That is why, if Pretty Lady meets a person on the Internet, and she does not meet this person for coffee and a chat within a month or so of the initial correspondence (under two weeks is by far the best) she tends to write off the possibility of ever knowing that person in person, in more than a casual 'Hey! It's you!' sort of way.

She has entertained too many long-distance marriage proposals from delusional, incompetent twerps, and been used and abused by too many self-involved players, to do otherwise.

Now, if a person meets Pretty Lady in person, and then becomes cybernetically involved with her meanderings, this is a different story entirely. This individual is merely fleshing-out and deepening his original impressions; that is all fine and dandy, and can lead to very rewarding friendships indeed.

But all of this speculative nonsense about the possibility of Pretty Lady's bestowing her deepest affections upon a textual construct is simply obnoxious spouting-off. Pretty Lady has an email address, a phone number, and feet. Any gentleman who lacks the confidence or capability to make use of these facts does not figure in her day-to-day life with any degree of significance.

The Real Man

My lands. Pretty Lady cannot believe the number of times she has answered the question, 'What do women want?' and been greeted by a chorus of head-nodding, only to have the question repeated. To be fair, it is rarely Pretty Lady's friends who are asking this question; it is the unenlightened Others who do so. However, it is so reliably guaranteed to pop up in the community on a regular basis, that Pretty Lady feels she can go on answering it ad nauseam, without any fear of boring her readers.

In brief: Women want a Real Man.

Definition of a Real Man:

One who 1) knows who he is; 2) knows what he wants; 3) engages with her; 4) consistently.

All of these elements, darlings, are crucial.

The vast majority of whining, carping, frustration, rage, and lack of empathy with women comes from wannabe Real Men who wish to cut corners on one or another of the above criteria. The Pathetic faction is heavy on the end of Allowing the Woman to Define him; he is the sort who will go off and drink a gallon of aloe vera juice because the lady demonstrates an interest in holistic health care, and come running back, expecting a pat on the head. The Boorish faction, on the other hand, hold no truck with this sort of thing, at all, at all; he goes after what he wants, attains it, and parks it. He is the sort who invented the immortal line, 'Of course I love you. I married you, didn't I? What else do you want?'

Gentlemen. Please.

A lady does not wish to be the prime motivating factor for all of your actions. This is too much pressure, and it makes her feel decidedly unsafe. It gives her the uncomfortable sensation that if she were to become engrossed in her own activities for half an hour or so, you might go off and commit hari-kari for lack of sufficient attention; she does not want your blood on her hands. When she tells you to 'get a life,' she is being literal and sincere about it.

However, it gives a lady a warm, fuzzy, proud feeling to know that on some level, she is a prevailing influence in her man's life. There is nothing sweeter than the sound of the words, 'I was thinking about what you said, and I've decided...'. These words make a lady feel as though she is more than a decorative possession, to be flaunted or stowed at will. They make her feel that she is an ongoing force to be addressed; a challenge, if you will. Certainly she is more than a combination brood mare and chambermaid.

Pretty Lady would like to point out, as a side note, that a man who pursues several different women simultaneously is NOT a man who knows what he wants. He may claim that what he wants is several simultaneous girlfriends, and a concomitant freedom from responsibility; he may, in fact, want precisely that. However, such a man is incapable of engaging on an intimate level with anyone, and is thus unable to fully know himself. He is constantly shuffling communication modes, is frequently trying to remember which story he told which lady, and is never fully present. How is it possible that this man is honestly cognizant of the contents of his own mind? Let alone that he could have space in there to understand anyone else's?

Pretty Lady notes that all the men she has known who were like that were initially fascinating, having perfected the art of the initial fascination through assiduous practice, but got exponentially more boring every time the tape repeated itself. In pursuing breadth of experience, depth is inevitably sacrificed.

By the same token, a man who does not consistently engage with the woman in his life becomes, inevitably, a tedious lump who ultimately is not worth the space he takes up on the sofa. His routine may be straight, narrow and reliable; he may thus be shocked when the woman who has loyally washed his sheets for thirty years precipitately files for divorce.

But the fact is, circularity serves no ultimate purpose. Whether it be the same circular argument, the same scurrilous betrayal, or the identical carping comment of a political nature repeated every evening for three decades, circularity is a characteristic of Hell. Life, to be ridiculously cliche'd about it, is a journey. What women want is a trusted and intimate companion in a landscape which is always, and intriguingly, new.

Sad news

Pretty Lady's friend from California called this weekend. "I have some sad news for you," she declared.

Pretty Lady nearly went into a panic. "Who died?" she asked, bracing herself.

"I have just been cleaning out my National Geographics," replied the friend. "And I have discovered that there are no single men on the East Coast."

Well, Pretty Lady's keen intuition had figured that out already. Her friend, and National Geographic, merely provided the statistics.

You see, the situation is very simple. Gentlemen, being pragmatic, pursue Good Jobs. Ladies, being frivolous, pursue Quality of Life. The result is that all the single ladies are living east of the Mississippi, and all the gentlemen are west of it.

Thus we have cozy Eastern Seaboard cities full of single ladies--strolling in the parks, attending concerts, visiting museums, hanging in cafés, and trolling the sale racks at designer boutiques. On Sundays, we go to brunch and compare stories about our nonexistent love lives. It is all very congenial.

Meanwhile, every single man in the United States is apparently working some technical job in Texas, Colorado, California, or Seattle. He sits in a cubicle for eight to fourteen hours, drives to his bland suburban ranch house in an SUV, and parks in front of the television of an evening, with a six-pack and a sandwich. We assume that he is content with this state of affairs; certainly he does not strongly feel the dearth of museums, concert halls, or brunch.

The side effect of this state of affairs is that single men who DO live in the Big City have a wholly inflated view of their own worth. They seem to regard the females as so many interchangeable parts; they do not engage in anything so tedious and demanding as Focused Courtship, or even Planned Dates. They wander out, whine, make propositions, and wander off again. Pretty Lady will have nothing to do with such degenerates.

At the same time, Pretty Lady is morally, pragmatically and personally opposed to Playing the Odds in the mating game. Uprooting her life, changing states in the desperate hopes of nabbing a suitable partner is Not Her Style. If it is madness to consider doing this for the sake of an extant, but neurotic and uncommitted (how typical!) lover, how much more so would it be to do so on the basis of a mere Statistic? Perish the thought!

So Pretty Lady formally announces that from this day forward, the City is her Temple. She will live the monastic life of the Pure Artist. She will banish unclean thoughts from her mind; she will contemplate only Higher Things. It is her Destiny; this much is clear. She is content.

Enlightenment! -or- August Explains the Male Mind to a Benighted Pretty Lady

August elaborates upon the Missing Logical Link:

You mentioned a proposition.
You mentioned saying something extraordinary.

Now there has to be an assumption somewhere between the two, and I figure that assumption is in a male brain.

That particular male has likely perceived the extraordinary as the competitive, and is hoping such competitiveness will translate into some friendly competition in the bedroom.
...

As for myself, my assumptions in similar situations are simple: loyalty and competition work in opposition to each other. I simply disengage. I have learned enough lessons the hard way.

Ah. So that's it.

Let us set aside all the sardonic commentary--indeed the floods of rhetorical self-indulgence, illustrated with many florid anecdotes, that sprang to Pretty Lady's fevered brain after she was finally able to wrap her hopelessly feminine mind around the above logical sequence. Let us consider this as read. Let us, merely, ask this theoretical male a theoretical question.

Are you familiar with the concept of a team? As in those sports thingies? Group of persons working together toward a Common Goal, such as to win the Super Bowl, or something else equally random and trivial?

Pretty Lady pauses, for the man to bring this undoubtedly familiar concept to mind, and hold it there.

Now. Think hard. Suppose you were a coach, auditioning players for a team. Would you require these potential players to prove their competence, by handling the ball or puck or stick or whatever, with finesse, logic and aplomb? Or would you require them to prove their loyalty, by fumbling around and dropping it all over the place, so as not to infringe upon the other players' inherent superiority?

Hmm?

Now, I ask you, theoretical man, to stretch a paradigm. Imagine, that in the mind of Woman, relationships are roughly equivalent to teams. This putative Woman regards a relationship as an entity in which two individuals work together to achieve a set of Common Goals, such as building a home, raising children, establishing a system of mutual nurturance, companionship and spiritual, emotional and intellectual growth.

Now, imagine that this hapless Woman, with this goal in mind, proceeds to audition for a place on this Relationship Team by proving her competence. Her method includes displaying perspicacity, humor, kindness, flexibility, wit, resourcefulness, and a basic ability to hold up her end of the stick, in both practical and aesthetic contexts.

And the Man promptly responds by thinking, "Who does this Woman think she is, being all clever and competent like that? I'll take that bitch down a peg. She's begging for it." So he treats this potential team member as a Woman--that is, as an exotic sort of prostitute--grinds her into the dirt, abandons her, and goes off in search of a ball-dropper to put under contract.

Are you, theoretical Man, perhaps getting a hint of the sort of frustrations and miscommunications that can arise, due to this mutual conflict of assumed paradigms, yet?

While you are chewing on this idea, Pretty Lady will pose some alternatives to the notion that an intelligent woman, making a humorous, perceptive, or witty remark, is attempting to emasculate a man by Competing with him. The possibility exists that her motive in making such a remark might be:

1) To express what's on her mind, in the hopes of kindling an answering spark of resonance in his.

2) To defuse a tense situation with humor.

3) To introduce an alternate perspective for mutual consideration.

4) To pre-empt being patronized, which can be mildly annoying, when a gentleman assumes that no sweet little blue-eyed blonde lady could possibly be able to process ideas or information beyond the first-grade level.

(Incidentally, a lady who engages in such patronage pre-emption may also be endeavoring to spare the man the humiliation that inevitably occurs, when she is finally forced to confess to having a Ph.D. in engineering.)

5) To engage his attention in a flirtatious way, for the purposes of mutual enjoyment.

6) To let her Freak Flag fly high, in the hopes of attracting someone who likes that sort of thing.

7) Just to express the sheer joy of being alive.

Now, it is certainly possible that the lady is a ball-busting bitch who wishes to see all men castrated and ground down under her dominating and vindictive heel. Such bitches are occasionally born. However, it is Pretty Lady's private suspicion that such bitches are also made, after a well-meaning lady has been given the competitive-whore treatment a couple of dozen times.

In closing, Pretty Lady would like to re-iterate the statement that loyalty has nothing, nothing, nothing whatsoever to do with competence. Loyalty is an aspect of character, which in all humans is divorced from other characteristics such as wit, intelligence, creativity and the like. You may not assess a woman's character in the course of a brief conversation, however witty or bovine this conversation may be. You can only assess it by interacting with her over a period of time, and observing her actions.

Of course, if you drive her away by vulgarly insulting her with a lewd proposition, the first time she dares to say something clever, your storehouse of Erroneous Assumptions will remain wholly intact. And you will, incidentally, end up with a very dull wife.

The Competitive Female

Pretty Lady must apologize for having become Hot Under her Collar for a moment. Ordinarily she likes to maintain a Balanced Perspective, in order to open her soul to the infinite truth and forgiveness of the Holy Spirit. This, she has found, is the way to remain happy, healthy and keep her complexion in tiptop condition. The cosmetic benefits of allowing the Holy Spirit to rule one's mental landscape cannot be underestimated.

But occasionally someone presses a Sore Button in Pretty Lady's serene psyche, and she goes ballistic. Such a one, unfortunately, was this:

Are you being extraordinary, or are you being competitive?
Men want to marry women who display the characteristic of loyalty.

Pretty Lady must say it again. Hmph.

It has been Pretty Lady's sad experience that men, in general, are largely oblivious to the flagrant signs of unhealthy, vile, underhanded, backstabbing Competitiveness in Females. Men are simple souls. Show them a winning smile, a winsome pout, and utter a few bland clichés about Home and Family, and they believe a woman to be everything she touts herself as, and more. This same winning, winsome woman may utter Malicious Lies, Cutting Remarks, and Wholesale Betrayals of Confidence freely before this same man, and he will not even notice. He will merely think she is perspicacious and clever; he may even honor her malice with the label of 'loyalty.' Loyalty toward himself, of course; obviously she is merely protecting him from the designing hussies who surround him on every side.

It never appears to occur to him that a mind which sees malice under every rock may be seeking what it wishes to find; moreover, that it sees the thing it is steeped in.

Pretty Lady, when very young, was taught this maxim by her mother: "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." With a few regrettable and notorious lapses, she has endeavored to live up to this precept during her entire adult life. More than this, she tries mightily to look for the best in people, and to understand where the worst might be coming from. This habit of hers has led her to make some egregious errors in the selection of her intimate friends. Preoccupied with her industrious treasure-seeking, she has been dismissive of, or honestly blind to, aggressive destructiveness of character in others.

That is, until the full force of her self-deception hits her right between the eyes; then she is wont to reconsider.

Far from being Competitive herself, Pretty Lady has always believed that vulgar scrabbling between females for the attention of a man ought to be avoided at all costs. If a man is so distractible that he cannot be bothered to remember that he originally asked Pretty Lady on a date, when another woman invites herself along and clings to him like glue, chattering engagingly, Pretty Lady will not remind him. She politely and ironically excuses herself and catches up on her sleep. When a man decides to be a big cocky jerk and invite her to lunch as the tall half of a set, she does not attempt to command his attention with seductive gestures; she thanks the two of them, grapes and all, and heads to the studio. Pretty Lady has neither the time nor the inclination for such egoistic games. Either a man perceives her obvious singularity of character, or he does not.

Pretty Lady takes the concept of Loyalty very seriously indeed. If her friend is interested in, dating, or married to a man, he is Off Limits in Pretty Lady's universe, until five years after the divorce. In fact, if a man is previously attached at all, even to her worst enemy, he is equally Off Limits, even if his wife is flinging him at Pretty Lady's head.

Thus, although she generally maintains a tight-lipped reticence on the subject, Pretty Lady's deeper opinion on women who regard the intimate relationships of their close friends as fishing grounds for their own purposes, is that these women are poison. No matter how many times they disingenuously declare, "It just sort of happened, and I feel terrible about it."

Pretty Lady's Ten Best Dates of All Time

Pretty Lady just received the unwelcome reminder, courtesy of a client of hers, that Valentine's Day is almost upon us. This particular client has been known to Get Fresh, and Pretty Lady was forced to cut him down pretty sharply. She has never been a big fan of this 'holiday,' corporate construction as it is; she once drew a comic entitled "The Evil of Valentine's Day" which was published in an obscure 'zine called 'theoryslut', back in the mid-nineties, and her opinions have not significantly altered since.

However. It occurred to her that this is an unproductive attitude. Valentine's Day is not inherently or exclusively evil; it is, like most things, what one makes of it. Pretty Lady was then going to make a large and glorious Valentine, which she intended to distribute impartially to everyone in the world, via the Internet. But this plan was dashed when the grocery store proved to sell only the most inferior sort of paper doilies.

So instead, Pretty Lady has decided to wax nostalgic, and present you with her personal recipes for her ten best dates ever, more or less. It is to be hoped that you will then be inspired to share such blissful occasions with your own personal sweetie, and Pretty Lady will sleep in peace, knowing that she has not heaped another whopping dose of negative karma upon this benighted holiday.

10. The Valencia junk-shop troll.

Ingredients: Valencia Street between 24th and 16th.

Start at 24th; peruse every antique, thrift, junk and used bookstore until 16th. Discuss which items of exotic furniture would be appropriate for the theoretical industrial loft warehouse you intend to occupy, in the uncertain future. Conclude with tapas at Picaro's.

9. The all-night avant-garde film dialogue.

Ingredients: Two-dollar balcony seats for pretentious film at Hogg Auditorium; skateboard; all-night coffee shop.

Make sure you get the front row balcony seats, so you can prop your feet on the ledge and watch the bats fly around. After the film, skate downtown and order a bottomless cup of decaf and cheese fries to share. Argue about esoteric philosophy until 3 AM.

8. The Manhattan Jazz Standard.

Ingredients: Round corner table by the piano at Small's; one bottle Booker's.

Be sure to consume the Booker's at a rate wherein the experience of the jazz is slowly, gracefully heightened, not brutally obliterated.

7. Manhattan: The Works.

Ingredients: Whoa, nelly.

Start with Ethiopian food at that place in the Village which is below sidewalk level. Get a carafe of honey wine to share. Move along to that bar in the Village which has couches facing the sidewalk; have a Manhattan or two. Take a cab to the Algonquin, and have a couple of apple martinis while hammering out the plot and cast of a screenplay entitled "Drunken Angel." Take a cab to Chelsea and visit an impossibly hip club, just so you can say you did. Leave after half an hour, because that last bit was really Too Much.

6. Tahoe ski weekend.

Ingredients: Two weekend lift passes to Heavenly Ski Area; reservations at the Lazy S; cooler full of goat cheese, caviar and Jim Beam.

Drive three hours, get onto the slopes even though there's not really enough light left in the day, return to motel, consume goat cheese, caviar and Jim Beam, swap massages. In the morning, enormous breakfast at Denny's, ski blue slopes until dark, go for cheese fondue. Repeat the next day; drive back to San Francisco and collapse. It is very important that this be undertaken without much premeditation.

5. The New York winter unemployment special.

Ingredients: two bicycles, motley and faintly ridiculous warm winter garments, one trans-East-River bridge (Brooklyn and W-burg most aesthetic.)

Awake at the crack of a bright winter noon. Don long johns, jeans, sweaters, boots, wool thrift-store jacket, scarf, hat and gloves. Mount bicycles and cross to the East Village. Park outside the Lotus Cafe and order coffee, orange juice, and bagel with cream cheese, olive paste, and roasted red bell peppers. Nab corner table between window and bookshelf; select reading material. After 1 1/2 hours, re-traverse bridge and go back to bed.

4. South of France food tour.

Ingredients: two round-trip tickets to Paris, one rental car, 1 pair running shoes, 1 swimsuit, family in the Midi-Pyrenee.

Fly to Paris, stay with Herve 4 nights. Consume Pastis, go out for Moroccan food, crash. Wake after 4 hours and repeat. After 4 days of this, rent car and drive toward random adorable village; find best restaurant and order local cuisine. Go running every morning, or swimming in local rivers, so as not to gain 100 lbs. Repeat every day for 1 week. Stay with family 1 week, spending vast majority of time á table under the tilul tree; drive to Montpellier to visit friends, then Nice, where Reg has his cottage, that bounder. Return via Paris after 3 weeks. Or not.

3. The Home Depot.

Ingredients: 1 trashed, vacant storefront; 1 van; Home Depot; sushi.

Get in van, drive to Home Depot. Purchase caulk, caulking gun, primer, paint, tinting colors, rollers, sandpaper, tools, light fixtures, hardware, houseplants, and planters. Return to vacant storefront, deposit purchases. Go out for sushi.

2. The post-tequila-binge hangover cure.

Ingredients: two tequila hangovers, 1 van, 2 mountain bicycles, mountains, 1 hole-in-the-wall stew joint, 1 video.

Drag selves blearily out of bed, pack bicycles into van, head to hole-in-the-wall and order beef stew, tortillas, hot salsa, Pepsi and lime. Consume. Drive van to 20K mountain biking trail, deserted except for hungover selves. Complete entire trail to Santa Rosa and back. (Alternatively, hike deserted Spanish ruins in rain.) Return to bed, play video, take naps.

1. The all-night music exchange.

Ingredients: 1 bottle Chivas, 1 pack cigarettes, 1 record collection.

Take turns playing favorite tracks while consuming Chivas and cigarettes. Talk about everything, everything, everything. In the morning, proceed to #2.

Bonus: Go to grocery store. Buy ingredients. Go home and cook them, while drinking good wine and talking about everything, everything, everything. This can be repeated indefinitely, anyplace in the world.

Pretty Lady Gets This Sort of Thing a LOT

Dear Pretty Lady,

One can also consider not collapsing inwards just because the outwards doesn't live up, for we are inexplicably in some sort of ongoing sweaty tango that pushes and pulls with the beats of our individuality.

And following that, there is also always the very best efforts of tantra, so-called, to turn to, or listen to, as human, of course, as it still is, that involve the incredible miracle of the form before the former (as you have said, is that not enough for one willing initiation?), thus no need for fantasy or whips, plus as you have said, "are they not already there?" (well, you din't actually say that).

And then perhaps include a deep yet whimsical and ongoing rhythmic meditation, contemplation, exaltation on what we may and may not be, as you so delightfully suggested in the fantasmically perfect response you gave to the Sam Harris/Dennis Prager debate, about lovley Sammy's boobsession with being soul-y the body, which had me laughing out loud and—in the way of the cosmos, and the interface of silly screens and screams—led me here to your wit.

And for the record, be that record vinyl or god knows what, the actual dance of not collapsing fully inwards or outwards is perhaps a reflection of that universal tantra, so-called, ongoing, unstoppable, spinning a beautiful rock around a giant ball of fire to who knows where...?

But back to the original synapse firing, when the tension deflates or inflates too far, for example from too much messiness (as you describe it), people perhaps then start desperately tying other people up to bring that miraculous tension of the body/soul life-force journey back to a workable passion.

Then again, who knows?

I have no idea what I just wrote and I know I should read it over, but I'm not going to becuase I am haphazard and crazy today, and I blame it on your exquisite song of words that activates such an unavoidable stream of unconscious consciousness, and reminds us poor souls to play, you flea-bitten varmits, play!

Having said that, I do wonder if Sam Harris and Dennis Prager secretly love each other. I think they'd have a decent tension, if they practiced retaining, but perhaps that is too specific for your dear readers.

I ask that because I love them, and I love you too, as you dastardly (is that word?) keep your very own interdependent sacred tantra-tension alive by refusing to abandon the amazing truth and wonder of your sat, chit and ananda to the utter madness, joy, absurdity, decay, pain, rotting, dreaming, loving, giving, hoping surrending, helplessness of it all.

Petexoxoxoxoxo

Dear Pete,

Pretty Lady has this strange sort of feeling that she's met you somewhere before. Was it by the keg at the...no, did you send her that twelve-page email that almost got you...no, it was the eighteen postcards from Eur...no, the Buddhist monas...the professional poker...the graduate composer who had the nervous...never mind.

Seriously, never mind.

Ever since Pretty Lady first started noodling around with the primitive e-mail system at her work-study job, back in the Dark Ages, she has, seemingly, inspired the copious and many-authored composition of poetic, unrestrained, undisciplined missives such as this one. In latter years, she has been wondering if she ought to specialize. To wit:

Are you Brilliant?

Are you Misunderstood?

Are you in the Throes of a Spiritual Emergency???

(If you are unfamiliar with the term 'Spiritual Emergency,' this does not mean you are not suffering from one. See above letter for points of reference; if you find yourself on the point of composing such a thing, if it makes some sense to you, if it seems to articulate some inchoate and undefined sensation, niggling at the corners of your brain, you may qualify.)

Well! Then you may sign up for a Correspondence Course with Pretty Lady, your stringent but gentle guide through the treacherous shoals of Consciousness Expansion, without the unfortunate Slitting of Wrists or Torching of Valuable Relationships!

Merely fill out this form, including height, weight, age, education, IQ, exercise program, physical illnesses, mental illnesses, family history, financial assets, intellectual assets, vehicular assets, skills, talents, talents you wish you had but don't, sexual fantasies, astrological chart, and elementary school report card.

Once you have passed Pretty Lady's security check and almost-sanity test, the cost of this course is a low-low-low $59.95 a week, plus taxes, to include at least three specific, pointed, practical admonishings, written in a sprightly and engaging style, geared to your own particular charming but undisciplined needs. Phone calls extra; in-person visits are absolutely verboten.

Once you are enrolled, you are not permitted to quit until Pretty Lady fires you. Which--do not panic--she is certain to do, sooner or later.


What do you think, darlings? Is this a workable business plan?


Oh, and Pete, dear, I love you too.

The Angry Atheist

Of course you darlings were too polite to ask. But she can hear you wondering.

"Of all the colorful characters in Pretty Lady's shadowy past," you think, "why is it that the one we have not heard about is the Angry Atheist? Surely this one is the most colorful of all. Surely she could mine this character to the fullest extent, in her cautionary tales of Tolerance Gone Mad. Surely there is infinite fodder here for wry, picaresque and illustrative self-mockery, for Adventures on the Edge, for voyages into the absurd that one can only dream of. Why is Pretty Lady so uncharacteristically reticent on the subject?"

The truth is, friends, that the Angry Atheist was the one who sobered her up. It was no laughing matter, this relationship. The Angry Atheist is the reason that Pretty Lady leads the all but monastic life she leads today. And for that, she supposes she must thank him.

You see, darlings, Atheism, despite its pretense to strict rationalism, is anything but. It is a philosophy rife with superstition, fanaticism, evangelism and irrationality. In the hands of a person with formidable intellect (as indeed, intellect has always been one of Pretty Lady's primary requirements in a consort, however these gentlemen may be lacking in other respects), it can become a dangerous weapon. The shell-shock incurred by experiencing the side-effects of this destructive philosophy, up close and personal, for a period of years, veritably smelted Pretty Lady. It rent her to her foundations, and she has spent the subsequent years painstakingly constructing her soul anew.

Superstition? you say. How so?

One of the hallmarks of Atheism, as Pretty Lady experienced it, is a wholly irrational trust in the efficacy of Transference. That is, the belief that one can solve a perceived problem by focussing one's energies on something that is not the problem at all. This human intellectual failing can be summed up in that hoary old joke, "What are you doing?" "Looking for my car keys." "Are you sure this is where you dropped them?" "No, I lost them in the other block. But there's more light over here."

The doings of the Angry Atheist were almost wholly dictated by this unexamined philosophy. It manifested in the manner in which he dealt with his chronic, simmering, unappeasable rage; in order to avoid showering his nearest and dearest with such (this included Pretty Lady, up until the bitter end), he would habitually pick fights with persons he believed to be both peripheral and deserving targets. Such as cops.

Of course, the laws of Karma being what they are, not to mention the nature of cops, this habit had some not inconsiderable side effects. The Angry Atheist would frequently complain, "I'm always getting guns pointed at me. Even when I'm not doing anything. Especially when I'm not doing anything. Cops have it out for me."

"That is because you look like Bernhard Goetz, darling," Pretty Lady would reply. The A.A. did not find this amusing, but it was true. Cops, both good ones and bad ones, have a certain intuitive sense for sensing dangerous auras in random persons; the combination of high intellect and smouldering rage creates a particularly palpable field. Ergo the stories.

"All I was doing was riding my bicycle in the rain alongside the Billyburg Bridge," he stormed. "This cop car came up behind me and forced me onto the sidewalk. Then he gave me a ticket for reckless endangerment, because I was riding on the sidewalk. I gave that asshole a piece of my mind, all right; I went as far as humanly possible without getting arrested."

This story occurred very late in the relationship, so Pretty Lady was not quite as sympathetic as she might have been hitherto.

"I'm sensing two distinct elements in this story," Pretty Lady replied, tersely. "One is gross injustice, certainly; but the other one is YOU." The A.A. cut short the conversation.

Now, the Real Reason for the Atheist's chronic rage was, of course, a set of absolutely vile progenitors. There is no doubt in Pretty Lady's mind that this man was raised by abusive creepazolas. His anger was, then, completely understandable. It was also completely pointless, because 1) the abusive creepazolas were thoroughly, physically dead by the time she met the Atheist, and 2) he was committedly perpetuating the effects of their abuse upon himself, by choosing to remain in his state of impotent, humorless ire against them.

Of course, the Atheist's philosophy of choice made any other methodology of rage-management impossible, because the notion of healing and forgiveness was a ridiculous fairy tale, in his opinion. He subscribed entirely to a mechanistic vision of psychology, as well as every other science; if one generates Rage, the only thing to do is to Vent it. Like ammonia, or fluorocarbons, or ozone.

Pretty Lady, at the time she met the Atheist, was firmly entrenched in a state of undiagnosed co-dependency. Her idealistic notion was, that if she just loved the Atheist enough, if she understood that the root of his outbursts was his own deep woundedness, if she accepted him for himself, that this would Heal him. So she proceeded to do so. She tolerated all manner of egregious, offensive outbursts, in the name of Divine Love. She was a total idiot.

For tolerating the Atheist's chronic venting of spiritual poison did HIM no good at all, and very nearly killed Pretty Lady. Since the violent demise of this relationship, Pretty Lady has had no tolerance left over, whatsoever. She is a wee bit Hypersensitive, in fact. That is why, when any person at all vents his Spleen in her direction, she has developed a habit of intolerantly calling him on his toxicity, and in the event of failure to apologize, she cuts the connection. Any other practice is wantonly self-destructive.