Lucky Luke

Pssst!

Lucky am I to have casual or absent "friends" who believe my heavily filtered and hallucinated life stories. Too uninvolved in my life to know what I actually do and say beyond the veneer of politeness and self-aggrandizement. A few still need directions to my workplace or home- that's how out of the loop they are! They'll believe me when I say that my nutcase stands outside my door through the early morning hours, that she constantly begs me to marry her, that she calls me at work trying to get me to have dinner with her. When in fact, she's quite happy to know that I'm still churning my walrus in front of the computer and in the shower, socially deprived as usual.

My real friends live in Morocco, France, the East Coast.

Here I have dates, booty calls, coworkers, homely girls who want my attention and will drive to see me at the drop of a hat.

I complain to maman and papa, my cousins, Chrisann and Caro, that girls here are no good. That they can't see me for my elegance, glamour and mystery. They get the impression that I'm picky (= have standards) and turn down girls down en masse. The truth is, most girls aren't interested in seeing me after the first date. The pretty ones, the ones with good careers, the interesting ones... the ones with a degree! But I won't tell anyone that. I'll blame the girls. They're the ones with the flaws, not me! But anyone with half a brain who spends more than a few hours with me at a time can see the truth. That the ones awestruck by me are nothing to write home about. Les petits mortels, as my papa says. They're plain or even homely, uneducated, uncultured, monolingual, dull, ignorant, pedestrian, gentille, sans plus... frigid (ha! I'm not l'homme moyen sensuel, you know).

Like Bush, I present nothing but platitudes, false bravado, blame games and strident self-delusions. Also like him, my audience is happily ignorant and not too keen to probe deeper. Therein lies my advantage. If they spent any significant time with me these days, they'd see differently.

They'd know that the girls I seek are not the ones who contact me. It weighs on me, hence my bitter tone. They'd know that when things go well in a relationship, I eventually get bored. That when I'm with the type of girl I know I may never meet again and things get rocky, I reserve the right to cheat on her, so I can be with a "nice" girl for a change (even if it's just 30 min in the sack and inane conversation), and when she overreacts at the news, I cheat on her again, because she's not being nice. (She should have been more accommodating and just excuse my behavior as part of being a man. That's what a young, adoring girl would have done.) They'd know that I look for casual relationships ("generous and shamelessly sensual"), take the scraps who agree to such an arrangement, then moan about not being married. They'd know that I don't want to marry one ex because she's too American, too short, not well-traveled, not freaky enough in bed and too picky an eater. Another ex I don't want to marry because she's too frail, also not freaky enough in bed, a pothead, too emotionally high-maintenance (why should I spend my time comforting and reassuring someone? So what if we're close?). They would know that I spend most of my time in "relationships" (longer than two dates) complaining about everything, eventually unappreciative of my generous and understanding (sometimes even adoring) companion, while raving on and on about the perfect woman and wondering out loud why my present company can't match my ideal in looks, breast size, multilingual ability, degree level, intelligence, gastronomic aptititude, entertainment quotient, etc., bemoaning my work deadlines, meals, my favorite porn sites and video games - in short, spend most of my time engrossed in myself. Why can't women these days be "strong" enough to put up with that?

Once I emailed my player-mentor, Jean-René, about Danielle, my first psycho ex from college. Ridiculous pseudo-philosophizing about girls... and...that she fell in love with me, then with Otmane, flying to Switzerland to see him. After that I never saw her again. Or so I told him.

The truth is I saw her several times again in LA, the last was my farewell party before Morocco in the summer of 2003 (there are witnesses). She wanted to have sex with me. I didn't refuse, even though I thought she was a bitch. How can I say no when I had no other options? But of course, I won't tell people that. I'll tell them that she's still asking about me, desperately waiting for me to tell her that it was love after all, begging me to take her back. Little do they know, I check out her friendster profile every now and then. As Tim knows, when I see Julianne Moore on the screen, I stop in my tracks and my briefs start to get tight thinking about Danielle.

My sister asked me once why my psycho ex was so angry at me. I simply told her "It's too delicate- I don't want to go into it." Pheww! Why tell her the whole story when it'll just make me look bad???

I won't admit to anyone, esp. to my own little terrorist, that I'm unhappy with or without reminders of my deficiencies. Regular company (not casual friends) can witness my perseverative rants about that psycho's vicious email taunts. They would know those emails bother me because they pinpoint my anomie- anxiety about meeting girls (and keeping them), relationships, getting married, not having real friends, my career, my intelligence, my feminine body, my hairline. My self-esteem is too important to admit stupidity or bad judgment.

When I need company, I don't juggle a long list of options- people I have something in common with, buddies through thick and thin. I just call whoever is available and interested in hanging out with me. Since Tim has his own life, that usually means just one person. ;-) The only thing we have in common? She can't get a date, either (see previous). Some people just aren't involved enough in my life to know certain details and to verify tall stories and will believe anything I tell them. The ones who've been in recent close relationships with me? Well, they don't exactly want to be fixtures in my life, hehe.


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