Am I a souvenir? July 17, 1985
I should have figured it out for myself. After all, Hank
pointed it out to me some years ago when I introduced him to my then-girlfriend,
Suzanne.
He claimed I always dated the same kind of woman. He meant
at the time women that looked similar since Suzanne strongly resembled my ex-wife,
Louise.
In truth, I tend to go for the same type of women, who may
or may not look alike, but are plagued by the same psychology, deep down fundamental
features to which I am inextricably drawn. Flawed women, who need to be
rescued, and I need to play the role of white knight and come to their aid, and
who would ultimately reject me.
Or more to the point, I would find a way to get them to
reject me.
I rarely see this in advance and so cannot detour around what
is clearly a mine field full of potential danger.
The warning signs are always clear, women like Louise or Suzanne
or even Fran, who tie me up inside, twisting me into shapes they desire until I
wake up at one point, realize what has happed to be and rebel.
Safire is Louise multiplied several times, smarter than
Louise, but with the same ability to manipulate, passive aggressive to a fault,
so that ultimately in the end, I think I’m the person responsible for the bad
things that happen, when I’m not always so.
Safire is so much like Louise in the more subtle ways, I’m
shocked I didn’t see it before, and yet it explains my intense attraction
(since I never got over Louise in the first place, my first true love and my
first love gone bad).
They both have similar history, having gone through the same
sexual meat grinder, starting out as “popular” girls in high school, graduating
to some aspect of the sex trade, eventually marrying to try to undo the bad reputation
they earned as strippers and later worse.
Both tend to pick men they think will save them only to find
those men to be as bad or worse as the men they are trying to escape. Both have
become harden by their experiences, needing a lot to get passed the shell they’ve
built to keep themselves from being hurt.
Both change lovers like light bulbs, seeking a new one when
the previous one burns out.
This might be said of the other women with whom I’ve had a
serious relationship, Suzanne and Fran, but not so blatantly obvious.
Safire and Louise have other more superficial similarities, such
as their attachments to trinkets that remind them of places they’ve been and
people they’ve been with, from knick-knacks to bumper stickers. Louise has a
sticker from every state she’s ever passed through from the time she was a little
girl. Safire has a collection of similar souvenirs, both connecting these
things to special people they were with when they first collected them.
Safire showed me a collection of commemorative spoons always
exactly the same as a set Louise has, and oddly, both women lived in trailers.
Deeper down, both women have the habit of manipulating
themselves into unfortunate situations, from which they struggle to find a
solution.
Safire no longer lives in a house because her husband is in
Baltimore seeking to find a new one for them to live in. Louise abandoned her
apartment to live with a man on a camp ground, only to have him abandon her.
She later got burned out of the apartment she found, and ultimately settled in
a trailer park, from which she hopes to be rescued soon.
All this hit me all of a sudden, just at a point when I
found myself ready to plunge into a possible new relationship with Safire, a
stunning revelation that floored me, and reminded me again of Pauly’s Tarot
reading which heavily suggested trouble lay ahead.
Maybe I’ve finally seen the warning signs and may still have
time to take a detour before I end up in someone else’s souvenir collection.
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