He was a good friend to me for several years. Platonic. Like a brother, I thought, or better than one. So I knew about his search for a female partner in life. Over time my opinion about it changed. I saw a pattern of him rejecting good women before giving them a chance. He wasn't a womanizer. He put an extreme emphasis on attraction though. So if he wasn't real excited and feeling over the moon about a person after three dates well maybe he'd give it six. Meeting women and asking them out on dates wasn't the problem.
Meanwhile his criteria when it came to a woman's looks became more detailed. A certain kind of eye. A certain kind of smile. He had male friends who were womanizers. They were bad influencers. They would talk about various women - their looks - and brag to him about the women they claimed. This shrunk his confidence.
One of these men was cruelly beautiful and comported himself around the music clubs on Sunset. He wasn't just cool. He was cold. He was a Brain Fucker that left women damaged. His arrogance was that he'd offer my friend his "leftovers."
I wished my friend would step away from this person or people like this but I had friends he didn't like too.
What was happening to the nice guy I once knew?
One day at a party my friend's latest date and I met. I liked her. So when he said, "I just get this feeling - I don't know - like I'm not getting to know her," I said, "You need to start giving women more time. At least a few more weeks."
How or why people fall in love is a mystery. Told repeatedly that for men it's visual at first, I often wonder What about Charisma and Chemistry? Have you ever people-watched and realized you'll never understand what couples see in each other and you don't have to? I have. In my very brief and long ago incarnation as a mall rat I'd sit resting my heels and watch the parade go by, wondering as couples walked by "what does she see in him?" Point being, there were plenty of couples who seemed to be into each other, even all over each other, who were visually not suitably matched. Something else was happening.
The woman, let's call her Bonnie since there are no Bonnie's in my life presently, had earned a Master's Degree in Psychology but said she didn't want to become a therapist. She worked at a retailer and was living in her parents sizeable home. She was intelligent. Slim and naturally pretty. No makeup. She seemed nice. If you made a list of the things these two people had in common, you would suspect compatibility.
She walked around his house and told him she loved it. She said she wanted children. She said, when he said he was unsure, that she was a Big Girl and could have sex without expectation.
So they had sex.
This was not a When Harry Met Sally moment. It made no difference in his desire to keep dating her and so at that point he told her "Let's be friends." (Ok. I know that line is usually B.S.)
She was furious. She wrote him a scathing letter. I had told her I was all for people honestly expressing themselves but this letter was a chakra killer. Most people who got such a letter would probably be horribly wounded and throw the person out of their lives and the hell with friendship. It was clear to me that she had lied about being a Big Girl. However, he and she persisted, he took blame despite her unfairness, bought her an expensive I'm Sorry gift, and, well, I left town.
When I got back to town, they were still friends and he suggested that she and I get better acquainted. At this point she was out of work and available. I started picking her up in my car and we went here, there, everywhere. Her parents were delighted. Apparently, she rarely left the house now, except when she borrowed their car and took off to meet someone for "coffee." My friend was aware of all this activity. He thought I was doing her some good.
But one day while we sat next to each other at an outstanding concert, I looked over to her and said, enthusiastically, "Isn't this great!"
A male voice came out of her, surly and sarcastic. "Yea, it's great." I wasn't shocked. I was quite surprised.
On another trip, with me doing all the driving, I made a rest stop at a Mission. It was open so I decided to go in. Not raised in any religion, she didn't want to go in. "Look at the architecture and art," I suggested. While I lit a candle in honor of a deceased relative, she sat in a pew with big earphones on that protected her from God with blaring punk music.
Then there was the afternoon we went to an independent coffee house and when a woman with two sweet children sat across from her, she growled "I can't sit here, I hate children," I got home and called him.
She said what?
My friend was right about not getting to know her. She told people what she thought they wanted to hear, to please people and remain unknown. Under all that accommodation someone was absent.
She liked to listen but you couldn't turn the conversation around to her and get an answer from her about what she thought on the same subject you went on about. Tell me she didn't learn to do that without doing clinical hours.
Now the question was, what was her diagnosis? Multiple Personality Disorder or Possessed?
One night at another coffee house, she awaited a call from a new man. He called and she ran out the door and down the block to meet him. Leaving me to sit there wondering if I should wait for her return or go.
Later, at a book fair, she told me, "I'm like a man about sex." She was answering ads and hooking up in search of a husband who would support her. This was pre hook ups, pre friends with benefits.
She had a collection of ex's. I realized my friend was just part of the collection. That she was back in the personality she'd worn when she first met him.
Bonnie was not the first person I met who had a degree in psychology and was "crazy" or the last person I'd meet who had more than one personality voice, but I think she was the best at hiding that she was sick and the most reluctant to be in therapy to deal with it. A friend tells me these disorders are biological but I tend to think there's a spiritual aspect. The friend tells me there is no Satan, no Devil, that Evil is in people. I think there are many evil entities, embodied and not, just looking to possess, if not possess, confuse.
I recommend M. Scott Peck's book People Of The Lie.
C 2021
