Navel Gazing

Permit me a bit of navel-gazing?

Let me set the stage, first. From Tennessee Williams’ introduction to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955):

Personal lyricism is the outcry of prisoner to prisoner from the cell in solitary where each is confined for the duration of his life.

I once saw a group of little girls on a Mississippi sidewalk, all dolled up in their mothers’ and sisters’ castoff finery, old raggedy ball gowns and plumed hats and high-heeled slippers, enacting a meeting of ladies in a parlor with a perfect mimicry of polite Southern gush and simper. But one child was not satisfied with the attention paid her enraptured performance by the others, they were too involved in their own performances to suit her, so she stretched out her skinny arms and threw back her skinny neck and shrieked to the deaf heavens and her equally oblivious playmates, “Look at me, look at me, look at me!”

And then her mother’s high-heeled slippers threw her off balance and she fell to the sidewalk in a great howling tangle of soiled white satin and torn pink net, and still nobody looked at her.

I wonder if she is not, now, a Southern writer.

I wonder if she is not, now, a misplaced Southerner living in Indiana.

The other night, my husband and I watched He’s Just Not That Into You (2009), a sweet but forgettable romantic comedy—the title says it all. Like the little girl in Williams’ anecdote, like Gigi in the movie, I tend to scream for attention. Sometimes I win a friend, but more often I “[fall] to the sidewalk in a great howling tangle”. I’ve chased after some characters in my time.

In second grade, I badgered Lisa*, voted “Most Popular”, until she finally relented and let me come home with her after school. I heard her whisper to someone on the bus that I had invited myself, that she didn’t want me to come. True enough, but it still stung. (Can you believe we actually voted for our favorite boy and girl classmates? And not only that, but dear old Mrs. Day tallied the votes ON THE BOARD, by name! I got zero votes.)

In high school, there was Emily, a lissome blond with perfectly straight hair, the kind we all strove for in the 1970s. She was fun and smart and a bit rebellious, creative and thoughtful and well-read. We rode horses and talked books, dreamed our weddings and careers and cars, ate cream horns and cookie dough. I did pretty much whatever she told me, and she enjoyed my company—unless someone more interesting was available. I was a perfect foil for Emily—pretty enough, but not likely to be noticed first; smart enough, but painfully easy to make fun of; available always and game for whatever she wanted from me. One summer we went to camp together, and she ignored me from the first day on. After camp ended, she acted the same as always, claiming that she hadn’t been ignoring me, merely enjoying new friends, knowing I’d be there when camp ended. I basked in her glory for several more years, standing in the wings so that she reflected off of me in the most flattering light possible. Finally, in college, she came to my house and announced that she could no longer be my friend. She just wasn’t that into me.

Janet drove a red Mustang (we looked great in it), and her husband wrote for a muscle car magazine. She was sexy and fun, and she loved Dan Fogelberg as much as I did. We’d drink beer before lunch and shop after, buying cheap, funky things that didn’t shout “Word Nerd” to innocent passersby. Distance did our friendship in—she just wasn’t that into me.

Professor Dan was a colleague, popular with students, and he taught my son for four consecutive semesters. When my son was killed the summer before his junior year, I turned to Dan in the vain hope that he could somehow give me what he had enjoyed—daily contact. I wanted stories; I wanted to connect with my son through this man. I relentlessly pursued the poor prof, using all my cyber-charms to ensnare him in an email connection (I failed). In retrospect, I can understand his fear and trembling—who the hell is this frantic, grieving mother who won’t leave me alone? What does she want from me? I wanted what he had, recent interaction with my son. I wanted a blow-by-blow replay of every moment of every class. I hounded him.

My most recent attempt to conscript a consort was with a charismatic charmer who guarded his heart with steel bars. I filed at them tirelessly for several years, but never got inside. He reminded me a lot of Emily, all grown up. Like Emily, he was articulate and acerbic, witty and winsome. We didn’t eat junk food or dream weddings, but we talked animatedly of Big Ideas and Big Dreams. He was insightful and astute, and our conversations and contact helped me through the spiritual abyss that followed my son's death. Poetry, especially, called to us both. And he made me laugh. I wanted him to want me in his world.

I have played ankle-biter, tripped over my dress-up dress—choose your metaphor—in a pattern that leads to self-doubt and sorrow, borders on masochism, and frustrates the hell out of me and those who love me, including sometimes those who just aren’t that into me. And yet, to borrow from Garth Brooks, “I could have missed the pain, but I’d have had to miss the dance”. Cheesy but apt. In the movie, Gigi says of her long struggle to find love, “Maybe the happy ending is just moving on. Or maybe the happy ending is this, knowing after all the unreturned phone calls, broken hearts, through the blunders and misread signals, through all the pain and embarrassment you never gave up hope.”

They just aren’t that into me. But I am ever-hopesome.

* All names are fictitious. Look at me, I’m writing fiction now!