Vanity

Vanity, Vanity, all is Vanity.

At the wedding, W. said to me, "You're vain, aren't you?" And I said, "Yes, yes, I am." He said, "I thought you asked me here to show me off to your friends, so you'd have some handsome guy on your arm." Yes, that's it exactly. Plus also the fact that I adored you like an older brother when I was in college, that I looked up to you and admired you. That you took care to listen, and to watch out for me.

At some point over the weekend, W's friend J. offered me a drink, and I declined, and said I didn't drink. W said, "At all?" "At all." "Well, how do you deal with life?" Oh no. Ohhhhh, no.

"I deal. With. Life."

And later, after the wedding, he said, "I can't believe you don't drink at all. That is mind-blowing. Lately, I've been drinking six days a week!" And I asked, "When did that start?" And he said, "1996?" Ah.

Over the course of the weekend, I realized he had no recollection of me from college other than the night we met, when he and his now ex-wife helped me home from a party. The first and last time I needed help like that. He didn't remember talking to me about his wife's family's reaction to the news that she, a sophomore in college, was pregnant. He didn't remember showing me photos from the wedding. He didn't remember sharing with me his own moral qualms about hazing the pledges in his fraternity, nor me saying, "But you don't have to do any of it," and him insisting that of course he did, and hating himself for it. I guess I'd forgotten about that -- conveniently put it out of my mind (denial). The pledges that year loathed him more than anything and anyone. I remember pure hatred shining out of the eyes of my friend, A. A. could not believe that I was friends with W., he shook his head and said, "Maybe some part of him is okay if you're friends with him, but I absolutely hate him." I couldn't imagine anything that they could hate him so much for, except for extreme physical abuse. I know they spanked their pledges with wooden paddles and pissed on them -- I saw it myself out of a window. How can I be friends with these people? What did I say to A..."I believe you, but I myself have never seen that side of him. I have only seen a good and kind side."

That's the only side I ever see in any addict or abusive personality. My friend T. does security for rock stars and movie stars. He once told me that I look like a mark -- like a victim. I asked him what it was about me that made me a mark. He said you're pretty, you're tall, and you greet the whole world with this trusting ray of sunshine. People are drawn to you. And bad ones see you as someone they can take advantage of. I hope that's changed. Sometimes, with addicts/abusers, I feel like they seem me as some sort of small, precious animal that they would like to take care of, and that in taking care of me, they would find atonement, only instead they betray me, and therefore are frustrated by their attempts at finding redemption within my person.

My college friend, L., was (is?) a ladies' man, very gorgeous. Movie star gorgeous, like W. And he's English nobility. I stayed far, far away from L. in that way, but I was friendly with him, but not familiar. I walked into a party once, and he was cutting lines of cocaine on a plate and he looked up and saw me and a strange amalgam of joy/shame crossed his face. He said, "You! You're not supposed to be here! I'm not supposed to be doing this in front of you. I never wanted you to see any of this! I would come and hug you, but I wish I wasn't doing this!" And I said, "It's ok, it's ok, I'll go in the other room." And I did. And in a few moments he came into the other room and he took my face in his hands and he said, "I am so, so sorry you saw that, I never meant for you to see any of that, and I'm embarrassed, but I am so happy to see you." And we weren't particularly that close, at least I didn't think we were all that close. And I was sort of shocked by the intensity of his apparent feelings for me, how protective of me he was, how embarrassed he was by his drug use, and what a pedestal he had placed me on. As far as I was concerned, he was just someone (a beautiful someone) I occasionally saw at parties and chatted with on campus. A while later I ran into him at the library and he gave me his number and asked me to call him and I never did. He was too beautiful, too rich, too worldly, too into drugs and women. But I was amazed at the way he took my face in his hands and apologized for having cut lines in front of me. It felt like I held special meaning for him as something good and pure, and I didn't know until then that I did hold that meaning.

And I never saw {The Ex}'s abusive side. I only saw a wonderful boyfriend, who was dismayed and frustrated by his own jealousy.

W sent me a movie, and said, "It reminds me of us." I said, "There is no us. Watch this 'us' business." There is you, and your women, and there is me. And as long as it is that way, I don't mind the women. But once there's an us, the women have to go. And I know that you won't let go of them.

But the movie was about a little boy who is being chased by the mob, and about an aging ex-gun moll who takes him in and they go on the run together. W said to me, "I'm just a little boy looking for a beautiful woman packing major heat to save me." And I knew immediately that W was something that I could not and would not take on. Oh, but I miss him. He'll have to figure all of that out, the drinking, the women, the dark things he did to my friends in his fraternity, he'll have to handle that all on his own. I can listen, and I can be a friend, but I cannot save him.

Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.

A few years ago I had to learn what my own beauty meant to me. My experience with {The Ex} taught me that my own esteem of my beauty could be used as a weapon of manipulation against me. My vanity was and is a character defect.

I humbly ask that this defect be removed from me.

I feel like W's project right now is to learn what his physical beauty means to him. There was a point when I was dating {The Ex} when I realized how powerful my beauty was to some people. And I thought to myself, I must use my power for the forces of good. I don't know what that means, but it has something to do with giving up my own vanity. I do want a beautiful man. But I want a beautiful man who uses his power for the forces of good.