Coping with My Italian Boyfriend
I was recently reminded again of the Case of My Italian Boyfriend. At one point during the most uncomfortable parts of this incident, I thought that this was actually a prank, and that the woman was part of some street theater, or even a candid camera sort of television show, anything to remove myself from the random madness of it all.
For a brief moment, I went with it, and appreciated the skill of the illusion. Later, I developed this approach into a defense mechanism.
When someone is being an extreme pain in the ass, I imagine I’m in some sort of immersive theater experience which I paid a lot of money to attend, and that my antagonist is a genius actor portraying all that is wrong with humans.
This has worked frightfully well sometimes, but mostly not much. It does really help when I’m exposed to someone infected with some loud sort of fanaticism, or going through some sort of customer service nightmare. It doesn’t really help when you’ve got a lot at stake in the interaction. Give it whirl sometime and report back.
March 17th, 2006 at 7:22 am
Before I went to St. John’s, I went to the University of Houston for two semesters. One day, crossing the quad between the school buildings and the “two towers” that were the dormitories, a very large fellow burst into song. As it happened, it was my birthday, so I immediately suspected it was something of a set up. He was about 6′5″ and 300 pounds and wearing a bowler (along with his other clothes) and he cut a striking figure, a figure I’d never before seen, so I thought as I said that it was a birthday set-up prank. He was singing something from some musical (I hate musicals, except Oklahoma) and I just stopped and looked at him. I figured, if something’s gonna happen, it’s just gonna happen, so let it happen. I have fish to fry.
Well nothing happened. He moseyed past, singing, and stopped next to me to say, “how are you today sir?” and I said “fine thanks, you?” and he winked and said, “well, at least I’m singing!”
Then he left. Singing. I wanted to be mortified by that moment but I couldn’t find that emotion, that sentiment, that condition. It got me thinking. There aren’t any laws against singing in public (or maybe there are and I just don’t know it) but since people just don’t DO IT except for money, it’s weird when it happens.
I never saw that guy again. As I reflect on it, more than 20 years later, he was probably a music student or a drama student (or hell a physics major) and was just enjoying a fine December day and burst into song.
I think, though, that he was one of my Muses. For that’s sort of when I started appreciating my own voice, and learning that voices have many outlets, and that it’s ok to sing for no audience save oneself.
I can see this getting longer and longer so I’ll limit myself to one more thought. Last summer I was visiting my friends in Portland and we were walking from their house to downtown (and pushing a stroller), and at the top of a bridge my friend just started singing this “round” that he knew I knew, and we just sang it. Then we sang another. And maybe a third.
Have you seen the ghost of Thames?