Old Friends

Occasionally, I meet with an old friend of mine. We grew up together, dated the same boys, sunbathed nude, and she even taught me how to french kiss without going YUCK and wiping my tongue on my shirt. Yep we were close and have been since the day we met.
It saddens me, though, that she is still the same, maybe that is why I feel comfort around her; maybe not. Maybe that is how it is supposed to be, old friends like old comfortable shoes that you don’t have the heart to toss out. We don’t have anything in common. The last book she read wasn’t even a book; it was an excerpt out of a book that we had to read for our English class in high school, I know because I asked her. She doesn’t have time to read she says.
We talk about our kids and our sisters, that is what we have in common, kids and sisters. She is bulimic, weighs under 100 pounds and she gripes about no clothes fitting her. He wrinkles, and there are many, have changed her beautiful face and because of years of smoking her voice is old. I tried to talk politics with her but she could only mention that Clinton was a better looking president than Bush, religion was out of the question, since she believes the entire Bible is true and is to be taken literal, and I wonder why she hasn’t cut off her hands for all the evil she has done in her life or why she is still eating pork, although it only stays in her stomach for a short period, maybe that is how she justifies it. I don’t know. I told her I am studying Buddha (a great way, by the way, to become a better person) and she thought I was doomed for hell (maybe to join our favorite rock store who died of an overdose leaving us a few good songs and a great style of clothing and glasses) and I told her I didn’t believe in hell (which really scared her and pissed her off), and then I mentioned that we are organic (a word I had to explain since her thoughts on organic mean organic raised food and that to her was just too stupid) not meant to last forever so how could we burn forever, and she said it is our spirits, and I said if there are spirits they can’t be organic because we don’t see them so they are not made up of all of those elements that cause visualization. It was so consuming trying to enlighten my friend but I kept on.

I told her that I liked the idea that once we die, there might be a chance that we just decompose and are gone, or that we have a chance to come back in a better life; my hopes are to come back as a sperm wale, so I can keep my fellow pod mates from getting beached, or maybe a turtle to keep them from crossing the road, or a hawk and I would keep them from eating road kill in the middle of busy highway. I like owls too and might like living in a tree and watching life with huge eyes although the thought of eating mice isn’t too appealing, but I would like them being an owl.

I told her if I had life to live again, I would have gone to graduate school many years ago, joined, while I was healthy, the peace corp. and donated all my time to making a difference in the world, making it a better place for the individuals that I would have met. I told her that I would have remained a virgin and kept my sanity, I said to her joining the Buddha monks would have been nice, although, I would have had to shave my hair and hide my sex, easy to do when I was younger, or at least wearing those baggy robes, it would have been easy.

I don’t know if she knows me any better or if she still thinks that I am the girl who sat on top of her car while she had sex with the wildest boy in school, the girl who got sick on rot gut wine, the girl who hid her report card for fear of being called a geek, the girl who smoked pot to think not to act stupid. I don’t know. I am sad that we have so little in common other than meeting for coffee and talking about the women in our lives, daughters and sisters. I wish she knew Faulkner or Morrison or Dunbar, or Chaucer, or Stokes, or even Alcott or Wilders. I would love to discuss something interesting with her, just once.

Promises, Promises

I had plans to go to my favorite bookstore. I was going to go peruse for some resources for a paper I am working on. I forgot that this is the weekend of the Promise Keepers. You know, where all these fundamentalists men get together and hug and pray and make all these promises to be better men. Yep, that is what they do. I am not opposed to that, in fact, I think male bonding is nice; however, I am opposed to their religious meeting being held at my University. I can actually say that now, since I have officially been accepted into its graduate school. There are so many available vendors; yet, they are meeting in a federally funding university. I wonder if, for instance, they would allow a huge Jewish meeting there or a Buddhist’s monk meeting or a Wicca meeting or a Jehovah witness meeting? I might go up there just to see what their bumper stickers say, what kind of vehicles they drive, and where they eat and how they eat and are they really dedicated. I wonder if they are, in fact, there to be better men. I wonder why they have to meet together to be better men, why, for instance, can’t they meet with their wives and make these promises. I wonder why there can’t be women there. Did Jesus meet with men separate to instruct them on how to be better husbands? Nope, he didn’t, I checked. He allowed women and girl children to come to his meetings on how to become better people. You get a bunch of fundies together and it could be dangerous, it could be deadly if you consider the past when over zealous men got together and did things to improve their world let me see of recent, oh yeah, the lynching of African Americans, the holocaust, the burning of accused-of-witchcraft women and men, and other such acts of depraved acts of genocide in the name of God and country. I best stay home this weekend.