Scarecrows, Tin Men and Cowardly Lions, Part I

Everything you are about to read is true.

The names have been changed to protect the guilty.

First of all, about the title of this entry…

About a month ago I was re-connected with a first cousin of mine who lives in Maine.

We have been emailing since. We are getting to know each other and sharing family stories. She is a joyful and delightful surprise. This week, as she read about my sojourn from RI to SC, she wrote and compared me to Dorothy of Oz. I constructed a dream for myself, she said, and set about to live it. I thanked her for that wonderful compliment and then added, “And like Dorothy, I keep meeting men who have no brains, no heart and no courage.” So, this little blog entry concerns those Scarecrows, Tin Men and Cowardly Lions I have met along the way…

Within six months of moving to South Carolina eight years ago I met someone and fell in love. We were together for four years. He was seven years younger than I and at the four-year mark of our affair, it ubruptly ended.

With the exception of one blind date set up by my former landlord I experienced a two and a half year dating desert. My girlfriends suggested and insisted that I must give off some kind of “screw you vibe,” that scares men and gives them the not-too-subtle message that, “If you’re coming over here, Buddy, you’d better have something to show me.” I thought, “That can’t be it. Me? A ‘screw you vibe?’ Nah.” Also, at the risk of sounding as if I have agoraphobic issues, my best friend once told me, “You know, Louise, if you want men to find you, you actually have to LEAVE your apartment.” Sometimes, I just didn’t feel like it.

The blind date was a disaster. He was antagonistic, contrary and downright hostile. Our senses of humor could not have been more different so that when he actually put his gloves down and tried a comedic quip I didn’t laugh and  when he was absolutely dead serious I laughed my ass off. The kicker came when he asked about the courses I teach. I began by briefly describing my Comparative Religious Ethics course, which is a study of narratives of the lives of men and women, both ancient and modern who are lifted up by the world’s religions as representative of what it means to live an ethical and noble life, e.g. Siddhartha Gautama, Abraham, Rabbi Heschel, Mohandas Gandhi, Jesus of Nazareth, Martin Luther King Jr., Muhammad, Rosemary Radford-Ruether, Alice Walker. I really didn’t go into detail and didn’t want to bore him but when I mentioned the Mahatma, he reacted by saying, “I hate Gandhi.” You hate Gandhi??  You HATE GANDHI? Who SAYS that?? I didn’t even ask why. What could he have possibly said that would have made any sense? We were standing on a pier at the time. The man is lucky he didn’t end up swimming for his (next) life.

Then I mentioned that I teach a course on Women and Religion. I know what you’re thinking. “Oh no. She didn’t.  She couldn’t help herself and launched into a tirade about women’s rights and the patriarchal character of 5,000 years of intra-planetary social organization.” But I didn’t. I SWEAR. I only mentioned the title of the course and then he said, “Women have to earn equal rights.” Then MY gloves came off. I said, “Oh really? Seems to me that the last time I checked The Constitution, my rights were inherently guaranteed and are a truth that is ‘self-evident’ simply as a matter of my having been created equal.”

When I relayed these scenarios to my landlord the next day he said to me in his smooth, beautiful Charlestonian accent, “Now see, Louise? Yaw’ll ah nevah gonnah make it aut theah if yah keep thaht up.” What, Jerry? You mean if I don’t lie down and play dead every time some man says an offensive, idiotic, mean-spirited thing? Then he said, “Maybe, next tahm Ah won’t tell ‘em y’all went to Hahhvahd. Somethang lahk thaht ‘il make ‘em nerhvous.” And that’s supposed to be MYproblem? Oh and Jerry, by the way, there won’t be a next time.

So I went back to the desert and my apartment and tried to name, claim and exorcise the “screw you vibe,” that invisible-to-the-naked-eye but detectable-by-men demon that presumably sits on my shoulder and hisses and spits at them as they consider approaching.

Then I took a trip to RI to visit my mom and brothers.

My oldest brother is the bartender and day manager of a family-friendly restaurant and sports bar in Cumberland, RI. It’s a great place; family restaurant downstairs, sports bar upstairs and Red Sox baseball on all the time. I spent a lot of time there. So much so that I received a “Buddy’s Bar and Grill” t-shirt as a going away present. I thought to wear it on the first day of fall classes, point to it and say to my students, “THIS is what I did on my summer vacation.” My sister-in-law commented one day that I am a "man magnet."  I told her that the Mason-Dixon Line must de-magnetize me when I fly over it, because I am no such magnet in Charleston. As I sat at the bar, I was hit on by Frenchie, the carpenter/plumber who cannot read.  Now, I am not an intellectual snob and Frenchie was very sweet, but he CAN’T READ. How ever would we discuss Captain Ahab and the real symbolism behind Melville’s white whale? Then there was the night bartender who is married but wanted to know where I was staying so he could sneak into my bedroom window after his shift. Then there was the other night bartender who, well, just let me say that his intentions would not measure up to what was expected from Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table. Then there was the furniture store owner who, as we closed up the bar one night asked me to go “for a ride” with him. I said, “No. I don’t think my brother would allow it.” When I told this to Ben later in the car he said,“No.I wouldn’t have.” He has always been my fierce protector. And I  love  him fiercely.

Then there was the former RI divorce lawyer I had contacted to finish up some business I had too long neglected. We started an email correspondence that resulted in his visiting Charleston for more days than I care to remember. He was obnoxious and bossy and rude. His visit was so repugnant that when he was gone I was inspired to compose the following (which really isn’t about “boys” at all, but is rather about ONE boy):

The Trouble with Boys…

Boys are smelly.

Boys breathe too loud.

Boys sleep too loud.

Boys talk too loud.

Boys tell you how to drive,

Boys tell you what to eat.

Boys tell you what to do.

Boys do not clean up after themselves.

Boys talk during movies and tell you what is happening as if you were BLIND.

Boys tell you what is wrong with the world and do not even realize they made it that way.

Boys want to fight with you about things you don’t even care about.

Boys remind you of mistakes you made three days ago.

Boys fall asleep all the time.

Boys actas if your not liking the things you don’t like is crazy.

Boys want to be with you even though you do not like them.

Boys are stupid and do not even KNOW you do not like them.

Because they cannot IMAGINE anyone NOT liking them.

Boys think they are never wrong.

But they are.

Especially about people not liking them.

Two days into his visit the voices in my head started to scream, “ARE YOU STILL HERE? WHEN ARE YOU LEAVING? I DO NOT LIKE YOU. GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!” The decibel level of the voices in my head increased exponentially with every subsequent, torturous day. On the night before he left (You thought I was going to say, “On the night before he died…” didn’t you?), we ate dinner and I said to him, “Look, someone has to say it. This isn’t working.” I did.  I really did say this.

The next morning, on the way back from the airport where I had deposited him at the curb, the voices in my head became speech and all way back to Charleston I expressed my gratitude out loud, “Oh thank you, thank you, thank you.” I was incredulous then when I walked into my wonderfully silent apartment and he called from the terminal to ask, “Do you miss me?”

To be continued….