Molly Want a Cracker?

I occasionally hang out with Molly a couple of times a year because we have a mutual friend, a mutual friend who I think was trying to hook us up at some point, since we both consider ourselves writers. Alas, we are not Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida, unless Dave Eggers' feelings for his wife fall somewhere between contempt and pity. I don't blame my friend for thinking it was a good idea, eHarmony thought the same thing.

The last time the three of us hung out, we went to a restaurant for happy hour. It was sometime after my trip to New York, where I came back with the first pieces of what is now known as my technicolor wardrobe. So I was sporting one of my pastel hoodies and wearing a couple of shiny rhinestone rings to match my hoodie. These rings don't look like real jewelry and I wear them unapologetically.

I never thought a $5 ring (which was bought for me as a gift) could stir up so much controversy but it did. Molly would just go on and on about how "gay" it made me look. It definitely made me look silly and I was and am still clearly aware of that. I didn't mind the teasing for the most part, it was Molly's crudeness that took things way too far. Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised since most of my interactions with her have been unpleasant at best, but I figure at some point I'm going to have to see something positive in her since my friend must have some sort of positive opinion of her.

Molly decided to cross the line when she flagged down our waiter to ask him his opinion if my ring was "gay". He looked at me, looked at the ring, and said "no, it matches his hoodie." Instead of thanking him for his time and letting him go back to his job, she persisted by once again asking "are you sure that you don't think that it looks gay? It looks so gay!" He was confused and I just felt embarrassed, not because of self doubt, but because I had some sort of relationship with this girl. This girl who didn't realize that she wasn't going to get the answer she wanted to hear no matter how many times she asked, who didn't realize that this waiter was not going to risk losing his job by insulting one of customers even if he did feel that way. She had turned the restaurant into a school yard and was doing her best to bully her way to popularity but no one was biting.

I didn't see or talk to Molly for a very long time after that. I wasn't avoiding her or angry, she just has a tendency to disappear for months at a time. She usually reappears after she's been mistreated by some guy and then subsequently dumped. Then, she finds me and tells me that she's going to write some sort of masterpiece. This has been her cycle for as long as I've known her, and it's a cycle that I even recognize even though I don't know her very well.

First there was the screenplay she wanted to write and then it was a book. The screenplay was going to be "like Garden State" and then to book was going to be "like Life of Pi, because I think my style is like the author of that book". After realizing that she always wanted to write something like something else, I told her to find her own voice. I told her that it didn't matter how well she wrote (let me be on the record that I haven't seen enough of her writing to have an opinion), she needed to have a voice. She would counter my argument by telling me things she learned about writing. "A lot of stories are pretty much the same, but they're just told differently" was her big epiphany that I subsequently deflated, since that's what kids learn in English class freshmen year of high school*.

I tried to help her without discouraging her too much. It wasn't my place to tell her whether I thought she should pursue writing or not. It would be a moot point since she lacks any sense of self-awareness. Her problem with my rings didn't stem from homophobia or because she thought she had encountered a fashion faux paux, her problem was her inability to accept someone being so comfortable in their own skin. This is not to say that I don't have any or less insecurities and hang ups than anyone else, but perhaps it magnified how insecure she was, because I wasn't trying to dress like anyone, I was just being me.

*(http://changingminds.org/disciplines/storytelling/plots/conflicts.htm)