| |||||
|
Arts & Entertainment  BooksComics Health & Body Media Mothers Who Think News People Politics2000 Technology - Free Software Project Travel & Food  Columnists
- - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - Also Today For a full list of today's Salon Books stories, go to the
Books home page. - - - - - - - - - - - - Search Salon - - - - - - - - - - - - Salon Columnists - - - - - - - - - - - - Recently in Salon Books Reviews Reviews Book Bag - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
Bad behavior
- - - - - - - - - - - -
April 18, 2000 | It is a great city if you're in the right frame of mind, and if
you're not, there are places that can put you there, like Bryant
Park, on Sixth Avenue between 41st and 42nd, behind the Public
Library. It is simply one of the most splendid outdoor spaces
anywhere. People with business in midtown come and sit beside
beautiful plantings of tulips and irises, and look across a plane
of lush grass, in a box canyon of handsome buildings, and turn
their pallid faces up to the sun. The sunny side of the park has
the crowd, the shade side is practically deserted. It's a diverse
crowd, lots of suits both male and female, lots of blue collars,
a smattering of tourists, young punks, old coots, two or three
disheveled people slumped on benches and talking to themselves,
and a few people like Mr. Blue who talk to themselves but for
professional reasons. There is a cafe under canvas on a plaza for
them what wants it, but it's so much more relaxing and sumptuous
to sit in the square and soak up sun amid the grandeurs of New
York. A block away is the old New Yorker office where the old
heroes toiled and Broadway is just to the west and north and the
old RCA studio where all those great original-cast albums were
made is on 44th and of course that literary hothouse, the two
great reading rooms of the library. After an hour in Bryant Park,
Mr. Blue is sorely tempted to tell his letter-writers, "My dear,
you really ought to get outside more." A person can sit at a
kitchen table and accuse himself of all sorts of failures and
betrayals and work himself into a dark mood indeed, and a person
can also go outdoors and sit in the park and take the sun and
lean his head back and feel somehow lucky. Sometimes life is
almost that simple. A number of readers chided me for my advice to Heartbroken, the
wife whose husband is profligate with money (including a monthly
$500 marijuana tab), and I'm sure the readers are right. I told
her to split up their finances so that he couldn't drag her down.
The readers pointed out the obvious: $500 is a lot of money to
spend on reefer every month. (I guess it's a lot, I don't know,
I'm not active in the market.) "It seemed rather obvious to me
that their problem was not about money, but rather her husband's
drug addiction," wrote one reader. "Anybody who smokes that much
dope has a big problem." Well put.
Mr. Blue Garrison Keillor's column appears every Tuesday in Salon Books.
Feeling blue about your prose? In the doldrums over your last date? Ask Mr. Blue. Another reader wrote: "As a former lover of a habitual pot-smoker, I can guess that money issues are not the cause of the friction; rather, the friction is the result of the pot habit. The money issues would cease to exist if the pot issue went away, and if Heartbroken stays in this relationship, she will continue to enable this person to medicate himself and be unavailable to her." Another reader said: "I learned the hard way in a somewhat similar situation that one who uses marijuana on that scale is dependent on it, and it totally screws up how they relate to the world." Dear Mr. Blue, I'm 31, dating a guy of 32 for four months now. I am not really sure if it is serious or not. I often feel like just some skank he's out to bang. However, he has hinted that he'd like to spend more time with me or even move in together, and when I call him on the carpet for behavior I don't like, he listens and says that he'll try to do better. Sometimes there is improvement. The behavior that disturbs me: 1) Saying "all women like to be knocked around a little." (He's
since stopped saying this.) I have tried a couple of times to break things off with him, but I just can't seem to do it. Either I lose the nerve or he talks me out of it. I'm so afraid of being alone. I feel so incredibly lonely, all the time. A year ago, the one good guy who ever loved me decided he no longer wants me. I really don't think I'll ever again be treated as well as he treated me or be really loved again. So if that's the case I might as well stay where I am, it's as good as it gets. I feel so lost. The behavior I mentioned he has worked on so it's not as serious anymore -- but it's so hard to keep struggling. Oh, what to do, Mr. Blue? I want a new life. Lonely Dear Lonely, I don't know what "very rough physically" means exactly, whether he's slugging you or kicking you or if it's a playful boot in the butt, but at worst it's grounds for a battering charge and at the very best it's boorish and idiotic, the behavior of an 8-year-old bully. It isn't something you beg a grown person to change; it shouldn't be there in the first place. I don't care if he's modified some things and stopped saying, "All women need to be knocked around." It's simply abysmal, period, and you are in such pain from the loss of your old love that you cannot bring yourself to stand up for yourself. But you must. It's your life. You can't let somebody kick you around and treat you this way. It isn't funny, it isn't anything, it's just sort of hopeless. The searching of your wallet -- deliberate humiliation. The ogling of other women. The coolness to your messages. Don't struggle with this. Don't accept it. Walk away from it. You can have a new life. The moment this idiot is out of the picture, life is going to look very new and a lot more fun.
| ||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
||
Next page |