You're so vain...

She suspected that her inability to love had something to do with her inability to delude herself.  Love was self-delusion.  People ignore the obvious truths, ignore their instincts and smile, kiss, make love, fool themselves over and over again.  Smile, lie, fuck.  Repeat steps one through three.

One story always stuck out in my head from the Mahabharat—the tale of Draupadi and how she ended up with five husbands.

Draupadi was a princess, and princesses were married off by swayamvara (which is an awful lot like “the Bachelorette.”)  Men had to win certain challenges to win the hand of the princess.

A prince named Arjuna won the princess and brought her back home to his mother.  He shouted to his mother “Come see what I won!” 

His mother replied without looking, “Whatever it is, share it with your four brothers.”

Momma’s boy that he was, he did as she said.  Draupadi married all five brothers.

Her ever-wise friend Krishna explained to her why:  “In your past life you fasted and prayed to Shiva to grant you a husband.  When he appeared before you to grant you your wish, you gave a long list of all the qualities you wanted in a man.  He told you it was nearly impossible to find one man with all those qualities, but you insisted.  So now you have five husbands who represent all the qualities you desire.”

I wonder what the moral of this story is.  No one’s perfect?  Women are too hard to please?  Or if you really want the perfect man, you have to have at least five of them?

My older sister had magazines like YM and Seventeen laying around.  I remember flipping thorugh one and coming across a picture of a certain singer.

The caption described him as a bad boy.  I just thought he was beautiful.

Twenty years into the future, I am engaged to him.  Can’t say no one ever warned me…

When I was in kindergarten, I was playing Barbies with a friend when her older brother decided to chase me around with a naked, headless Ken doll, screaming at me “DON’T YOU WANT TO PLAY WITH ME???”

He was held back a year, so he was in my first grade class.  Boys were getting in trouble for going around kissing girls on the playground.  I felt a pair of lips on the back of my head.  I turned around, ready to hit the perpetrator when I saw it was him.  I smiled, blushed, and turned back around.

I feel like my love life hasn’t changed much since first grade.

“Do you believe in soul mates?” he asked.

She stared at the bubbles in her champagne before answering.  “Why yes, I do.  I believe there is one perfect human being on this Earth for each of us.  I found mine, but unfortunately I lost him so I’m forced to spend the rest of my life in fake and empty relationships.”

As she said it, she wondered if she was joking.

“You’re young,” he said. 

You don’t know how old I am, she thought.

I’m like a cat…independant, a survivor with 9 lives.  You know I want you when I slink up against you.  You know you’re doing something right when I’m purring, but I’ll hiss if I’m rubbed the wrong way.  Abandon me and I’ll just wander into a new yard, find new prey.  Relatively calm, but don’t back me into a corner or else the claws will come out.