TheBunnyBlog.com - June 2, 2008

People always ask me, "What's it like to be friends with a narcissist?"

I tell them it's like being friends with a very interesting and dynamic person who lives inside a swimming pool. They're beautiful and intelligent, and they swim, swim, swim in circles all day long 'neath ten feet of water, impressively so in their own world where they can control things and heave their weight around supernaturally, like Poseidon, or a little boy in a bathtub playing war with his GI Joe dolls. From where you're watching them, we're all obeying the laws of physics and reason, and we can empathize with each other, but through the water it's different. Everything belongs to him. Particles of matter bend to his whims. People are pawns. There's this disconnect that's often hard to swallow, but there are also times--beautiful times--my swimming pool friend comes up to the surface and chats with me as just himself...without all that crazy water.

A few days before I left Los Angeles, Tucker and I went out for lunch and a walk through Runyon Canyon with the dogs, and it was on this somewhat sunny, hot afternoon, that my swimming pool friend breached the surface for a bit.

"Bunny, do you think the financing will come through?" he asked me, taking off his shirt to make the sun come out. That's how it happens in the pool: 1) Take shirt off. 2) Make sun come out.

"Of course it will, Rilla."

Murph dashed thirty meters up the trail, spun out and laid in wait for Maxie-who trotted insouciantly, hoping to spy a pretty, long nailed lady with which to spark flirtations. Murph got tired of waiting for Maxie to return her invitation to play, and charged back down the hill, kicking up dust and debris with her signature stride. She wastes all her motion laterally, bouncing to the right and then back to the left with each lay of her paws to the dirt, not unlike a wobbly train that's about to derail, a joyous, retarded train. Tongue flopping outlandishly, she smacked into the side of Maxie and squealed. She then squatted and shat.

"Do you really think so?"
"Of course I do, Rilla. You've been on the best seller list for three fucking years. Just 'cause the media is too retarded to respect you, doesn't mean there isn't a huge market for your movie."

If you swap out "best seller list" and "movie" with other accomplishments, you can say we've been having this conversation for five years. We're both so tired of it. There was a time when we would stay up all night long and talk about our various dreams--ones involving grand pieces of art, ones involving houses on hills and lots of kids and dogs in them, ones involving justice for the people who add value to the entertainment industry, ones involving the vanquishment of the people who don't-but that sort of talk has become exhausting. Talking time is over, and has been for quite some time. Now, its walking time, and the walking is going way too slowly.

He sighed. "Yeah, I guess you're right."

The tiny cloud that shrouded Runyon blew over Beverly Hills, and it became too bright to keep my sunglasses on my head. I slipped them down over my eyes just in time for my "special needs" dog, my Heeler, to whack me in the back of the knees, squeal, and then run off, ears flapping joyously. The way her ears flap, I sometimes imagine that her head is a retarded crow. Flap, flap, flap. So much joy in one little dog.

We stood side by side and admired the smogged layout of Los Angeles, sort of fluffy under the smoke. Little gray buildings downtown. A green square of pubic hair over Hancock park. La Brea snaking up through Hollywood. Century City. The Baldwin Hills. It all seemed as faux as my experiences within it. Had I even lived in this place? I was too tired, body and soul, to even consider it.

And as casually as can be, the real Tucker--without the water--turned to me and said, "I just...I don't know. I really don't want anyone else to have to go through what I've gone through out here with all these assholes. It's not right, and something has to be done about it. People shouldn't have to take abuse to get a project made."

"I agree, Rilla. That's very empathetic of you."

I said more about how excellent it was to see him, the narcissist, showing some empathy, just as he began to curl his forearms up and flex his pectoral muscles, his biceps, his triceps, etc. Just like that, my swimming pool friend had retreated to the depths again. He was checking himself out in my sunglasses.

"Are you...are you checking out your muscles in my glasses...in public."
"I look hot in this lighting."

So yeah. That's what it's like being friends with a narcissist. He's there, and he's not there, quick as shit.

But I'm so very proud of him, and I love him dearly. It is difficult to say how much I do without sounding crazy or pathetic. All the good analogies, metaphors and similes are used up and he's not my boyfriend, nor has he been for a great while. I'll just say that when I left Los Angeles, I gave him the greatest parting gift ever, fifty-five pounds of retarded joy. It pretty much felt like giving away my kidneys.

I miss them like hell, my "special needs" animals.

Posted by The Bunny at 12:56 AM