The Party Circuit
Catch up here – Part one – Introducing The Players
Cruella invites! She invited us left and she invited us right. I don’t claim to fully understand this. The reason is because she was just too tedious to contemplate for long. I think she was just wildly swinging her purse at the situation. I was supposed to go down readily but I proved to be hard to kill. Hey. If she had asked I’d have told her.
She invited us to her home for dinner. Repeatedly. Her place was posh and we were served something exquisite. I don’t recall what because I didn’t care what. Honestly? I think she was having dinner catered and then pulling it out of the oven as if she had cooked it herself but so what? I was bored out of my mind.
It was hard to say what her agenda was. To impress him? To intimidate me? To highlight her superiority to me? All of those, or something else? I really don’t know. I didn’t know, because I didn’t care. The thing about Cruella was she was profoundly boring. It was all I could do to stay awake in her presence never mind think about her after hours. Not a chance.
We’d run up to her place and it was three hours of listening to where she’d been and where she would go next. It came out like this:
“I’m considering taking a prime and lovely and exclusive trip down a road paved with gold, diamonds and rubies that will land me in Greece for six months. Haven’t you always wanted to go to Greece, Lover Boy? Yes? I thought so. By the way. The wine you two are drinking? It came from somewhere you can’t afford to go, and it cost something you can’t afford to pay. Tra la la!”
Oh brother, get me out of here. How am I supposed to sit through this with a straight face? Someone get my agent on the phone!
Cruella, invite, invite, invite, invite. It occurred to me she was observing me. It’s one thing when you can’t catch a man and neither can anyone else. Lover Boy had not been caught for awhile. He’d been stag for a year, maybe two but he was currently on the mat down for the count. This was a major puzzle to her. How’d I do that?
I could feel her studying me. She was looking for a weak spot for sure, but I think she was also trying to perceive what it was I had. She really thought I’d be gone in a blink. I wasn’t, but why?
I wouldn’t have minded this if I thought that she had a hope in hell in figuring it out. If she could figure it out, a breakthrough would occur and if that happened, who knows? The whole thing would change and perhaps the pieces would fall into a more interesting arrangement.
Instead, what we had here was a boring card game with one more angle I could perceive which was by far the most egregious to me. Having us “here” and having us “there” prevented us from having each other. Pretty swift, huh? In this way Cruella was effective. There I was stuck drinking wine I couldn’t appreciate rather than having the sex I coveted. Hrmph.
Noticing this, I complained to Lover Boy and his first response was to defend her.
“She’s just lonely, Elsa.”
“Well of course she’s lonely, who the hell could stand her?” I said. “She has a crush on you by the way.”
“No she doesn’t.” He blushed. “We’re just friends.”
I laughed. Or knowing me I probably snorted.
“Oh Elsa, that’s silly. We work together. And she likes you fine. I know she doesn’t talk to you that much but it’s because she doesn’t know you. Cruella is a nice person. She knows a lot of people. She has a lot of contacts. You should be nice. She could do you a lot of good.”
I smirked and contemplated a tirade, but decided to drop it. Fuck it. The whole thing was becoming “not worth it” to me. Fed up with this stupid scenario, I started thinking about bailing.
To be continued.
I have met this type and they are well worth avoiding.
“You should be nice. She could do you a lot of good.”
Oooh, that’s fatal.. never go there!! Those people NEVER do anybody any good. They suck your blood, like vampires.. 😉
goodness…you DO have Libra, don’t you? I admire your patience with this situation. I would’ve given it to her right then and there, but gathering info may be the smarter way…
🙂
LOL!
I can’t wait to read the rest of the story 😉
Man people like that are SO BORING! I worked at a winebar once in London’s financial district and couldn’t beeeeelieve how boring some people were! No one read books, or went to movies or anything! No hobbies! Just wine and cocaine and naval gazing.
Yawn, yawn, and yawn again!
Grrrreat writing!!
Thank you!
Love, love, love this writing, Elsa!
In 1991-’92, I came to know a man extremely well, with sexual
undertone for a full year before we ever kissed. He was a
different race, he had moved from another country that I knew
little about. He was incredibly drawn to me, yet we were both
repulsed by one another at times. We spent a tremendous amount
of time together during this full year of sizing one another up.
Finally, we meshed and merged. That is when he brought me around
to meet her. Cindy was very much like me, white American, fair
skinned and kind of smart. She had met him when she lived in his
country. She learned to speak his language by reading children’s
books. One day, he looked me in the eyes and told me matter of
fact, that he was considering marrying her. I didn’t know what
to say, I was puzzled because he was clearly sleeping with me.
I could tell that he had not slept with her, he did imply that
he was not sexually attracted to her.
Our now adult son and his wife were visiting me a few months
ago, I brought out a bunch of old photos to look at. My son
grabs a picture of Cindy, his father and I, standing together
in a restaurant. My son points to Cindy, asks me who is that?
I tell him how he met her when she lived in his country, and
how they were room mates here. My son notices the date on
the picture, he says, “Mom, that is a month before you got
pregnant with me!”.
His father doesn’t speak to Cindy or I anymore. Not out of
spite, he just moved on and married a woman who is is race,
who speaks his language and lived in a far off country nearer
to his. I think in the end he looked at us and our being
American born and bred as some sort of prize that he was
excited to compete for, but became bored with when he finally
won.
Actually, thought I won the biggest prize, because I got
exactly what I wanted and needed. And now, so has our son.
Not sure what became of Cindy, but I wish her all the best.
She was a kind stranger to me, who shared a meal and a
friend at a restaurant, one night.
I’m on a roll, just remembered another Cindy.
While I was spending that first year, just
getting to know my son’s father platonically,
I also had a dear friend named Cindy. This
Cindy was a most beautiful heart and soul of
a person. She was everything I was not, except
she never saw it that way. She shared her family
and friends with me, she was a model who could
never break thru the glass ceiling of steady
work. We used to always joke about how she was
the mom pictured on the Holiday Inn advertisement,
and about the time she was the latest Nordstrom
dress sale model featured in the local newspaper
advertising, because she was always so seemingly
close to a big gig, yet so far away.
The first time my son’s father slept with me, I
left him, literally, telling him matter of fact
that I was going out with Cindy. The second time
I saw him after, he very angrily told me that I
had to choose between him and Cindy. I went out
with Cindy a couple more times, the last time she
looked at me with tears in her eyes, as we stood
together in a crowded nightclub that she always
dragged me into. She said her sad farewells to
me, and she said that she knew that he would win.
I never saw her again, could never figure out how
to look her up, and always wondered about her.
One night, my son was in elementary school at the
time, we were living in another state and I was
in single mom mode. I turned on the tv to watch
Saturday night videos on alternative video hour.
A song that I had never heard of was playing and
across the screen, walked Cindy. She sauntered
by in and out of the video, she looked like
Audrey Hepburn. I gasped. Later, when my son’s
father came out to visit us for a rare treat, I
showed him the video. He watched, then gasped.
Cindy?? He sort of stammered slowly. I turned
and grinned at our son, who was quietly observing.
I shared some wonderful, happy, fun memories of
Cindy with them. I was so very glad to see her
again.
I love all of your stories but this one is climbing the charts!!
You always have me on the edge of my seat with your incredible stories!❤️