Mantra Girl
MantraGirl was a laid-back, chill, almost hippy-esque chick when I first met her in the late 90s.
She had uber long hair of a fine wave, and a stomach always tight as a board. Her features were created somewhere at the junction of Janis Joplin St. and Fergie Ferg Ave., so depending on her state of make-up and the onlooker’s state of inebriation, she could either look busted.com or pretty cute.
The fact that she had an easy smile on her lips luckily for her tipped the scales to Fergie Ferg more often than not. She was someone who most people would be happy to share a drink, a conversation, a dinner with.
But then things started to change….
2003 came around, and I swear, if I got a penny for every time she uttered those words, I may have amassed a small fortune by now. Definitely enough money to buy me a month's worth of Starbucks every morning.
"Men are intimidated by me, because I am such a strong person.”
'"They like me, but can't handle me due to my sheer strength of mind, my over- the-top-personality, my fine wit and incredible intelligence".
What she could not see, is that every time she repeated the mantra, it failed to portray her as what she wanted to be seen as: this incredible force of nature, this tsunami of self-assureds .
MantraGirl suffered from the condition I call “love-me-daddy” validation-seeking. She sought validation and self-completion from her trysts, and justified men’s subsequent loss of interest by repeating over and over that "He must have gotten afraid of being involved with such a strong person".
In late December 2004, the new mantra became:
'"I'm not comfortable with the casual nature of sex in this city".
Cynic that I am, I had to suppress the sudden reverse peristalsis about to take place , and instead, ended up rolling my eyes so deep back into my brain cavity, I swear I saw some synapses firing like mad.
Could it be that after an entire year of rampaging through NYC's men, MantraGirl, the chick who embodies the sport-sex definition, suddenly did not want or believe in casual sex? Good for her, maybe she finally got out of the straight path into a Valtrex prescription.
But fear not: Immediately after uttering the latest mantra, with an apres-diner drink at Whiskey Park, she meets a charming executive from Washington State, and…
Wakes up the next morning with her garage hurting, and calls me looking for reassurances that most AIDS cases are not transmitted through heterosexual contact.
Right? Right?
2005 came and brought with it a re-incarnation of the “Men-are-intimidated-by-me" mantra:
One recent night last winter, the last time I hung out with MantraGirl, I was offered this gem every five minutes or so, I kid you not. By the end of the night, I would rather have jumped out the window, than hear it one more time:
"I am confident". "I am so confident". "So-and-so is not as confident as me".
Every time "confident" spilled from her lips, I imagined this poor little girl on an empty dark stage at Lincoln Center repeating the phrase over and over again. Then an oval bright light would come on and follow her around the wooden floor, accentuating her lack thereof.
She had uber long hair of a fine wave, and a stomach always tight as a board. Her features were created somewhere at the junction of Janis Joplin St. and Fergie Ferg Ave., so depending on her state of make-up and the onlooker’s state of inebriation, she could either look busted.com or pretty cute.
The fact that she had an easy smile on her lips luckily for her tipped the scales to Fergie Ferg more often than not. She was someone who most people would be happy to share a drink, a conversation, a dinner with.
But then things started to change….
2003 came around, and I swear, if I got a penny for every time she uttered those words, I may have amassed a small fortune by now. Definitely enough money to buy me a month's worth of Starbucks every morning.
"Men are intimidated by me, because I am such a strong person.”
'"They like me, but can't handle me due to my sheer strength of mind, my over- the-top-personality, my fine wit and incredible intelligence".
What she could not see, is that every time she repeated the mantra, it failed to portray her as what she wanted to be seen as: this incredible force of nature, this tsunami of self-assureds .
MantraGirl suffered from the condition I call “love-me-daddy” validation-seeking. She sought validation and self-completion from her trysts, and justified men’s subsequent loss of interest by repeating over and over that "He must have gotten afraid of being involved with such a strong person".
In late December 2004, the new mantra became:
'"I'm not comfortable with the casual nature of sex in this city".
Cynic that I am, I had to suppress the sudden reverse peristalsis about to take place , and instead, ended up rolling my eyes so deep back into my brain cavity, I swear I saw some synapses firing like mad.
Could it be that after an entire year of rampaging through NYC's men, MantraGirl, the chick who embodies the sport-sex definition, suddenly did not want or believe in casual sex? Good for her, maybe she finally got out of the straight path into a Valtrex prescription.
But fear not: Immediately after uttering the latest mantra, with an apres-diner drink at Whiskey Park, she meets a charming executive from Washington State, and…
Wakes up the next morning with her garage hurting, and calls me looking for reassurances that most AIDS cases are not transmitted through heterosexual contact.
Right? Right?
2005 came and brought with it a re-incarnation of the “Men-are-intimidated-by-me" mantra:
One recent night last winter, the last time I hung out with MantraGirl, I was offered this gem every five minutes or so, I kid you not. By the end of the night, I would rather have jumped out the window, than hear it one more time:
"I am confident". "I am so confident". "So-and-so is not as confident as me".
Every time "confident" spilled from her lips, I imagined this poor little girl on an empty dark stage at Lincoln Center repeating the phrase over and over again. Then an oval bright light would come on and follow her around the wooden floor, accentuating her lack thereof.
posted by observia at 10:01 PM
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