Talking about Grace

Haven't talked about one of my friends, Graceless Grace in quite some time. Still have our regular lunches but it's getting few and far between especially since we've both gotten caught up with other events ( and people! ) in our lives. Fortunately since I'm not sure I can hold up to my side of the wedding pact we made years back - Charming Calvin certainly wouldn't approve of the idea of me getting hitched with someone else :P

Reminiscent of the Wedding Banquet, don'tcha think?

And yet just last evening after another ignominious breakup she came to me with a question in her eyes - and one I found myself unable to provide with a satisfactory reply.

Grace : Another man bites the dust.
Paul : Oh.
Grace : You have this look on your face. What is it? Really, what's wrong with me?
Paul : Hmmm.. you really want to know?
Grace : Tell me. I want to know.
Paul : You can't handle the truth!

Seriously? I honestly didn't reenact A Few Good Men with that last line.


Nah, she can't handle the truth!
But does she really want to know? Not everyone can handle the plain truth and nothing but the truth. I have done that before, I've looked in the mirror often enough to see all my horrible flaws from arrogance to sloth to to self-absorption to indecisiveness. If I'd any doubt, I'm sure she ( and probably Charming Calvin ) would have been all too glad to point them all out to me!

Doubt everyone can accept their own flaws quite as easily though. Don't think she'd take it with any grace for sure. There are times I look at her and I wonder why such an estimable girl can remain single. And then I look back again, recollect on some of the unforgettable events in her life - and I actually see some of the unfortunate reasons.

For one thing, Grace has an unerring precision in picking just the right bastard out of all the lousy scumbags that are attracted to her like stinking moths to a flickering flame. Super-scum-magnet we once called her and sometimes some of them seem to adhere forever till shaken loose by the police force.

From a sneering bastard with a penchant for shockingly unbelievable sex fetishes ( even I shudder at the thought! ) to a nervous wimp who turns tail to run each time the dreadful C-word is mentioned - and yes, even to a closeted gay man desperately in search of his identity. That would be me. Of course at that time with my adolescent hormones out of whack, I would have fucked a letterbox. Not that I've become a whole lot more discerning lately :P

Lousy choice of men apart, secondly there's also her forceful, unbending personality. Although she's a wonderful girl otherwise, sometimes her blunt, straightforward observations can far too easily deflate a man's fragile ego. Overly quick to make erroneous assumptions about people, she holds to these preconceived notions stubbornly buckle and thong.

Grace : How is the soup?
Date #1 : The soup is okay, did you make this?
Grace : You misogynistic pig, you expect me to slave all day, all night to make this and then you tell me it's okay. I know your sort, you are a useless, selfish pig. And look at the way you hold that spoon - it shows weakness in a man!
Date #1 : Hmm... Thanks for the soup. I'll call you.

Discretion seems a purely alien concept to her. A pure Sagittarian, she's all light, lively and yet in between her friendly banter, she can shoot these painfully stinging barbs with shocking accuracy. Friends and foe have fallen alike under her relentless rain of arrows that blot out the sun. Not sure how anyone could possibly live for more than a day with her picking over each and every flaw, mistake and error - placing it under the inescapable light of the microscope and re-examining it again and again. It would take a man of tremendous self-confidence to sit through a rerun of his personality faults on a daily basis. Why wouldn't her ex boyfriends leave willy-nilly especially after being told repeatedly that they are cowardly failures?

Utterly tactless, Grace obviously finds it easy enough to point out all her friends' manifold flaws but yet I find myself biting my tongue to reply in kind. So what do I tell her? Is there a line drawn between friends? Can she handle the truth?