u s e y o u r h a n d s

Today, I asked a co-worker about her relatively new beau. She’s extremely in like with him and he recently gave her what she called, “the most beautiful poem in the world.”

Without even thinking, I said, “Have you run that through Google yet to make sure he really wrote it?”

In this case, I’m the asshole. Not even a question.

UPDATE:  The poem is an original. And I’m still an a-hole for suggesting that maybe it wasn’t.

So, I have this theory, right? (I always have some theory I’m working on. Most of them are 67% fantastically right, 20% crap, and 3% overly caffeinated.) And this theory is about relationships! It’s a tested, tried theory, so I guess it’s not so much theory as it is a truism or even a Law. So, I guess I’ll start to call it a Law.

Every relationship has a star.

And by “star” I mean the person in the dyad, who, in public, appears the most charismatic, dynamic or in control. Ususally a bit of all three. This person is louder, in public, than the other member of the dyad. And I’m sort of depicting the star as asshole, but the star is not necessarily an asshole. Although the star can be an asshole. The non-asshole star is the kind of person who will get a bunch of friends together with their partner and then tell some great story about how their partner made them a great omelet this a.m. or something else subtley (but not syrupy) sweet. The non-star asshole is complimentary, kind, and probably is beloved my most everybody anyway.  The star asshole, on the other hand, is the kind of person who, in public, will make fun of their partner in order to lay some wacked-out claim to their partner and somehow, in a ham-handed way, make their partner feel loved, by mocking his/her choices in marmalade, pens, or other benign crap. Most stars vacillate between these poles.

Anyway, star definitions aside, all relationships have a star. In public. And this is often different from who wears the relationship pants in private, though not always.

The trouble comes when you get two people who want to be the star. You can’t have two stars in a couple. If both are of equal star power, you’ll never get a word in edgewise with these fuckers. They’ll shout and argue and laugh at their own jokes and probably turn their razor-wire tongues on you at some point. And you can’t have two stars of differing star power. Because you can’t tell a star that he or she isn’t quite starry as their more powerfully starry partner. What I’m saying is that you can’t hook a supernova up with a pulsar, dig? The pulsar thinks he (or she) is a supernova already. And you get those two kids together, the pulsar realizes that the pulsar isn’t quite such hot shit, and simply cannot take it.

You can, however, have two non-stars together. It doesn’t happen that often and these people always leave parties early. But they always show up on time. However, in private, one of them is incan-fucking-descent. And it’s never who you’d think.

The cat realized, after months and months, just how rabbitty her friend the rabbit could be. And though she still wanted to bat around with her lepine companion, he ran far, far away. The cat, now alone, licked her paws, swished her tail, and chased after life on her own. Her old friend the rabbit spent his time in his burrow, missing the light and shade of the forest and everything she could show him.