Full of Flapdoodle

A woman who can't stop talking holds men in thrall

FULL OF FLAPDOODLE

 

She knew almost nothing about anything real, but she could talk, so her discourse contained many more words than concepts. Men paid attention to her because they hoped they could get on her good side by pretending to be interested in her conversation. They were wrong. The only reward anyone ever got from listening to her seemingly never-ending stream of consciousness was more of the same. I imagine she calmed down when she slept, but none of the men who had endured so patiently her torrential word geysers ever found out. At least I never met one who did, and I met many.

 

She was possibly the sexiest woman I have ever met, but not the prettiest. As looks go, she was only average, but there was something about her, maybe a scent, or a way she had of looking at you that made her irresistible. You knew you would be lucky to have her, even though that luck would run out soon after it arrived, if you were ever so lucky in the first place.

 

In finding disciples, she did not employ facial tics or affectations. I never saw her wink. No coy smiles crossed her lips, no dimples formed between cheek and mouth. She simply looked right at a man, and then through him, and the effect was unnerving.

 

She talked about everything, because with an audience so rapt she had the time to cover a wide range of subjects. Her favorite themes involved soul migration, aliens living among us, and magnetic resonance as a source of teleportation and time travel. Since most people have no real opinions about these matters, hers were never contested. People, mostly men, simply listened.

 

Her speech was faux didactic, slightly condescending, full of implied common understandings that were as fanciful as they were far-fetched. No one ever said more about less, yet her audiences never dared point that out for fear of losing her affection. In that way she inspired loyalty.

 

If one of these men had bothered to really listen to what she was saying, he would have found that she often repeated herself. The same themes were illustrated with the same examples. The story of the little boy who was out chasing fireflies one night when he saw a flying saucer making crop circles and then fell into an abandoned well so he sang the hymns he’d learned in Sunday school to keep his spirits up until he was rescued was an old chestnut she took out and polished at least once a week.  

 

I know, because I paid attention to all her stories, and caught all the allusions and inferences, remembered the details and the odd mix of Bible tales mixed with stories of Venusian visitors who brought Adam and Eve to our planet a hundred thousand years ago. From her I learned that raccoons are smarter than horses, that dogs were once human but de-evolved as punishment for cruelty, and LBJ had JFK killed over an insult that no one else remembered, but that the Texan never forgot.

 

Too bad she and I never became intimate. In fact, the more I knew about her, the less interested she seemed in me. Eventually, she would ignore me entirely, saving her piercing gaze for newcomers. They came and went, but I remained, ever attentive and hopeful.

 

I have found that the more intermittent and unexpected the reward, the more addictive the activity. At the beginning, she would smile at me every time I was in her presence. After a while, that dwindled to weekly, then monthly, and then it ratcheted up to a whole new level when the smiles came rarely and as a complete surprise. Talk about being hooked!

 

My self-esteem reached new lows, and yet I persevered, convincing myself that it was only a matter of time before she recognized and rewarded her most loyal fan. Then my self-esteem would skyrocket! Finally, I would have what I’ve always craved, the perfect setting in which to develop peace of mind and true contentment.

 

Only it didn’t happen that way. It just got worse. Finally, I realized that I was like someone who had fallen into a cult religion. To admit that it was all baloney was more than I could bear. Despite my nagging doubts, I had continued onward because it seemed easier to endure chronic pain than be overwhelmed by a wall of grief for all the lost hours and dashed hopes.

 

There was nothing wrong with her but there was plenty wrong with me. Once I admitted that, things quickly got better. I stopped listening to her flapdoodle and began noticing what was really going on around me. Much to my surprise, it proved more interesting that the same tired stories about aliens and time travel.

 

It turned out that I am, and probably always was, surrounded by perfectly delightful, sane people who don’t make a big impact at first impression. Two of them showed up my first week of abstinence from you-know-who.

 

Dennis was a musician, a writer, but more importantly a guy who wasn’t afraid to work. He didn’t think his artistic talents qualified him for a free ride in life. He enjoyed being of service and doing a good job. If he had any esoteric beliefs, he kept them to himself. The first evening we got together at his place, we watched television with the sound off, listened to music from his laptop, and talked for about three hours about a great number of things.

 

The second person who magically emerged on my scene was Anita. Because she was about twenty years my junior, I felt more like her older brother than a possible suitor, which was just fine with her, because she seemed in no hurry to entangle herself in romance or its closest cousin, sex. We went to a movie, which was surprisingly good, and then over ice cream talked about it afterward. She paid her own way. I liked that.

 

I don’t mean to make it seem like I was completely cured of my fixation on Ms. Flapdoodle, but the pangs came less frequently as time passed, and after a month I only thought about her twenty times a day, which was a big improvement over every ten seconds.

 

Having two real friends in place of one sick obsession did wonders for my life in other ways. My ability to concentrate improved, and I found I was able to stay absorbed in a productive activity long enough to get real results. I had grown used to having my train of thought interrupted by thoughts of her, by her stories.  It took a while to move her out and me in.

 

Everything was going well until one day she arrived at my door. I don’t know how she found out where I lived, but she did. She said she had missed me, that it pained her to lose one of her best friends, and that she had grown fond of me.  Being as surprised as I was delighted, I offered absolutely no resistance, and within minutes all thoughts of my new life had vanished. Although we didn’t actually become lovers at that moment, it certainly seemed like the event lay just around the corner, and all my senses were keenly aroused. I was like a drug addict who had just been injected with his favorite drug after a long period of abstinence.

 

That was the last time I ever saw her. After that day, she simply disappeared. I wonder what she was after with that visit, and it seems in retrospect she simply wanted to exert her will, to show her power, to flex her muscles and reassure herself that she still had what it takes to make men like me jump. When she said “jump” by only response was “how high?”

 

I can only assume that she found herself another disciple who was more pleasing to her. It surely can’t be that she found one more compliant, for it’s impossible to imagine anyone more willing to do her bidding that I was. 

 

 

 

Reviews

[Talesha]

I love this so much.The way in which you potray the female character is mesmerizing.I just adore the subtle humor and the mans' addiction/unrequited love makes it interesting.Excellent piece.
Best wishes,
Talesha,