Article first published as TheFurFiles - Friend Zone, Greedy For An Uptown Girl, Wallpaper Woes on Technorati.

Madame Floretta "Fern" De Villiers, a.k.a. "Amanda Fox" is an author or erotic fiction and commentary.  This is her weekly advice column.

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Dear Fern,

I just turned thirty and I hate to say this, but I am done with love.  I’ve simply had enough.  See, every time I start dating someone, they end up telling me that they just want to be “friends” or that they are already involved with someone else.  I am tired of getting hurt.  Thus, I’ve come to the conclusion that I may be destined to live life alone.  It’s sad, so sad; it’s a sad, sad sit-u-ationnnn…  and it’s getting more and more absurd.  Any advice? 

Sincerely,

Guy Who Is NOT Michael Bolton But Who Is Mistaken For Him ALL The Time

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Dear Guy,

Are you sure you’re not more like Elton John?

Anyway, while I’d really like to help you out with your problem, I feel that there are far more important issues afoot right now, like the argument I had with this guy in my art class this past week. 

See, in my continuous effort to better myself, I signed up to take drawing lessons every Thursday evening from 7 to 9:30 p.m.  And there is this man in my class whom I will call “Samuel” because that IS his rude, vainglorious, contemptuously impertinent, real G.D. name.  From our very first session in the basement of the Old Town Hall Community Center, I knew that Samuel was a jerk.  No matter what we were doing, he always had something to say, and it was never anything nice.  Now, as you know, I’m usually a peace-loving person, but by the sixth week – just a few days ago – I (along with everyone else in the group) had had enough of his crap.  It was time to stand up to this moron.  Let me explain to you what happened…

We had just finished an evening of “life” drawing – for those of you unfamiliar with the term, that means drawing naked models – and we’d come together to critique each other’s work, something we do at the end of each assignment which is meant as more of a positive reinforcement that we are all trying our best rather than a harsh reality check that none of us are, or ever will be, Vincent Van Gogh.     

As we gathered at the back of the room with our drawings, I noticed that Samuel seemed more agitated than usual.  He was shuffling about, scuffing at the floor and stretching his arms repeatedly over his head.

“Samuel.  Would you like to go first?”  Critiques seem to run best when we start with him.

“First in line, first in life,” Samuel announced, eager to show off.

The teacher took a good look at his picture.  “Very nice.  Excellent use of contrast.”  Samuel had shaded in the negative space around the image completely black – black like his heart.  “Yes, and I also like the way you’ve captured a sense of churlishness in the model’s eyes.”  The teacher gave a half-hearted smile.  “Anyone else have anything to say?”

“I think you did an great job of drawing her knees,” Eileen spoke up.  She makes it a point to say something nice about everyone’s work.

“Well, I’ve been drawing my whole life, so I know what I’m doing, unlike SOME people…” Samuel snorted.

The instructor ignored him.  “OK, let’s move on to Fern.”  He turned away from Samuel and gazed for a few moments at my sketch.  “Oh, I see you’ve really captured the essence of her upper torso.  Well done.”

“Thank you,” I said, fairly satisfied with my attempt.

“You think THAT is good?”  Obviously, Samuel couldn’t hold himself back any longer.

“’Scuse me?”  I swung around, giving him my best “who died and made you God?” sneer.  He’d been nattering at people all month and I’d had enough.

“Seriously, it doesn’t even look like Annalise.”  (Annalise was our model.)  “And her breasts are too big.  You’ve given her a pair of 36 DD’s when clearly she’s no bigger than a measly ‘B’ cup.  You should be ashamed of yourself for creating such a pathetic representation.  What were you doing, trying to draw with your feet like Don here?”  He pointed to the man in our group with no arms who actually DOES draw with his feet.  “You are as bad as he is.”

“What?”  I couldn’t believe he was actually trash-talking my work.  “Oh, and yours is so much better?  So much more ‘realistic’?”  So what if I’d exaggerated Annalise’s breast size a little?  “Why is your picture of Annalise a better representation than mine?  Because you say so?”

“Because I KNOW so.  And any other art aficionado would also tell you that my picture is better.  In fact, anyone who knows anything about art would say that my picture is the BEST in the whole class.  Clearly, I am a ‘true’ artist and the rest of you are just wannabes.  Not only that, but Annalise told me herself that she liked mine the best.”  With that, he stepped forward toward my paper and boldly – a piece of charcoal in his hand – swiped a huge “X” through my picture. 

Shocked, and a few seconds later, furious beyond belief, I could barely breathe.  “You…  you…   you… arrogant, no good, over-bearing, self-righteous, self-aggrandizing, self-applauding, snooty, stuck-up, swaggering, son-of-a-$%#@. How dare you talk to me that way and how dare you touch my work.  I have it in my mind to do some serious bodily harm to you right now.  I mean, I’d like to take my pencils out of my pencil case and jab them into that scrawny, chicken-sized chest of yours.  And I’d like to take my Staedtler Kneadable Eraser, push you down onto the floor over there by the sink where it’s all wet and dirty from cleaning out paint jars, put my knee into your neck so you can’t move and erase the friggin’ crap out of your face so that your skin is all red and chaffed for days and days and you have to hide in your house until it heals.   But guess, what?  I would NEVER do such a thing, even though my blood is boiling to the point that I look the way Natalie Portman did at the end of Black Swan.  No, I am better than that.  Even though I don’t agree with you, I realize that we are both entitled to our own opinion.  And even though you have destroyed something of mine that I adored, something that held a special – almost SACRED – place in my heart, I know that hurting you is not going to make the situation any better.”  We then both just stood there glaring at each other, fire shooting out of our eyes. 

Suddenly, a small voice not much louder than the fluttering of a butterfly’s wings came from the back of the room.  It was Annalise.  “Um, can I say something?” she asked, stepping daintily, demurely forward.  “I just want you all to know that I think you are ALL wonderful artists and that I think each and every one of you has done a stupendous job of drawing me in your own special way.  And isn’t that what art is all about?  Isn’t it a means of releasing the soul?  Isn’t it a feast for the senses, the emotions, and the intellect?   Isn’t it meant to bring joy and passion and love into a world?”  She paused. “As great as art is however, in the end, isn’t a canvas JUST a canvas, something that does NOT breathe or feel pain. And while a piece of art may stand for something, isn’t it STILL just an object?  And how is an object ever more valuable than the welfare of a human being?   The people who are here right now and all the rest of the people out there in the world…” She turned slowly, poignantly, pointing to each and every one of us, “…are what matter the most.  That someone could turn art into an argument about right and wrong, about who is better, goes against everything that art stands for.”  She continued, “And Samuel.  I think you have MISINTERPRETED what I said.  I said that I ‘liked’ your picture and that I thought it was ‘really good’.  I DIDN’T say that your picture was the ‘best’.  Anyway, if this class can’t act civilly, you’ll have to get Kevin to be your model, and we all know how much of a creeper he is.  Can you say ‘accidental unicorn’?” 

When Annalise had finally finished speaking, Samuel’s eyes were like black slits on his face.  “Well, I never…” he barked, storming out of the room. 

“I’m not sure that your speech got through to the person who needed to hear it the most,” Eileen said to Annalise very matter of fact. 

“I think you are right and what a shame.”  Annalise shrugged her shoulders.  “At least I tried.”

After that night, Samuel never came back, and as happy as that made me, I still felt guilty that he was probably off somewhere cruelly subjecting others to his one-sided notions about art. 

Whew!  Now that I’ve gotten that whole fiasco with Samuel off my chest, I can think clearly again, and I’d say that your situation Guy, is a relatively easy one to fix.  Simply aspire to become a rock star.  That way you’ll be able to keep the crazy hair and gaudy clothes, while at the same time, you’ll have loads of admirers from which to choose a mate.  Bonne chance!

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Dear Fern,

My boyfriend has all kinds of pictures of naked girls on his computer, and he doesn’t even try to hide them.  He has them right there on his desktop.  In fact, his wallpaper is a rotating bevy of big-breasted beauties.  It makes me feel bad because they are all so gorgeous with great bodies and perfect faces.  If that’s what he likes, how am I ever supposed to compete?

Sincerely,

Regular In Red Deer

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Dear Regular,

I can’t help it that men are perverts.  Besides, what would you like me to do about it?   Throw darts at their heads whenever I see one walking down the street?  Put a pillow over my husband’s face while he sleeps and then when he stops breathing, cackle maniacally, “One down, three and a half billion to go?”  Find Brad Pitt, (as he seems to be a pretty good representative for ALL men), tie him up and slowly lick him to death?  Well, I’ll tell you right now, I’m not going to do any of those things.  Why?  Because men are like lice, really annoying but hard as heck to get rid of…  So let’s just forget about that and move on to something way more important, like the meaning of life.  Here, let me try to define it for you… 

It’s eating the same fat-free turkey, havarti cheese, lettuce, Dijon mustard but minus the mayonnaise (because you are trying to get those six-pack abs) on whole wheat bread sandwich everyday for fifteen years straight.

It WAS a whole lotta Coke until you learned that drinking pop is directly linked to pancreatic cancer.  Sure, they can put big bottles of it on the kitchen table surrounded by a loving family having dinner and laughing and talking like that’s what people ACTUALLY do at meal time, but Coke is still Coke – water mixed with a crap load of sugar and artificial flavors that is in no way shape or form good for you. 

It’s boxes and boxes of baking soda – used for everything from semi-cleaning the oven to messily applying as deodorant because you swear you are “going green” if it kills you.

It’s royal weddings, homelessness and The Beer Store.

It’s sex when you don’t really want it, but you do it anyway because if you don’t, that Visa bill is going to be a whole lot harder to explain.

It’s people signaling left, who then turn right, and grandmas who knit sweaters just because.

It’s Aladdin Bail Bonds.  They’ll get you out.  They’ll get you through it.

It’s weighing nine hundred pounds because someone in your family is clearly an “enabler”. 

It’s refusing to let the neighbor kid into your house because you heard that last week he had the flu, which was never officially confirmed as NOT being the “swine” flu but was probably just a really bad cold.

It’s also gladly ingesting the secretions of that hot brunette from the office, because knowing that she’s slept with fifteen of your coworkers somehow doesn’t seem to matter.

It’s thinking that you have to compete with pictures of naked women on your boyfriend’s computer because you are too much of a doorknob to understand that they are just that – pictures.  You do have a copy of the “Firefighter’s Of America Official Calendar”, don’t you? 

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Dear Fern,

The only girls who ever want to get with me have babies from at least three different baby daddies; they all have a list of STD’s as long as Chris Brown’s “supposed” Alabama black snake; they all have upwards of two thousand friends on Facebook, most of which are guys; and they all have that blonde on top, black on the bottom, hairstyle.  While it may not have mattered to me much in the past, now I think I want a woman with substance.  Yup, I need to find me more of an “upscale” biiatch.  What should I do?

Sincerely,

Guy Who Is NOT Fifty Cent But Who Gets Mistaken For Him ALL The Time

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Dear Guy,

Lately, I’ve been having the same dream over and over again.  I see myself working at the McDonalds’ drive-through.  My boss – Richard – is with me and I have a mad crush on him.  We are the only two workers in the restaurant.   Richard is dressed super sexily in black polyester pants and a blue, oversized, short-sleeved dress shirt and brown, checkered tie.  In my dream, he is flirting with me, asking if I want to “do it”?  I say “Yes, Richard.  Take me.  Make me your woman.”  So off we go hand in hand, leaving a line of customers shouting for us to “get their food or else.”  Ignoring them, we race to the back, ready to rip each other’s clothes off.   “I’m going to do stuff to you that you can’t even fathom,” Richard growls amorously.  Madly in love, I just want him to ravage me until my legs seize-up and my back spasms.  Next to the boxes of ketchup, we start kissing.  Richard begins unbuttoning my slacks, and then his own, the heat rising between us.  Within seconds, we are both exposed from the waist down. 

The crowd out front is now taking matters into their own hands and, as Richard pins me to the wall about to “park his pink bus in my fur garage”, we hear the sounds of people jumping over the counter, working the ice-cream dispenser and clanking about at the fry station.  Unfazed, we continue to kiss open-mouthed, slamming our bodies into and onto each other.  Just as we are about to blast off into space however, a voice shrieks from no more than ten feet away.  “Richard!?!”  Turning mid-thrust, we see a woman wielding a spatula standing in the doorway.  “What in tarnation do you think yer doin’?” 

Richard drops me immediately, almost breaking my tailbone AND his manly organ.  “How many times do I have to tell you Trixie?  I am no two-timer!” he yells at her.  With Richard’s thing dangling boorishly out, it is an embarrassing and ugly situation all around.  He then looks down at me.  “And just for the record, Fern,” he says.  “You’re fired.”  Haphazardly fixing his clothes, he stumbles over to Trixie, who proceeds to grab him harshly by the ear and pull him down the hall.

Now, in analyzing this dream, I am reminded of one very important life lesson, and that is, one should NEVER try to cross society’s boundaries.  McDonald’s drive-through cashiers should never try to get with McDonald’s managers.  Presidents of the United States should never try to get with twenty-two-year-old White House interns.  And late-night talk show hosts should never try to get with female staff.  It never works out.  Message: stick with girls of your own ilk, Guy.  It’ll be easier for everyone that way.