matter-of-fact fashion. I had to act, had to portray myself
as being happy, sympathetic, interested and cheerful in order to
maintain a level of . . .
. . I don't know what you would call it. It wasn't communication in
any meaningful sense of the term as I understand it. It was a kind of
--emotional badminton.-- I acted happy, sympathetic, interested and
cheerful and then it was her turn to act happy, sympathetic, interested
and cheerful and then it was my turn, etc. She might accidentally say
something interesting where I could, with sincerity, say that I found
what she had just said interesting. This temporarily escalated the level
of her cheerfulness but, alas, that is all that it did: whatever was
being said ranking a very distant second to maintaining and escalating
the level of cheerfulness. A very, very distant second. I realized that
this is where the --henhouse cacophony-- originates. If
--communication-- within a group of women is working properly (as women
see --working properly--) everyone should be talking faster and faster
and faster and in a higher and higher musical range -- either portraying
themselves or being (the two states being deemed interchangeable in the
female world) cheerful, more cheerful, --cheerfulest-- -- until, maximum
cheerfulness having been achieved, a glass breaks or something.
That was when I realized that women are emotion-based beings. --Once a
thing is seen, it can't be unseen.-- I gave a couple of more tries at
relationships after that (a year-and-a-half and three-and-a-half years
respectively) but it was really like solving a --brain teaser-- after
som
.
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