It's all about me

or is it

I used to have a friend in high school named Krissy and she was so shy that she would go out with our group to go dancing (a bunch of teen girls who worked the weekend drive-thru window at Burger King in 1982 Florida) but she’d never dance. She wouldn’t even come on the dance floor.

There we were in some skate rink, random teen disco or house party in our leg warmers and Capezio jazz shoes thumping like second string rejects from the Soul Train audience and she’d stand on the side. Yay! You look great! She’d beam.

Come ON, I’d say, no one is paying any attention to you. Everyone is too worried about themselves! And I’d double down on something I saw on Flashdance and adjust my off the shoulder sweatshirt. We’d spent a lot of time blow drying our bangs to watch them roll up like window shades in the Florida humidity, and practiced an entire lip synch routine to Prince and the Revolution’s Let’s Go Crazy.

Dearly Beloved\\\We are gathered here today\\\to get through this thing called life

We had the entire hand motion, head pivot, hair flip, lick your lips, we’d be wearing lace lingerie if our moms let us, wrist snap routine down

Electric word life\\\It means forever and that’s a mighty long time\\\but I’m here to tell you\\\there’s something else\\\the afterworld

How did Prince get away with wearing lace gloves and high heels with a long purple sequin duster and somehow come off as a tough (hetero-ish) sexy lover man on a motorcycle? Not once in my young adult life did I watch Purple Rain and think, Who does this cat think he is? Shameless!

As the years went on, Krissy developed some OCD traits and neurotic behaviors about attending functions based on Who Would Be There, I started to wonder if it wasn’t something besides shyness. She really overvalued her attendance at the party by acting like she had to go to keep up appearances.

In our 30s it started to look a little self obsessed. I’m not going to say narc because that’s overused by a lot of people and I’m not really clear on the boundaries and definitions of that. Krissy (and also a sister of mine) just really thought that people were always looking at her, through a window, in the shower, on the dance floor, getting lunch in the cafeteria. Everyone is staring.

No one ever was. It teeters on paranoid sorta. It’s not a good color on any of us.

But in high school kids were picking food out of their braces, considering running away over their acne, wishing their parents didn’t get a divorce so they had enough money to buy a prom dress.

My neighbor in Georgia had what she thought was a high profile job at the Elementary School in our rural town of 20,000 and she wouldn’t go to the liquor store in town and instead drove 20 miles to the next town so People Didn’t Know Her Business.

And I’ve noticed that I, a full grown up person, have been avoiding my neighbors because they talk ill about my numerous dogs or hate Pedro because he chases the black dog with the lady with the rust colored hair. I saw the dude throw a rock yesterday. It came in my patio and I threw it back at him. We exchange no words. I hear him talk in hushed tones sometimes. I imagine it’s me he whispers about. Oh she’s the worst! She has all those damn DOGS

I’m being a Krissy. He could give a shit.

That guy has way bigger fish to fry than me. I see him and his wife exchange grumbles and he sleeps in his garage/shop most nights after drinking a pile of beers. He works on cars daily in his “retirement” and fixes the same “bumper” on the same ratty cars weekly. In a town with a bunch of mid 90s clunkers with broken windshields that never get repaired, I’m fascinated by this obsession with bumper body work. I’m pretty sure his whispered tones are about someone’s “delivery business” and not how I have a metric ton of rescue dogs which, by the way, isn’t a secret. And it’s only like 10-13 and some of them are feral and live outside. And half are old and littering the sofas. Any attention to me is to deflect from his “business”.

Why don’t they like me?

Because it’s a gift. If they did, they’d be over here chatting all the time in Spanish I’m tired of trying to decipher in Sonora and inviting me to things I don’t want to attend like church or birthdays with their grandkids and making me eat the hotdogs and “sopa” which is really macaroni salad flavored with paste.

The mind plays tricks on us, especially if you’re alone and don’t have anyone in English to say, Meh. Who gives a fork. Let’s go get tacos.

They’re unsure why I have spay clinics in my living room and are sure I’m financed by the government somehow. Which is funny. I just am trying to end suffering, but I know that’s not possible nor is it my job. I spayed 34 dogs last month and two weeks later 3 dogs that I know of had litters of unwanted pups and that’s another 30 dogs.

And there we are, chasing our tails.

If my dogs bark for 15 seconds in unison because some dogs are passing by, it sucks and I jump up like a car alarm is going off by accident. But I’m here all the time, it’s not like anyone needs earplugs. And given Mexican’s disregard for noise in general, fireworks, music speakers 4 ft tall in a car, parties with bounce houses with 85 kids on a 10ft square patio and this week Semana Santa bands playing at window vibration level until 5am, I hardly think I should worry about a dog that barks when someone is at my door. Also, that’s their job. And it’s a rescue, pendejos.

My inner Krissy thinks they are looking, judging, wishing the Gringa would go back home. Everyone’s worried about their own deal. I may be a point of gossip, the shop ladies wonder why I don’t want a boyfriend (gross) and then wink and ask if I want a girlfriend maybe? (about as progressive as it gets in this town, but also no) and it’s just a handful of mostly drunk, small town simpletons who are headed to the beer store, smuggling things to the border or making costumes for their kid’s school play or having a blood drive for their tia. Super self absorbed of me to think they’d give me a second thought. I even think that when I write, or post on Instagram. Who cares? But we have to connect somehow or I’ll blow away like an untethered kite.

It likely makes us feel sad somewhere inside that we don’t think anyone really cares. But the more I grow (I think that’s what I’m doing) the more I realize that we can’t get all the stuff we need from outside sources. Ouch.

But oh, we try. The drinks, the drugs, the therapists, the gyms, the churches, the relationships, the shopping, the jobs, the cars, the trips. The RESCUE DOGS.

No one knows why I’m here, how I got here, why I’m still here. Me neither. And no one needs to. When I can I will go. And they may say, wasn’t there that one American lady who lived on that street over there? She liked dogs. Or was it cats? And someone will say I was Australian.

So who cares. For now I’m going to channel Prince and put on my purple sequin duster and march down to the tienda to see if they have romaine lettuce by some miracle.