She’s so pretty, and I’m falling for her, but I’m such a severe codependent that I never know if my feelings are the true thing or just a manifestation of my needy personality.

Plus, we’re in Berkeley, at an open mic, so it’s best not to show any emotions.

I point at her guitar.

“Are you playing tonight?”

She looks at me like I’m an idiot or a Republican.

“Of course I’m playing,” she says.  “You think I carry this around just for fun?”

Her intensity scares me, and I just met her like two minutes ago.

“You have one of those faces,” she says, “like that of a nice guy, like you still think there’s hope in the universe, like you’re from the sixties or something.  But I like that in a man.”

“My ex hated that I was nice,” I say.  “She liked me talking dirty during sex.  I tried, but I kept feeling guilty and apologizing all the time.”

“What happened?”

“She left me for a guy with Tourret Syndrome.  I mean, how can anyone compete with that?”

“Yeah, nowadays only crazies find true love.”

The place we’re in has a hippie décor: mandalas, zodiac signs, and assorted psychedelic posters which, I’m told, are not really posters, but “historical documents,” and cost a dollar a piece.

“Damn Hippies,” she says.  “They had everything: rising wages, growing middle classes, even the Apollo missions.  And what do we have?  A crumbling planet, the Kardashians, and mounting student debt, it’s so unfair.”

We’re eating an all-around PC salad: organic, biotic, vegan, locally produced, pesticide-free, GMO-free, gluten-free, I mean, a real liberty salad.  It tastes horrible, but we’re supposed to be liberals, so we pretend to like it.

She tells me she grows marijuana plants for a living, so many the cops have dubbed her the Mad Gardener, although she prefers the term Weed Genie: it has a nicer ring to it.

“I’m on probation,” she says, “so no more Social Security, no Section 8, no nothing.”

I keep looking at her legs and her skirt.  She looks nice.  Still, I can’t make up my mind.  Should ask her out?  Or should I just go to the bathroom?

She senses my ambivalence.

“You and I are going to reach an understanding,” she says.

“We are?”

“Oh, yes.  I can see it in your aura; I can see it in your eyes.  And let me tell you, mister, when I’m high I can see everything.  I can even read your mind.”

“My mind?” I say. 

“Yes. Souls have a way of finding one another, and when they do, they become inseparable.  Do you understand?”

“I think I do.”

She’s driven, and I’m completely codependent.  The contrast is insane, probably inhuman.

We’d make an ideal match.

She pulls out a flask, offers me some booze.

“Traditionally women offer men an apple,” I say.

“Times have changed,” she says.

She drinks and drinks, and gets louder.  Now she’s in a power of the will path, like Nietzsche or the Superwoman.  “Finish your salad,” she orders, “fetch me some tea, sit next to me, buy my new CD.”  I say yes to everything.

She so bossy I feel I’m already in a relationship.  She being so driven means I won’t have to ask her out and I’ll never have to stop being a coward.

I knew my codependency would come in handy one day.

She goes to the mic to sing her song, and this time I can see her aura.  Man, I can see everything!  I can even read her mind.  And it’s beautiful, the colors, the symmetry!  It’s like I’m inside a perfect mandala!

She must have put something in the booze, something stronger, more distorting of the mind.

She sings a bluesy, defiant song, and the world melts around me.  Souls do have a way of finding one another.  Our complementing mental illnesses blend together.  It’s the only way to partner in this crazy world.

She finishes the song and we clap, and she sits down next to me and writes her phone number on my hand.

“Call me,” she says.

And I will, of course, because it’s true, just like she said: only crazies find true love.

# # #

Photo credit: Robert Owen-Wahl