IS SHE PRETTIER THAN ME
a reminiscence from happier times in LA, evacuating the fires in january
I’ve seen fights at a bar. I’ve seen people throw up in the club. But I think the …if not the worst, then the least-defensible behavior I’ve seen at a bar took place on a patio in Carlsbad, CA. The city is relevant, because Carlsbad is a military town. Camp Pendleton is really nearby, and the people in this story had real “spouses who only see each other once a year between deployments” energy.
It was a guy, his friend from high school, and a comparatively recent girlfriend. Or wife. It was unclear. I know how possessive she was of him, and I know how tolerant of her bullshit he was, but i don’t know what amount of paperwork was done in service of this toxic dynamic. But it was clear the gentleman in the center of this grouping had not yet introduced the old friend to the new love. It was a first meeting, and it was fraught. Dude was trying to reconcile the past with the present and the present was a bitch.
How did they come to my attention, you may ask. It’s because Girlfriend kept shouting “Who is this whore?? Is she prettier than me?!!” at her boyfriend’s phone.
“Who is this whore? Is she prettier than me?” It echoed off the walls of the patio again and again, until swallowed by the sea to the west.
Apparently, dude had recovered the photos off an old computer, and wanted to reminisce with this old bud, recherchez les temps perdu on Flickr, ya know? But to his wife/gf/whatever, every woman was a threat. And a whore, and a villain. And potentially prettier than her.
That’s what stuck with me the most: Is she prettier than me? Baby, you have eyes too. You can make an assessment. What additional information can your husband provide? Maybe the issue is that she didn’t know whether or not she was pretty. I know how attractive this woman is, she thinks, But is she more attractive than me? How attractive am I? What do I really mean to this man, who can abandon me for months at a time to spill blood on foreign soil or drone attack weddings or whatever it is he does? Maybe my mom was right, and no one will ever think I'm as pretty as Olga. Olga is her older sister in this scenario. And the woman is an adult Helga Pataki, and the boy is Hey Arnold. Arnold really needs to be telling Helga every day that she’s beautiful.