by Wendy Darling
Dear Wendy,
I’ve sailed on barges and fled great battles. I’ve put my face on coins and slept with emperors. I’ve been a subject for Shakespeare and Shaw and biased historians. They wanted to drag me through the streets of Rome but I had another idea. I chose the how and when. No one else. With each century I inspired new madness in the mixing of sex and power, love and marriage, corruption and sales. There were crowns and castles built and traded, churches burned and looted. Diamonds. Gold. Blind drunkenness in all forms. Love was a fuel to be harnessed while governments bloomed then scattered with nothing left but the legend.
And then it all started to degrade.
My last decent incarnation was La Liz in the twentieth century. But she gave up Mark Anthony to help elect a Republican congressman and nearly killed herself eating cheeseburgers.
And now a stew of Real Housewives. Divorced Duchesses who sell diet food and peddle influence, presidents not having real sex with chubby interns, super models married to world leaders wanting nothing more than to thump blandly on their guitars.
What happened to my influence? The grand passions? The great loves that wasted armies and empires? The wicked, uncompromising intelligence? Don’t they understand? They’ll never get into the history books singing pop songs and shooting Botox. As for me I’m lucky to be a Halloween mask sold on Hollywood Boulevard.
But here’s to love,
Cleo
Dear Cleo,
How lovely to hear from you. It's been a long time. What was the last? When we testified before the House Committee on What Stories Have to Offer Democracy, wasn't it? (Personally, I think they just cobbled that one together to distract Dennis Kucinich…at least, I never heard anything more, did you? I do get a nice postcard from Dennis now and then, though.) That was great meeting Liz Taylor. I hadn't realized she was a fictional character too, up till then. My god, the stories she told! We all roared, remember? After her third boilermaker, she listed all the fictional characters she knew. Michael Jackson. Brittany Spears. Bob Dylan. Walt Disney! Who knew?
Remember how we went in the ladies room at that bar, and it was all decorated with pictures of you? That was really something.
You've always been a hero of mine, Cleo. And Wonder Woman's, too–though I think she told you that herself, weeping on your asp shoulder clasp, after her second bottle of Cristal.
But even though you are an admired cultural heroine of mine, even though you are a model of a woman who did all she could given what she could, even though you have always had a steely nerve and an eagle eye, perhaps you'll allow an honest admirer, colleague and friend to say…you also have a tendency toward depression. Just a little. Toward seeing the glass of vinegar dissolving the pearl as half empty rather than half full.
I'm like that, myself. But I have some hopes, these days, that we're having an effect, even if underground. I have hopes that Fictional Characters of all Times and Places are stirring, whispering in the ears of what we so glibly call "Real People," starting new stories going.
There's a rumor going 'round that Fairy Tales are about to make their move. And when you get a chance, you might want to check out Lady Gaga. I'm not sure if she's fictional or not, yet, let alone that she's on our side, but I have hopes. I have very high hopes.
Yours with auld lang syne,
Ask Wendy