The Tale of Heinrich and Peggy*

*names have been changed to protect both the innocent and the awkward.

Heinrich and me

Heinrich was a friend of mine, in part because he was friendly to everyone, but mainly because we were weird. I don't mean the benign sort of weirdness that seems to be an esthetic choice, but the deep-down, painful sort of weird that necessitated many school lunch hours spent hiding in the library.

I guess there's a special bond that springs up between those who could never fake normal long enough to blend in.

As an adult, I tried - somewhat successfully - to channel my blatant strangeness into a more genteel eccentricity. Heinrich, on the other hand, had given up any charade of normalcy and just let his freak flag fly. The first time I saw him, he was wearing a headscarf, love beads and a Brooks Brothers suit, running furiously from something I couldn't see. "it's the Nagual!" he said, desperately. "it's after me! What should I do?"

Now, if Heinrich had said something like "how are you?" I might have been at a loss as for what to say, but being weird, I was perfectly equipped to handle this one. "Well, first you have to find your center." I told him. "Do you know any yoga?"

"Yoga! Perfect!" he shouted, catapulting himself into a complex ashtanga pose in the grass next to my front porch. "Why didn't I think of that?"

So began my friendship with Heinrich.

Peggy

On the other side of the courtyard, my neighbor Peggy watched all this with a disapproving eye. "You certainly have some strange friends" she said, meaningly. I shrugged. What could I say? Peggy was a very conventional girl. Not that there's anything wrong with being conventional. Conventional people tend to have an easier time in life; they face fewer struggles achieving their goals than those who are congenitally unable to fit with the crowd. But I can't pretend to truly comprehend them. Our values were very different, Peggy's and mine. I couldn't understand why she collected cow creamers. She couldn't understand why I worried about karma. But people are people, and they are what they are.

Heinrich and Peggy

As time progressed though, something strange happened...Peggy fell in love with Heinrich. The first sign of this was when she came down to the sidewalk where we were making chalk drawings and proceeded to put the moves on him. It was so very odd, Peggy twirling his hair and saying "why don't you come up and see me sometime" like a sort of ersatz Mae West that Heinrich at first couldn't figure out why she would want him to. "Er. Well, okay. Sometime." he said, nonplussed.

Peggy did not give up, however, and eventually Heinrich got the message. They went out on a few dates. That's when the war between the conventional and the unconventional began.

One of the reasons, I think, that Heinrich and I had such a fond friendship was because I understood that in his basic nature, he was a free spirit. He was a bit like a butterfly and about as harmless. He would flit around to other places and people, but sooner or later he'd flit back. When he did, one accepted him for what he was. There was no reason to expect different from him, really. To do so would invite disappointment.

"Disappointment" is a mild word for what soon began emanating in loud shrieks from Peggy's apartment whenever Heinrich was around. "Put on some proper shoes, you can't wear sandals in winter!" "No normal person drinks wheat grass juice!" "It's Saturday night, you're supposed to be here with me, not out playing guitar for hobos at the park!!" and so on and so forth. Finally, one night, there came the topper: "You must do as I say, Heinrich, because DAMMIT, I AM OLDER THAN YOU!!"

Heinrich, feeling the iron fist of authority bearing down on him, fled from Peggy even faster than he had from the Nagual. It was no surprise, really. As I said before, Peggy was a conventional girl, and while she may have fancied Heinrich in his natural state, no sooner had she got him than she tried to make him into a conventional boyfriend. It was doomed enterprise from the start

The story does not end there, however. Of course it doesn't, tales of lovers scorned rarely do. Besides, you're probably wondering how the shoe at the top of the page comes into this. Well, I will tell you.

In which the story becomes kind of embarrassing

Peggy was not pleased at Heinrich's having fled and was determined to get him back. No such luck. He was not interested. As he explained to me, he worried that spending time with Peggy was hindering his spiritual development. Well, he didn't use those words exactly. What he said was that he was worried her negative vibes were polluting his aura. Pretty much the same difference. We both agreed that there were better matches out there and that it was best to move on. He went on his way, seeking solace among a more accepting group of friends. That's when Peggy started stalking.

She pretended she wasn't, mind you, and was just happening to turn up wherever Heinrich went, but because we lived just across the way from each other, I knew she spent hours tracking his location by phone and planning her next move. It was in this way that she scored an invitation to a party given by a friend of Heinrich's friends - and Heinrich was going to be there. I wasn't going to the party, myself, but that evening still managed to produce one of the stranger images that has ever jammed itself into my memory.

The evening of the party, about 6 PM, Peggy sailed out onto her balcony. I knew she'd been in her apartment getting ready, since music was drifting from her windows and the front door was propped open with her cow-shaped doorstop, but this was the first time I'd seen her. She'd traded in her usual pantsuit and SAS shoes for a flowing patchwork dress and a pair of lace-up witch boots. Well, this was unusual. It really wasn't Peggy's style. Something about it bothered me, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Perhaps the outfit was meant to impress Heinrich, I thought. If so, it was a miscalculation, since Heinrich was more likely to be impressed if she'd woven a dress out of cornshucks than any store-bought clothes. No, something was really off here. I didn't realize what it was until she began to dance.

A Maroon 5 song had come on the radio and this must have inspired Peggy, because she began to whirl and sway with a dreamy look on her face. As she added more dramatic movements to her dance and began to pirouette across the balcony, I realized - oh, holy hell, she was imitating me!

I mean, not that I'd ever dance around in public to Maroon 5, good god, no, but I could recognize my own peculiarities of style and gesture recycled by someone else. Actually, recycled is the wrong word. It was more like a fashion designer finding a strange, random dress at a charity shop and recreating it for Bloomingdale's or something. Peggy, who had the gift of being normal, was attempting to co-opt my own weirdness in order to fit in. Well, it was certainly interesting. But it didn't work. Not even close. It was pure fakery through and through, and it irritated me.

For years now, I've pondered why I found Peggy's imitation that night so unsettling and distasteful. What was it to me, really, how Peggy chose to act? It's not as if I'm in love with my spacey demeanor or my rummage sale clothes, or any of the other things that make people look at me as if I'm an alien. It's not as if I feel any proprietorship over such things. Some of my qualities, I would have traded many times over just to not have the stigma of being different. But that's the answer, isn't it? What Peggy didn't understand is that for Heinrich and me and many of the other misfits who clung together like survivors on a raft, being weird wasn't a costume we could put on and take off when it was convenient. For people like us, being unconventional was never a choice.

Perhaps Peggy found out the hard way. Certainly she came home from the party in a foul mood sans boyfriend, and I never saw the patchwork dress or witch boots again. And Heinrich, he again went on his way, eventually flitting off to a far country where he finally felt at home. That was the end of Heinrich and Peggy, and I guess if there is any moral to this story, it's that one should accept people for who they are, and to thine own self be true. Peggy was a conventional girl with conventional ways, and it would have been better had she embraced that than pretended to be what she wasn't.

Then again, a few months later, Peggy married a burglar she caught breaking into her apartment, which is far weirder than anything I've ever dreamed of doing, so really...what do I know? :p