Matrioshka Head
-Barbie Doll Blues-
Matrioshka’s a walking contradiction wearing high-heels and low-cut shirts, over-sized bras and mini-skirts. She has dyed hair, collagen lips, silicon breasts, methacrylate nails, a plastic face, a liposuct stomach and longs for true love. She reads self-help books written by other people. Her diary’s a connect-the-dots of days with extravagant descriptions of her mediocre existence. Her photo albums look like laminated stationary showcasing various backgrounds with her smiling mug in the middle. When she shows everyone her albums (and she shows everyone her albums) every picture is prefaced, “this is me at (someplace) . . . “
Matrioshka loves possessions more than she loves people so she shrinks everyone into microcosms of themselves and arranges them on shelves. She has shelves for enemies, acquaintances, boyfriends, girlfriends, a high shelf for her best friends and an empty one for her future husband. As with all collections, her sole purpose is to horde the most and the best, so her focus is always on what’s next.
When Matrioshka’s not collecting dolls she likes to don her latest designer tackle-box and hit the mall to fish for complements. She always buys the best bait but hates to get her feet wet so she just waits with her big bobbers and shiny lures until some prickly pickerel puckers-up his best fish face for a slimy kiss. Once she pulled the pole early to hook a handsome salmon nibbling her worm only to have him eat his fill then sever the line. Since then she’s taken up fly-fishing and only caught shadows.
The experience leaves her feeling empty and hollow so for structural reinforcement she finds two smaller followers called friends that fit inside her. Their relationship is selfish and superficial but reciprocal; they rely on her exterior to attract attention and she relies on their interior to fill the hole inside her. Sometimes they come out to play but usually just stay tucked up, fucked inside agreeing with everything she says because they want to remain friends (and enemies are anyone that disagrees).
Every morning she awakes to an alarm clock then watches TV until the car radio. At work she gossips, gabs, and babbles, small talks and chit-chats about shit like this and that until it’s time for the all talk drive at five hour live. Then back home she divides her attention between the television, computer, and cell phone until it’s time for the alarm clock. She’s never experienced comfortable silence alone or with another person because she avoids it. She’s scared of silence because that’s when minds thrive and hers is toxic; Her brain’s a label maker and she uses her tongue to stick them on everyone. There’s a price tag attached to each relationship and the currency is compliance, hence most people don’t buy into her business. The few who do, however, love getting together to drink alone and vomit on themselves.
Since change is costly and adds up quickly, Matrioshka develops an unconscious bias toward whatever she learns first then practices defensive education by dodging opposite viewpoints and countering new facts with old opinions. She side-steps advice and strikes down constructive criticism with cynicism and sarcasm. Such insight into abstract epistemology even spurs a revelation in philosophy known as illogical negativism; Matrioshka’s dedicated work in the field remains unparalleled but continues to fall short of the Nobel. And unfortunately for her emotional well-being there are repercussions to this behavior: She feels fake and lonely, led astray and abandoned like an oxbow lake. Incessant judgment of every situation keeps her brain in constant rumination. Every experience is cross-referenced to check for inconsistencies, labeled and captioned for her table of contents, prefaced and appendixed then indexed for easy access. This process is so complex she’s only half experienced her whole life.
Asbestos Head is the truest friend she’s ever had. Today after a moment of mutual passion she says he somehow ruined their friendship through physical contact and she doesn’t know how to think of him Now because she hasn’t a label for that.
