How to Fend ’em Off

Posted on February 8, 2006 in Irony & Sarcasm Stigma

Being bipolar has its advantages if you want to avoid the assaults of the amorous and keep your marriage vows intact. The dread of entanglements with women of my own age kept me indoors for many years. A few would not take “I’m married” for an answer. (Another bipolar usually understands the importance of a stable marriage.) Until I had my diagnosis, I had no means of driving these away.

Just the casual dropping of the word “lithium” spears the fishbone designs of the most passionate middle-aged defiler of husbands (aka Cougars). It denudes the erotic flesh of its scales and the bones of its flesh so completely that this grouper cannot swim. Here’s how it operated last night and note that neither the word bipolar nor lithium was used:

A woman in a class for tutors approached me after the class had spent the evening spitting b’s, d’s, v’s, f’s and various other hard stops and whistles at one another. I don’t know why she chose me — other than the fact that I was the only man in the class. The instructor knew my wife and had even asked about her. (She also knows that I am afflicted.) This woman either did not hear it or chose to ignore that fact as well as the ring on my left hand.

During the class she’d checked me out from her seat in the front of the class. Not your casual turn of the head. She bent her neck backwards to get a look at me.

Divorcee, I thought.

She came up to me. (For those thinking I fancy myself a fabulous hunk, all the other women ran.) Told me that she’d been not working for years, but was looking to get back.

“I was a critical care nurse,” she offered without my asking.

“And where did you work?” I asked as I grabbed a chocolate kiss from the snacks table.

“Oh, then you must know Dr. DaSilva,” I said. (Guess what Dr. DaSilva’s speciality is? Ah, now you see the artifice!)

She admitted that she did.

“He’s very well respected,” I went on. “I’ve attended many of his lectures.”

Suddenly, she looked as if her colostomy bag had just let out a fart. (I sniffed. It wasn’t that.) “I’m not going back to that,” she said. “To nursing.” Then out the door — which was twenty feet away — in a quarter as many seconds.

So only the hint of mental illness is needed to secure yourself. Of course, you can also run into types like the woman who sat at the adjacent booth as I finished my dinner and chattered with my friend Kitty about my manic weekend. This woman turned her head towards me after I said the L-word. Whether she debated asking the waiter to take away my cutlery or wanted to remind me how important it was to take my meds, I do not know. I made a crack to Kitty about her nosiness and she turned away. But then her head drifted back, cocked so that the ear faced me again. I paid the bill and left.

I’d like to be able to talk about my disease without people lining up to see the Bipolar Man alongside the Amazing Unicorn and the Bearded Lady.