Did You Ever Meet...

Shattered Illusions

What a rare occurrence. She was actually leaving the workplace the same time I was. Since I knew she
was heading back to her home country soon, I decided to grab the chance to have a good talk with her,
instead of scooting home directly as I usually did.

She always was candid and open with me. I guess that came from knowing that I saw through her from
the get-go. That was not difficult, she showed all the classic signs. The bandage here, the almost
concealed bruise there, that subtle hitch in her gait, favouring one side over another. And of course,
they ALL use exactly the SAME excuse, "I fell down the stairs". Really, did they all grow up watching the
same soap operas or something?

Normally, at work, we couldn't talk too candidly. But this time we were out of the workplace, so she
could freely unburden herself of all the ways her abusive boyfriend was distressing her. That list was
long, we talked for more than an hour as we walked to where she was to meet some of her other
friends. She talked about how betrayed she felt when she discovered he was sleeping with the women
customers at his workplace to ensure their continued support, how shocked she was when he
demanded that she do the same with male customers should the occasion arise, the physical abuse of
course, and always followed by the fervent apologies, promises to change and begging for yet another
chance.

"You know what was the worst part, JJ? He was lying to me. He said he only owed about $200,000 (SGD)
but I later found out he actually owed about $500,000. How can I ever believe him again?"

At that moment, my head was too busy trying to wrap itself around those sums. It was only later that I
realized that this mattered more to her than even all the other things he did. She just could not let go of
this, she kept bringing it up again and again during our conversation. In a sense, she had a cherished
illusion shattered. And that deeply affected her more than even the physical abuse.

----

“I married him because I thought he was a gentleman,” she said finally. “I thought he knew something
about breeding, but he wasn’t fit to lick my shoe.”

...

‘The only CRAZY I was was when I married him. I knew right away I made a mistake. He borrowed
somebody’s best suit to get married in and never even told me about it, and the man came after it one
day when he was out. She looked around to see who was listening: ‘ ‘Oh, is that your suit?’ I said. ‘This is
the first I ever heard about it.’ But I gave it to him and then I lay down and cried to beat the band all
afternoon.’

----
One of the underlying themes in the Great Gatsby is of women having their illusions shattered. We see it
happen to both Myrtle, Tom's mistress and Daisy, Tom's wife. In my experience there are two types of
women especially prone to be taken in by illusions.

1) The younger women, especially those from sheltered childhoods. A woman raised in a wealthy family,
for example, has no frame of reference as to how hard it is to accumulate wealth. Therefore, she may be
vulnerable to being taken in by smooth-tongued suitors claiming to be capable and ambitious, when
their only ambitions were to marry into wealth. It's understandable why the parents and brothers will be
protective of this woman and very cautious about the men they allow her to associate with.

By the way, the friend I talked about at the beginning is from this category. Though she was not born
into a wealthy family, her first work experience involved a high-paying contract. Because she never had
to work a regular normal job like most of us, she had no frame of reference as to what the sums her
boyfriend quoted meant.

Let me give you some frame of reference. The official median income in Singapore is approximately
$3800 a month. If you purchased a public housing flat at merely $200,000, paying 30% of your monthly
income to service the mortgage, that will take you nearly 15 years to pay off (excluding interest). So if he
owed $200,000 and it was NOT because of property mortgage, something is already drastically wrong
with his lifestyle.

In other words, if she had some sense of proportion, even if he claimed to have only $200,000 in debt,
that red flag alone ought to have sent her running. He obviously had problems with his spending, his
self-discipline and very likely impulse control. It is not a far stretch to infer from that alone that he had
potential for reckless and damaging behavior.

But, as I said, she had no frame of reference. In my gigging days, I have seen too many women like that.
They got too much money too early with too little real work involved. That screwed up their sense of
proportion and made them very unready to face reality when their looks faded and the hordes of
gullible men willing to throw money at them eventually run out...

2) The Myrtles. As we can see from the above quote from Chapter 2, Myrtle had high hopes and
expectations for her marriage with George. And her hopes were swiftly dashed. Because of that open
wound in her psyche, it was easy for Tom Buchanan to seduce her with the hope of a better life and
access to a closed inner circle.

By the time he sank his hooks into her, she had no escape. Near the end of Chapter 2 Myrtle was
provoking Tom by challenging him, and Tom reacted by striking her, breaking her nose. You'd expect her
to realize that affair was not getting anywhere; that Tom was either reckless or cruel (how was she going
to explain such an obvious injury to her husband, say she fell down the stairs?). And yet she still clung
desperately to the illusions, both those fed her by Tom and those she created in her own mind.

My Personal Principle
I try not to cultivate illusions in the eyes of others. But it gets really tough at times, especially when I was
a freelance music teacher and needed to expand my base of students. I hate the thought of
disappointing people, so I followed the old marketing adage, "undersell and overdeliver". It sounds good
in theory, until you realize that people usually notice and hire the oversell first. And if the oversell
actually has less substance and ability than I do, you'd think they would remember the undersell (me)
and give me a try, but they go for the next oversell in the queue instead.

When it comes to Myrtle's case, you could blame George Wilson, her husband, for creating that soul-
wound in the first place. But that's the problem with dating and courtship. You are presenting your best
side, and if the other person is at least somewhat attractive, it is very easy to step over into pandering to
their hopes, to creating or feeding their illusions. This does not apply only to dating of course. It can
apply to pretty much all human interactions, even at work. But in the courtship game it is most blatant.

Courtship Game

The best summation of the courtship game, in my opinion, is in this stanza from the song, Sometimes
When We Touch (by Dan Hill).

Romance and all its strategy

Leaves me battling with my pride
But through the insecurity
Some tenderness survives
I'm just another writer
still trapped within my truth...

"Romance and all its strategy"

I didn't know this growing up, but now thanks to the Internet and the plethora of dating gurus and
experts online, I now do. There is strategy to romance. I am no expert on dating, but according to what
those people say, there is strategy to striking up conversations, setting up the date, how to behave after
the date to get the next one, what to expect from the person's actions later on, and all that kind of stuff.
Okay...

"Leaves me battling with my pride"

And some of that strategy really does leave me battling with my pride. Why must I do this?

Why must I act nonchalant when I am genuinely delighted at something the lady does?

Why must I hide my jealousy when she tries to provoke a reaction from me? Not saying I must wear my
heart on my sleeve all the time, but why would just saying "what you did does hurt, please don't do that
again" cause her to lose respect for me? I heard about this guy who said to the lady he was dating "I'm
not jealous, just angry!" We can laugh at him trying to salvage his pride, but why does a little honesty, a
little vulnerability disadvantage the sincere ones?
Why must she test me, to make me prove myself? Why must I switch the tables around and be the one
testing her instead? There is already that much in our world that preys on insecurity. Why must I induce
even more insecurity, especially in a woman I care for, just to ensure she doesn't do that to me or to
keep her on her toes? Am I looking for a woman to write our life stories together with or just for a pet
dog who needs to be trained?

My pride rages against all this.

"Through the insecurity some tenderness survives"

Insecurity vs. tenderness. Tenderness takes courage. Let's say you haven't heard from the woman on
your heart for a few days and want to text to just ask if she's OK. The dating gurus will say "She's keeping
her distance to make you chase her; if you do that she'll know she has the upper-hand" or "She's
ignoring you to keep you in your place, so you don't take her attention for granted". And let's say you
already had experiences before that proved those gurus correct.

Insecurity tells you to open up your Tinder app and swipe whatever direction for the next profile that
catches your eye. Leave that woman alone for now. Tenderness says send the message. You could be
ignored, blue-ticked, look needy and wimpy in her eyes, get rejected and get hurt yet again. But,
showing tenderness to another human being who might just need it at that moment, surely that is
worth the risk? Sometimes, the pain says the risk is not worth it. Do you do it anyway?

"I'm just another writer still trapped within my truth"

In the process of writing all these posts, I realized, yes, I am a writer. Not necessarily a good one, but a
writer nonetheless. There is an underlying truth I seek to perceive and then to put into expression, to
bring out both through my words and actions

"... still trapped within MY truth". There is an tacit admission that I could be wrong. I could have totally
misread reality. But until I know better, I still have to live life in accordance with what I know to be truth.
Thus, to deliberately create illusions, knowing that they eventually will be shattered, is so wrong to me.

Why am I so serious about this point?

----

It passed, and he began to talk excitedly to Daisy, denying everything, defending his name against accusations that
had not been made. But with every word she was drawing further and further into herself, so he gave that up and
only the dead dream fought on as the afternoon slipped away, trying to touch what was no longer tangible,
struggling unhappily, undespairingly, toward that lost voice across the room.

----

We guys can be really, really dense when it comes to women. But I can tell you, at that precise moment,
Gatsby was NOT dense. He knew very clearly exactly what was happening. He could see Daisy's
wounded heart, shocked by the painful betrayal, fleeing away from his even when she was physically
motionless before him.
His own death at the hands of George Wilson spared him the agony of living the rest of his life knowing
that he hurt deeply the woman he loved, and wondering if there was anything, just anything, that he
could have done to create a different outcome. And if he realized that there was nothing he could have
done differently, the self-loathing would have made his life a living hell.

Far better to have been honest, sincere and to have done the right thing all the way instead of chasing
illusions for himself and creating illusions for others, right?

Conclusion: this is about it for now. Any further musings and reflections have to wait till after I read the
book another time. There is something hovering at the edge of my mind, but I need to read through the
book again to see if I am correct. Thanks for joining me on this post!

JJ Huang

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#thewanderer #wanderermeetsgatsby #thegreatgatsby #literature #humannature #fsfitzgerald #truth

#lies #illusion #romance #courtship #sometimeswhenwetouch #shatteredillusions #abusedwomen