Miss Dona

Have you ever had a “user” in your life? Not a druggie or a drunk who use drugs or booze to make it through life. I'm talking about a true USER – someone who uses other people to get what they want out of life, which is power and control. USERS thrive on fresh blood of a passing parade because after a while, people get board with them. And with a USER its never their fault, its always everyone else's fault. A true USER is by profession, a victim of the unfair world around them.


Most of us are smart enough not to get trapped by these emotional harpies. However when a friend gets sucked into their vortex, and we love our friends more than we value our own peace of mind, these soulless maniacs can trap us and use us for their pleasure. The sane person chalks these encounters up to life and moves on. I'm not that sane. Well I'm sane enough to walk away from the crazy person, but on some level, I still feel that these people owe me an apology for treating me so rudely.

Such is the case for one Miss Dona (no last names – please - but it does sound a lot like a terrible word thrown at Jewish people by idiots and bigots), a leach who latched herself years ago onto a dear friend.

Dear friend (henceforth, DF) is my friend from high school who is a free spirit in every sense of the word, and that is why she is my DF. There is not a bad bone in her body. That is not to say that she isn't bright, smart, witty and charming – she is and more. But somehow she got sucked in to Miss Dona's vortex and that was that.

And Miss Dona was something else. In the mid 1980s she moved to Columbus from Florida ("just because," she said) and circulated a xerox pamphlet with all of the things that she demanded in a girlfriend. And she was unbelievably cruel – a textbook psycho fashion – which she switched on and off at whim. She could be charming, but she took great glee in being vicious and emasculating.

Like all story book wicked witches she flew about on a broomstick (actually she drove about in an ugly little French car with very, very appropriate vanity plates) that left a trail of a sulfur-ish odor wherever she went. Le Car, not so Le Hot.  She was not a small woman – and shaped like a bosc pear – but she had no fashion sense. Her wardrobe was limited to white and black which meant black pants, white blouse or black pants and black sweater.  Her feet were always clad in black "jazz shoes".  Her hair, dyed black (to match the bleakness of her attitude, and fake like who she was) was close cropped on the sides and curly on top with ringlets much like thousands of black mousse abused snakes.  Her skin was deathly pale. I think she justified her pallor as being akin to a pale British Rock Star, but she looked more like a fat figurine from Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas. Hey, this was the 1980s and she was styling - and she would tell you that.

For fun, she played all manner of tricks on me and every other person she met who did curry her favor.  This delighted her and humiliated those of us on the receiving end, which made her all the more manic. In yiddish, we would call her a vildya chyia - a wild beast - something uncontrollable, esily excited and impossible to tame, part of the time.  But a minute after going off on a tyraid *switch* and Miss Dona would become a semi rational if not opinionated bitch.  Being around was like walking on broke glass - you knew that you were going to get hurt, you just never knew how.

In my case, when it had progressed to the breaking point on my end, DF suggested that the three of us have dinner so I could get to know Miss Dona. So I offered to make dinner. On my meager student budget, I was able to afford three servings of the meal, which I made from scratch. On the evening of dinner DF came over and said that we had a problem: Miss Dona had invited one of her friends over for dinner as well without letting DF or I know in advance. I was at a loss because 1) this was supposed to be a “stress free” dinner with just the three of us, and 2) I found it rude. When Miss Dona learned from DF that I only had food for three, not four, Miss Dona called me on the phone (from DF's apartment across the courtyard) insisted that I serve DF, Miss Dona and Miss Dona's friend the meal because thats what a good host does. Now, if I had liked Miss Dona (as in she she wasn't such a total BITCH) I would have suggested just that. However what she said was:“My friend drove into town to see me and I will not ask him to wait while we attend this arranged dinner party of yours – a good host takes care of their guests first and their own needs later.”

And I would have held my tongue because DF meant so much to me. But after months of being treated by this woman as a doormat, the butt of her jokes and the dog that she treated me like all the while kicking me in the self esteem, something inside of me snapped.

“I'm not operating a restaurant for your guests, and I will not be your servant in my home.”

Ooops!  Never jab an angry skunk!

Miss Dona was offended and she let me have it in a selection of words that polite people do not repeat. Hell, people on Jerry Springer don't repeat these words. OK, here's one phrase she used on me: Ass Clown.

And that was that.

Soon thereafter DF, still smitten with Miss Dona moved in with Miss Dona, in an apartment that was then in a neighborhood that would one day be up and coming. I was invited over once with just DF at home, arrived with a house warming present, which I learned later that Miss Dona had thrown in the garbage.

Shortly there after, DF and Miss Dona broke up, but not because Miss Dona pitched my present.  DF broke up with Miss "AssClown" because DF is nobody's fool and inevitably, Miss Dona failed to recognize that she had used all of her good will up. Oddly, I learned of this from Miss Dona who answered the phone one day to announce to me that she and DF had broken up and then tried to start snarling about what DF had done to Miss Dona.

“Do you know what she did to me?” she asked. “Well???” she demand.  Suddenly, she became the victim.  And suddenly, she exposed her cowardness.

For a minute I thought over everything that I could say to her. I could have said that for months I had begged DF to smother her in the middle of the night, but how I was doubtful that something like could have worked because everyone knows you can't kill the undead. Or about how I had never liked her in the first place. Or the chickens had come home to roost.  

I could have kicked when she was down, but she never would have learned a lesson, or become a better person.  What was even the point of trying to deal rationally with an irrational mind.

Instead, I simply said that, no, I would prefer to speak with DF, who was my friend. Good luck. Good bye. Write when you find work. And I hung up.

I still have DF and I am grateful. But I still feel like Miss Dona owes me an apology for everything in the past. But I'd sooner win the Pulitzer Prize than get an apology from Miss Dona.

My friend Alice told me once that "hurt people hurt people". And its true. At some point in her life, Miss Dona probably was hurt and she lashes out at anything and everything because soul has been replaced with shear, unbridled Hitlerlike rage.

And reading her current web page, it tells me that Miss Dona now resides in newly lean body - reborn from gastric by-pass. She is also not a lesbian anymore, but instead enjoys beating men for sexually pleasure. She thinks she is "unrecognizable", the fat cruel control freak has turned into a thin cruel control freak.  She is an exercise junkie – her site demands that others follow MUST her exercise regimens - DO IT! The better news is that she has already found the perfect mate – she is as in love with herself as Narcissus was with himself.

I know that I will never get the apology that I deserve from Miss Dona.  I step on your your toe, I am going to say I'm sorry.  Thats just the way I am.  But when Miss Dona steps on your toe and its your fault for not getting your feet out of the way fast enough.  That just the way she is.

And that is because people like Miss Dona are so fucking "flawless" in their own minds that it is impossible for them to ever not step on someone's toes, let alone crush someone else's self esteem.  In their minds, USERS like Miss Dona view the hurt feelings of others as caused by their own personal weakness, not be anything that she could say or do.

So if you see a white Le Car with vanity plates and a madwoman behind the wheel, run fast.  Your very life could depend it.