I used to fall, o, my, I would literally leap from that balcony into the fine silk webs of the male animal, believing in the thousand year old stories of the maiden rescued by the fine man from her lair of abuse and blood.  Eight years under the hard tutelage of one and four beneath the poison illness of the other have pretty much disabused me of any such ideals.

I am a modern day Rapunzel, who put herself inside that beautiful, high tower of respite to recover bones and some sort of feeling in the lips and spirit.

So here is this man, another in the endless stream of salmon, leaving truffles and fine wines at the base of my tower.  Here is this man spinning words that incline me toward amusement at the whole nonsensical mating games of humans.  Ha!  I have learned my lesson, and I am one of those personality types that will rarely repeat the error.

"Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair." he says something else, but it's all the same sh**. 

"It's a new weave, so you can forget about that." I stomp a slippered foot in emphasis, and Cinders clears her throat at my back.

"You've something to say?" I ask her, but I do not take my eyes off the malodious yet divinely comical antics of the male fluffing peacock personality beyond his potential beneath the safety of my balcony.

"You've become mean, Rappy." she sighs.  "Solitude does that to a princess."

I turn to her in her Baby Phat hip huggers, perfect flat belly tattoed with a circlet of butterlies, comfortable Air Jordans which have replaced the glass slipper she smashed eons ago.  "And you are one to talk."

"I have no opportunity to be mean to them, that's why I don't even acknowledge their existence."

"And that is not mean?"

Cinders shrugs, "Not intentionally.  You are intentionally unkind." she says softly and flips through the channels.  Swirling images blending on the wide screen,.  We're hooked on Latino MTV.  She stops flicking on "Gasolina" courtesy of Daddee Yankee.

"You're entitled to your opinion." I purse rose lips and turn back to the male promenading below, false promises flowing from between his lips.

In time it gets old and trite and I put my back to him in favor of sunshine on my face above.

"Dinner it is then?" the male asks.

And I laugh and laugh and laugh.  Ah. how delightful their confidence even after you've crushed every hope.  I've noticed that with most males the more unavailable a female becomes the more so they persue.  There are laws against that sort of behavior now and even then they try to blabber there way out of it.

"Your honor, I was mearly interested in taking the lady to dinner."

"Is that why you pulled her liscence plate off the internet, got her address and proceeded to 'ask her to dinner' for two relentless weeks, accosting her outside her home with flowers, chocolates, and alas, when that did not work, threats."

"Rappy, if you ignore them, they're more likely to go away." Cinders says lightly.

"They don't understand, Cinders, do they, that this tower wasn't built to keep me in, it was built to keep them safe."

to be continued.