Projection Flashback

Discussing yesterday's Adventure in Projection with a friend, he remarked: "I would argue that projecting of a view onto others is not a male trait but a human one."

And I would agree.

In fact, my very first traumatic experience of being slammed with another's projection came at the hands of a woman.

The summer before I entered college, I met a graduate student of my new university whom I will call Alice, because that was her name.

Big-eyed, frizzy-haired and barely five feet tall, Alice was a good friend of a DJ at the radio station where I was an intern and took an immediate shine to me. I had not yet learned to be wary of immediate shines and, as a socially awkward and less-than-popular teen who craved any kind of friendly attention, I shined right back.

She asked if I wanted to go clubbing that weekend and, even though I was four years under age, I was six feet tall and looked 25, so I eagerly accepted her invitation. We traipsed through the then-hot spots like Limelight and The Tunnel and finished off at some gay bar in the West Village where I was mistaken for a transvestite. (I cleared the matter by putting my suitor's hand on my crotch; he recoiled in horror.)

Alice squealed with delight at my ballsy ball-lessness and asked if I wanted to go for a nightcap in her neighborhood. We got in a cab and emerged somewhere in Sunnyside. After a few more beers, we decided it was too late and too far for me to make it home to Brooklyn so she invited me to crash at her spacious one-bedroom.

"So the bathroom's there, and here's the sofa bed," she smiled warmly, "It's pulled out because the leg of my bed is busted so I've been sleeping out here. We can just crash together.... if that's OK...?"

"Um... sure..."

I bathed quickly, put on a long T shirt and passed out the moment my body hit the bed. I woke up only a few hours later to find her staring down at me.

"I was watching your eyes as you slept," she cooed, "I was wondering what you were dreaming about."

"I... I don't remember."

Now, to you, dear readers, I'm sure it's very clear what was happening here.

And even I, at that time, was dimly aware at an intuitive level. But my "rational" (or "rationalizing") side had Olympic-strength powers of denial. I vigorously argued down nearly every soul-saving impulse I had: "How can you judge her? She hasn't touched you or made any suggestive remarks. She just wants to be your friend!"

So we went to breakfast; she asked me to call her when I got home. I did.

She called me nearly every day for the next week or so. When was I available? Would I like to get together for this or that?

She belonged to a little poetry group in Park Slope and asked if I'd like to share some of my work. I agreed, and arrived the next Saturday at a prim Brownstone near Sixth Avenue. It belonged to a young sober but artsy couple, both decidedly diminutive.

There were a few others in that mould ... formless cotton dresses, colored khakis and polo shirts, but also tasteful, unique silver jewelry on both the men and women. (Can you say "Trust Fund"??)

We went around the circle reading our various poetical offerings. I was the only one who wrote in rhyme.

At the end of the session, I ran to the bathroom to evacuate the considerable amount of jasmine green tea I'd consumed. When I opened the door, the apartment was dark and the male half of the apartment's native couple stood in front of me.

"Are you OK?" he asked

"Sure ... uh ... sorry. Did I take too long?"

"Well, everyone's already gone."

"Oh. OK. Well, I guess I'll see you later."

I grabbed my bag and skipped down the long stoop.

Alice called the next day and asked if I wanted to come to her birthday party. "Sure!" I said, now fully enjoying the social life her friendship was bringing me.

The party was a lively chatterbox of even cooler artsy types. And Alice, apparently, had a new boyfriend -- a tall Bill Murray handsome-ish guy in a silky button-down that looked faintly creepy to me.  Whew, I thought; she was straight after all.

More radio people showed -- including her friend the DJ whom I'd secretly been crushing on. There were actors and graphic artists, writers and sculptors, all seemed charmingly humble and even geeky.

My favorite conversation compared the original Star Trek with the then-new Next Generation. This playful argument dwindled to include only me and a young man who insisted that no bald, stiff-backed Bard-head could hold a candle to his James Tiberius.

Finally the man was pulled away by a woman whom I later heard crying and yelling in the hallway. I shrugged and went back to the beer table.

In retrospect, there was something very wrong with the party from around that moment on (and probably before). But my denial-side rationalized: People get silly and crazy at parties, so some emotion is floating around. So what. And it has nothing to do with me, anyway....

I and the other stragglers crashed on the couch, chairs or floor. As we groggily pulled ourselves up in the morning, it seemed there was a move towards a group breakfast.

"No," Alice said, "There isn't."

I got my stuff and left.

I didn't hear from Alice for a while after that.

On a Saturday morning, over an hour before I was supposed to be up for a Shakespeare class, the phone rang. My mother woke me urgently -- something she would never have done unless she had been told it was an absolute emergency.

It was Alice.

"I just wanted to tell you that you're a horrible person and I never want to see or speak to you again."

"Uh.. huh...  Whaaa??"

"I invited you into my circle of friends because I thought you were nice and pretty and smart and I liked you. And all you have done is try to destroy my friendships and hurt the people who are important to me."

"What..??? What are you talking about...?" (I'm actually not sure I was articulate enough to say even this ... but the dumbfounded question repeated endlessly through my mind.)

"At the poetry circle you KNEW my friend and her husband were having troubles, and you stayed behind after everyone had left so you could hit on him, and they almost divorced! And at the party, my sister got in a HUGE FIGHT with her fiancé because of something you said!! And then you kept coming on to MY BOYFRIEND?"

Whaa..?? The creepy guy in the disco shirt?? Really???  Did I? Had I...?

"So I just want you to know I know what you're all about and I'm DONE with you!!"

And she slammed the phone down.

The back of my throat burned as tears surged down my face. I couldn't wrap my mind around it. Was I that person?? Was I some vicious, destructive femme fatale? A fledgling Marquise de Merteuil determined to control and exploit everyone around me?

Um. No.

I was an insecure, earnest 17-year-old desperate to be loved and accepted.

But I didn't know myself well enough to be able to stand against her definition of me. For days and weeks I cried buckets, barely able function, feeling as though my innards had been ripped out and stomped on. How could my perceptions be so completely different from the story she was telling me...?? It made no sense....

If, indeed, I had had any self-awareness at all at that time, any ability to unpack that stinking load of horseshit she had dumped on my virgin ears, it would have been very clear:

She kept saying, "you knew" and "all your fault" -- about people and situations where I did not and could not have had any knowledge -- as she repeated, "I know all about you" and "I know who you really are"...

Of course she didn't; she didn't know me at all. Nor was she capable of doing so.

But such is the case with projections. To a narcissist, everyone and everything is a extension of themselves with no perspective or even life of its own. They believe the world sees and knows as they know, so in her mind of course I "knew all about" her, when the real me hadn't a clue.

Something inside of her was undermining her life, perhaps damaging her relationships. For all I know, there was no real damage in the relationships of her friends and her sister, but she was likely projecting her own inner state onto them too. And since she clearly could not bear to hold herself accountable for any of this discord -- real or imagined -- she needed a scapegoat:

Me.

"She wanted you and couldn't have you," observed my psych-major pal, "So she had to destroy you. Simple as that."

Years later, I came to know a mutual friend who confirmed that, in fact, Alice's life had been out of control, as she grasped towards unavailable people and things in her field of aspiration -- just as I had been doing, actually -- which is perhaps the similarity that had really brought us together.

But I was 17 and she was 23.

My friend described her as being sexually confused: occasionally bisexual, dating men, but in frequent pursuit of straight women. He told me about one in particular whom she deemed her "best friend," and whom she would manipulate with carefully doled out praise and criticism.

Many, many years later, visiting the psychiatric wing of St. Vincent's Hospital, I saw her. She smiled at me sheepishly, and turned away quickly. I wondered if she had realized the damage she had done to me...

Part of me wanted to scream, "You crazy fucking bitch! Do you realize you fucking traumatized me when I was a kid?!?"

But I didn't. I imagined she was probably there for treatment of some sort, so perhaps she was fixing whatever had been wrong in her life. And if she was, then she may have had some awareness of the pain she'd caused me and others.

And if she didn't, then my attacking her wasn't going to change anything.  All it would do was confirm her projection of me.

And I knew: That's not who I was.