Hey baby, I've also included these home fries to help with your health problems. Why, I grew the potatoes myself. My my, I even interviewed the earthworms who aerated the soil your potatoes grew in - - made sure those worms came from a good family. Not to brag, I sure am taking good care of you, have you noticed?

Your friend says, not too enthusiastically, "Thanks."

You tend to stuff in the feeding of most of your friends. But you didn't do it for their enthusiasm - - you did it because they're eating up everything you have to offer. In fact, they're pretty much expecting it.

You hire a special dreamland limo, arrange for a choir of angels to appear in their sleep, singing an exceedingly tasteful Barry Manilow song (now that took some research!) and succeed in having exquisite manna from the heavenly realms delivered to the stressed-out astral body of this particular friend, she who's still devastated that the cute boyfriends she attracts inevitably reveal their real colors. As swine.

Hey, how was your dream? I arranged for angels to sing in it.

It isn't the response you wanted from your friend. < BURP >

You're one of those rare men who was born to mother, so no wonder that women consider you a likable doormat. You're insecure. Maybe her < BURP > means she really likes you. It takes a certain closeness for a woman to burp in your face. And she does seem upset.

Still obsessing over Bruce the Pig? I mean, Bruce Le Swine, he of the Infinite Lines?

You hear an inner line of wailing, of mermaids tearing out their hair. A pungent odor of seaweed and salt cuts through the mind chatter.

I guess that's a "Yes."

Sometimes we're answered by reactivated synapse memories from the subconscious. In his mind's eye, he envisions a gull swooping through fog. He hears its sharp, piercing cry. Gulls are scavengers, rats with wings. No, that would be pigeons. But it's a mystical sign.

Consider then the uses of subtlety. He whispers – is Le Swine present? I mean, is Bruce there?
       No. He just left.

Where is he?
       He left me!

Did you live together?
       Yes.

Did you continue to cook for him?
       Yes.

Did you continue to help him sell his special Italian herbs?
       Of course.

Did you let him make love to you?
       Oh yes, he said he loved me. So, so much.

Is that so-so much, or just so much?
       What?

I don't think he really loved you.
       Is that so!

Did you use a condom?
       No, he said it was so, so restrictive.

What did Le Bruce say after you got pregnant?
       He refuses to speak to me ... but we're still making love.

You are? Love, call that love? OIC.
       What does "OIC" mean?

Oink, oink, oink.
       You're kidding!

No, it means, "Oh, I see."
       Oh. Got to go.

But then your dear condomless friend, she who cavorts with Bruce's, announces a gift, and - - (sound effect, a short drum roll) hands you a modest white paper bag. You hope, pray beyond all reason, that you will feel fed. It's wishful thinking, yet natural, to believe in reciprocity. You've been catering to her for the longest time. You open the bag.

Inside the bag are three small cookies, and her cookies are stale. In spite of yourself, your expression is all over your face. "That's all?"

The friend that you've been spoon feeding for months, that same girlfriend who continues to attract men who are pigs - - PIGS who, without fail, wholly take advantage, looks you full in the eye, and without a snort of irony, replies, "Hey, real friends do not keep track."

How refreshing, you think, how ironic. How true, there's no track for these trains. Swine have been taking advantage of her for years, boyfriends rolling her to get off their smoking stack jollies, and they aren't exactly keeping track, either - -

Except to broadcast, hey, baby, I'm here and Willie's hungry now. It's me, Bruce the Pig, your man's arrived with Willy, his little piggy, Bruce junior. Ain't he cute? Feed us, feed us, the boy's gotta be fed. Shout it to the rooftops, grovel with my snout, I'm here with my Willy, we gots to let him out, we're ripe to go to bed!

The problem, as a devoted friend with a mediocre poetic mind, is compounded by moments like these. It's hard enough to be a man - but to be thinking this shit!

Outwardly you haven't said a word, but it's possible that the atrocious rhyme you just composed in your head leaked out telepathically and started jamming her Goddess circuits.

You're praying your face is a blank slate but sense otherwise. The inner dialogue continues.

It isn't that we don't care about others. It isn't that we wouldn't want to nourish others and contribute to their welfare. But certain people, no matter how you feed them, are never full.

Then, we might ourselves be the type of person who gives too much. When we attempt to take care of others, we avoid getting our own house in order. Involved in the other person's problems, we postpone resolving the chaos of our personal universe.

Friendships are the most elusive when it comes to nourishment. Obviously, friends shouldn't be keeping track, tit for tat, quid pro quo, scratch your itch, if you watch my back...

To tally, to take notes, implies it's now become a business.

"I'm your friend on the receiving end! — With an aesthetic Press Pass to take advantage of you. Divvy up, that's what friends are for. Thank you, you're a doll."

That said, we might begin to notice, once we've established a friendship's feeding routine, that we've been serving up support in the style to which we're accustomed.

Don't blame others when you are too generous. That's YOUR problem, buckaroo!

How many moments have passed while you replay tapes in your mind, evaluating the old "but I'm the good guy who's not a jerk, the guy who isn't a bastard" rewinds. Yep, that's it.

The long awkward silence about her three tiny cookies offends her. In a woman's life, there's only so much room for that one absolute jerk.

Abuse is an exclusive privilege anointed by a woman! No matter that busy Bruce and his Willy have literally been filling their faces with her, for time beyond Goddess-stuffing eons!

She sallies forth with another cliché, "With real friends, it's the thought that counts."

What thought? Thought of what? T'what? Then you think, that's so ironic, the lady isn't thinking at all. She's been living with "Bruce Pig No. 45" who just took her; now she's continues to maintain that state of not thinking.

Is this a Zen state? If mindlessness meant enlightenment, she'd be a saint.

It's akin to that adage, "Driving is a privilege, not a right." With this starving woman it may as well be, "Feeding barking willies requires no thoughts at all."

Then you have this horribly disturbed thought of barking vaginas and realize you aren't well. Should this be summarized? –

Would it be a commentary on No mind? Empty mind? Or merely stupid mind?

He should forgive her for many things, even momentary penis blindness. She wouldn't be the first woman to be so blinded, certainly not the last. What was that Biblical quote?

Not being able to see because of a sty in your eye? Wasn't there supposed to be an instinctual imperative in place where a woman selects a man based on genetic superiority?

Has she conceived that if the father is spiritually retarded and a clueless Lothario, that their child will bear reasonable resemblance as the pawn of his spawn?

Nope. She isn't thinking. She HAS to have this baby. Me me me, mine mine mine.

Baby baby baby, she's intones over and over. "Yes, sir, that's my baby. No, sir, won't say maybe." And El Swino's refusal to speak to her, that should give a clue, that, and wagging his stubby little index finger while screaming, "Abort the little bastard!"

She smiles the guileless smile which terrifies him, that "blank Aries in a headlight" look.

She's missed her period, she's clearly with child, and she's not thinking that his planted seed has the strong likelihood to contribute to at least half a monster of himself within her.

The father's an idiot. The child is at least half of an idiot.

The poetry of a man is always revealed when he believes he's in crisis.

The mother's not seeing that in Nature, as in God, there are inherent reasons where form dictates function.

El Swino won't ever show up as a Dad, especially now that Mom's not giving it up for him.

For a man, it could hardly be less complicated. She's not putting out. He's outta there.

A pattern of behavior points to the direction of likely belief. I try to reason with her; consider these traits.

First, Bruce No. 45 was tellingly silent. Then, his face contorted. As words flew from his mouth; veins on his forehead popped and throbbed, and clearly some internal engineer had cranked the volume. Consider his actual language. "Look here, you stupid little bitch" lacks discernible nuance.

"He's just angry," she responds. She rolls her eyes, as if that justifies her brain having been removed from her skull. "He gets in these moods."

Excuse me? This is extremely hostile verbal abuse, I point out, with special bonus points for inflection I desire as my reward for redundancy.

"He's not getting what he wants," she summarizes. Yup, she's the college graduate!

Tell me, what is it about abuse in a toxic relationship which escapes the redundancy clause?

Bruce the Pig has become abusive. And now, while I hold her little gift bag of stale cookies, my consolation price as the other guy who's been compensating too much, I'm in one of my own predictable male moments of quietude.

"Say something!" she barks.

What is it with barking women these days? Yep. I feel her displeasure, her tension, the sarcasm of sloppy delivery. "Even your silence is pregnant," she blurts, half crying. "Ha ha ha, pun intended!"

The humor is forced. She cackles like a woman who's overdosed on "Oprah", her face a mixture of smugness and concealed regret.

Her laughter is choking, yet I can't comment - - it's as if I'm frozen, having that feeling of, why did I ever get involved in being the friend who feels compelled to comment on anything?

Men aren't supposed to have good verbal skills. There's an evolutionary reason for this.

None of my opinions as to the pigs she's slept with ever made a whit of difference towards the uncrossing of her wanting to be loved. She never seems to comprehend that being desired by an oinker didn't make her desirable - - it simply qualifies her as fast food. What is for her the highly charged art of erotic surrender is, for Willy, his "breakfast to go."

It's fast! It's easy! It's the girl I care about and I'm too nice a guy to get through!

I sometimes think her real lover and nemesis is Willy. Willy who's merely attached to Bruce.

Something strange is happening - - her being pregnant also seems to make her brain swollen.

Her face appears bigger, with some kind of pre-amniotic emotional fluid. The air is charged, the energy of our exchange tense, like one of those galaxies which starts to cannibalize itself, and there's all this weird electromagnetic mental debris.

". . .And I baked those cookies myself!"

Baked cookies, however paltry, by a newly pregnant woman who's been abused for three years by a Bruce who considers her a juicy and tasty tart, are truly nothing to sneeze at.

Yet it doesn't change the fact that the cookies are as stale as ever. I do my best to stammer out A Three-Cookie Thank You.

She isn't buying it. My mind's elsewhere - - I'm doing the math, not meaning to, lessee, meat loaf, emotional lasagna, homegrown potatoes, choir of heavenly angels singing in the dream state, and finally, useless advice to a "liberated" woman not giving her power away to yet another male pig dubbed, "Bruce Number 45."

My mental body is free associating all over the place.

Did he at least smell good?
       Huh?

Your cookies are awfully damn small! I blurt out.

You dare call MY cookies small! Ah, you're exhibiting a little Oscar Meyer wiener jealousy towards my Bruce!

I wince - - my head reels at the thought that she imagines this is some sort of male sausage contest. My objections are purely over his being a total swine. Can you say OINK?

Then she smirks, wrapping herself in an experienced sulk of specially spun indignation, certain that it's all about Dick. I guess for her it is, but wasn't there supposed to be a man attached?

I dart and weave. I see you've taken the advanced indignation class. Good girl!

I'm way over her head, but she manages to toss a dirty look my way like a dated bobby pin dart. Amazing the things which remain with you from high school.

Then you realize - - you, yes you, he who bestows rum-soaked bread pudding, you, a genuinely nice guy who shores up a fallen woman's inner meat loaf, you, the good Christian who's established this pattern, yes, you're just another overeducated nurturer overfeeding the girl next door.

She's more than lost; OK, use the word everyone's thinking. She's a moron. You have no right to be disappointed. After all, this is the woman who just spent four years of her life giving it up for Bruce Number 45. Here, Brucee Brucee Brucee. Dinner's on the table!

Granted you like the girl. Granted, with a lot of prayer, you wanted to take her home to mother. Granted, you've been dressing the bandages of her emotions for months. And if you're honest, you've been undressing her bandages as well!

It isn't reasonable that you expect her to not take your friendship for granted. You're not her parent, so why be hurt when she treats you as frivolously as she would any disconnected relative? It's a compliment, in a way -- you see how she treats her folks. Now you're family.

Because she lacked a solid upbringing, she missed the structures and accurate details which prevent her inner structure from being derailed when growing up.

She's a rebel without a clause. He sees it now. Religion isn't something you learn in church. It's the inner words and principles you live your life upon.

He can't teach this young woman to renounce her denial. And it's long past time to stop feeding an emotional abyss. She can never be full. She's the mindless eating of emptiness.

Sex is a form of gobbling for that which has never been properly recognized. Funny how he never saw it that way before.

As you look about your personal house, at the same debris which existed last year, at your male kitchen which appears hit by a Salvation Army hurricane, and at that modest bag of white sugar cookies now dropped to the floor, one thing is clear.

The girl can shake but she can't bake. Stop it, damn it, stop the voices right now!

Well, she is tasty. Stop it right now! She isn't your meal to eat.

This isn't about you and your stupid male needs to take care of someone. It isn't about your being a cosmic martyred caregiver. You understand the truth of unequal nourishment.

Your being giving doesn't grant you any rights to others' awareness. Wasting inappropriate caring is not a license for personal entry.

You can cook for others who are already full, but even if they swallow it, does it mean they can digest it -- how could they? They've become the internalized flesh of their personal choices.

We're every meal we've ever eaten.

And worse, our bodies have memories.

Can these memories be erased? We're the cellular memory of everyone who's eaten us.

Even when you cook from scratch, and lovingly assemble delectable dishes in order to replenish others, you do so at the your own expense - - the delay of your own metaphysical passages.

Oh, shit.