THE FAIRY TALE FAIL?



by Byron Flitsch

Once upon a time in a magical kingdom called Chicago, a beautiful girl named Beth fell in love with a dashing young man named Ryan.

“It was something I totally didn’t expect!” Beth tells me over a shared spicy tuna roll a few weeks ago. “I mean, we were at this work function and he was a friend of a friend. He was wearing a suit and his smile and… everything about him was perfect!”

Well, the beautiful girl went on many lovely dates with the dashing Ryan. His thoughtful text messages, splendid dinner dates, and his clever kisses enchanted her.

“Byron, I just think he’s the one! I know it’s weird to say it! I know!” Beth shrieks in a voicemail as I hop in a cab home one night.

Then, after three months of seeing each other, an evil trance was placed on the dashing Ryan. A trance that no one, not even Beth, could understand. He stopped calling. He stopped Facebooking. It was as if a spell was placed over him causing him to forget what he and Beth had shared. The beautiful Beth went in to a thousand years of tears.

“Have you heard from your friend Beth since, you know, the ‘break-up’?” My friend Jeff asks me while we’re shopping for cheese at an organic market in River North a few weeks later.

“Nope… she’s completely out of it. The last time I talked to her she couldn’t even breathe she was crying so hard.” I say back while sniffing a sample of goat cheese. The market was busy for a Thursday afternoon and the cheese section was hopping with free samples; Jeff’s favorite.

“Well, not to be cruel, but what did she expect? She was treating the whole thing like this fairy tale prince charming deal. It was like she was swooped up in this make believe land.”

“Well, what’s wrong with that? Isn’t that what it’s supposed to be? Isn’t love supposed to be all make believe-y?” I ask squeezing a pack of Brie and dodging yet another stroller.

“Um, Byron, fairy tales are not real. Come on. Haven’t you ever read the real versions of fairy tales? From, like, Grimm’s Brother’s? Now those are fairy tales. That’s what love is.” Jeff grabs a package of Gouda and scoffs as he heads to the check out line leaving me amidst throngs of hurried shoppers, aged cheeses, and a desperate need to pick up a copy of these supposed “real” versions of classic fairy tales.

That night I read the Grimm Brother’s original versions and quickly discovered I’d been taken for a ride during my childhood. In the original version of Sleeping Beauty, she doesn’t meet her prince. She’s actually taken advantage of by the King while she sleeps and when she finally does wake up, she finds out she has two children from a man she’s never met. In Cinderella, the evil stepsisters are so desperate to fit their feet in to the glass slipper that they cut their own feet to win.

I was shocked. Every fairy tale that I grew up swooning over had been rewritten and sweetened and I had eaten it up with a spoon. If Jeff was right, and love was like the old version of fairytales, well then, we’re screwed.

I mean, sure, as we get older we know there’s no such things as princes on white horses or magical little castles, but wasn’t it nice to at least have that hope? The hope that we all could live happily ever after? Isn’t that what we all want in the end: that magical moment that leads to a happy ending?

But are we living our lives based on fairy tale lies?

A few days later while I sipped an Americano, I grabbed a copy of the Tribune while at a busy coffee place. I decided that maybe hard news is what I should stick to, you know, keep my head focused on the reality of things. But as I turned a page in the travel section (Hey! That’s hard news when you can’t afford half the trips they write about!) I looked up and… I saw him. You know, the him. The one that your face goes flush for the instant he’s in the room. It’s almost a feeling of suddenly being put under a spell.

It was Ben. The Ben. Tall. Dark. Handsome. My version of Prince Charming. We’d met a few years ago at a mutual friend’s birthday party and there had been sparks, but it seemed like we could never connect—conflicting schedules, new relationships. But every time we did meet up, it almost seemed magical.

“How are you?” He asks as he sits next to me and smiles.
“Great!” I reply back still blushing.
“Maybe we should try to grab dinner sometime soon?” He asks as he tells me he has to grab a cab for a meeting.

I nod as I watch him leave. I don’t know if anything will ever come out of that suggestion, but in that moment, I learned the lesson of “you never know what to expect in life”. Our stories, much like fairy tales, can go in any direction and isn’t that why we keep going? We want to know where our story will go and learn along the way.

Maybe fairy tales do exist. Because in the end, tales are just stories that involve lessons and like all good tales, no matter happy or sad, it’s the lesson that you learn that makes it worth reading… or worth living.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: When Byron Flitsch isn't pondering the art of relationships, buying magazines he'll never get time to read, traveling without maps, and discussing the meaning of life over a cocktail, he is a freelance writer. He's been published in The Advocate, New City, Gay Chicago, and a variety of print/online publications. You can spy on Byron properly at his website: www.byronflitsch.com