On Friday morning, General Porter woke me up at 0700 hours (Private Pieszecki had still failed to get an alarm clock) with a bugle horn and the assertion that I was to report for duty. At this point, I was a bit used to General Porter and actually a little amused at the distinction between her two personalities-I mean, let’s face it, General Porter was a straight-up *****. After six, when she reverted back into regular Bette, she was sort of a cute little puppy that you wanted to pay attention to you.

The only thing was that the personalities were so vastly different that I started wondering if maybe she was having some sort of personality split. I kept waiting for General Porter to refer to “Bette” as though she were a different person, and then start ranting about “the people, and the people, and the people”. I attribute this to my having watched Sybil the day before.

(True story: My mom was up for the lead in Sybil and they ended up giving it to Sally Field, which led to this entirely imagined and fucked up rivalry between my mom and Sally. I say “entirely imagined” because my mom’s the only one who knows about it; Sally Field could probably care less about who my mother is.)

Anyway, I’m just pointing out that the day started like any other day, with General Porter barking orders at me and me saying “Aye aye, Captain” and saluting (in the metaphorical sense). I was being the good assistant that I was really shaping up to be and I was excited about Bette coming home that night because it was finally the weekend and I was going to try and convince her to go with me on an entirely non-sexual, entirely platonic trip to the movies.

But Friday night was the night Bette decided to start dating.

I don’t know why I was so surprised. I don’t know why it seemed so unexpected-I mean, of course Bette was dating someone. Except, I hadn’t known about it, and I had thought I was getting to know Bette pretty well. I mean, she seemed so focused on her work that she barely had time to have friends, let alone date someone. And I think I had talked myself into thinking she and I had developed such a rapport with one another that we were like, these two friends who weren’t dating each other, but weren’t exactly not dating.