Rube talked about her virginity, and now I have to talk about mine because my comment was too long and it turned into a story. Heart you, Rubes.
Being comfortable with my virginity was like living on Saturn, surviving off iced salt and chaos rings. I wore it like a cloak of shame and self-disgust. When everyone was sharing dashing stories about sex, I would darkly withdraw. Because I was not a virgin by choice, I was virgin because I was not sexy, and I'd been told so I knew it was true.
Some people would say, "oh, but you had the chance, of course, and you weren't ready." And I would clarify, "No. No one has ever shown any interest. Believe me. I'm not stupid." They would insist I was wrong and offer ignorant and careful consolations, like "well, you know, I was thinking about trying this new kind of make up, maybe it will help you feel more confident about yourself, you should just relax, sometimes you can be a little stubborn and some women find that men like them better when they listen," which is just a betrayal, justifying my previous belief that they were liars who didn't have the guts to tell me I was plainly unlovable to my fucking face. Besides, telling someone like me to "listen" and "relax" has the same effect as shoving your hand in a fire.
I would angrily point it out and they would deny it three times, but I understand words better than most people and have little respect for both magazine rehash disguised as advice and subtle implications between friends. It's goddamn insulting.
I would prefer to hear, "Well, looks are important. They're the first thing someone sees. You dress down on purpose, you don't exercise, and you assume everyone you talk with has the same knowledge as you, which is goddamn frustrating. Either stop bitching or change something." It's such a relief when someone speaks without that deceptive mind-crap.
I chose 'stop bitching.' Why? Because I wanted to know. I wanted to know if someone could really, truly be attracted to me as I am, no masks or games. This is me, in all of my angry, whiplash, anchored, beer-fueled glory, and I am loud, sometimes cruel, and protective to a fault. And your joke was not funny but I like the effort. We'll work on that. Let me tell you a tragedy:
Once upon a time there was a stone who loved the wind, but she loathed how it teased her.
It's horribly sad, isn't it? Poor immovable stone.
...
So a friend got very, I mean, embarrassingly, nay! obscenely drunk this weekend and confessed she and her husband had mutual crushes on me and every time they thought I would join them for a threesome I would go home or fall asleep and they would go to bed unfulfilled. She thanked me for always being gracious about denying their advances, and never getting awkward or uncomfortably judging.
I had no fucking idea what she was talking about.
No fucking idea.
She gave me instances of nights I fully remembered, and they were fun drunken conversations between friends, and how the fuck was I completely unaware they were underlined with subtle, insidious flirting? Granted, I would never have done it because the thought of being in a threesome makes me uncomfortable, terrified, and cold, but shit. I am not, nor have I ever been, polyamorous. I am way too selfish.
I've been edgy and nervous ever since, trying to cycle back through so many conversations I've had with guys and wondering if they were actually interested and I'm just completely illiterate in the language of pre-doin'-it. Oh my god, what if I'm a sociopath. I have an inability to read facial cues. Shit. Fuck damn. What about Donny? What about Ben? What about all of those guys I dismissed as friends when chances are I was unknowingly letting them down easy?
I have so many phone calls to make, which I never will. "Joe? Hey, it's Rassles. Yeah. Hi. So remember that night we met and we stayed up watching cartoons, and you told me I should have more faith in guys and they all weren't judging bastards and I laughed at your face? Yeah? Were you trying get some? Did we stop hanging because I wouldn't put out?"
...
"Well, Rass, honey," Savannah explains, "That's because you're naive."
"I am not naive. They rarely rarely rarely try anything with me. None of my male friends has ever tried to sleep with me." I finish off my beer, slam the glass on the table and stare at it, or behind it. There is a hole in the table.
"See, that's because...this is what I'm saying: You're naive."
"I don't follow your logic. I need another beer."
"They always, always, always want to sleep with you. Everyone wants to sleep with you. Always. All the time. Own it. Look everyone in the eyes and let them know that you know that they want to fuck you. Rum and coke," Savannah grins at the server walking by, who smiles back.
I laugh and turn my head to the server. "Ha! Kai getta High Life, please?" she nods and smiles at Savannah before heading back to the bar. "And then they say, 'what is wrong with you? Stop looking at me like that.' I know. It's happened before."
"In like junior high."
"Left an impression."
"You cannot judge how men see you based off of a conversation you had when you were twelve."
"Yes I can. I need more male friends."
"What does that...? Shut up. Half of your friends are dudes."
"Yes, and most of them are married and none have tried to make sex with me. I should have a pride of dudes at my disposal, if so many dudes want it. A fucking pride."
"Okay, no one wants to 'make sex' with you. Now you're not naive, you're just a dork."
...
I am not good with subtle implications, and I understand words worse than most people. Oh, you wonder about the man who will eventually break my stupidity?
Let me tell you a satire.
Once upon a time there was a stone who loved the wind, and she never realized its teasing, faint caress was a return of affection rather than friendly, belittling mockery.
...
Showing posts with label Rassles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rassles. Show all posts
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Monday, October 25, 2010
Let's Do This
Okay, so let's do this. Let's talk about alcohol. I know a great deal about alcohol. I've consumed a great deal of alcohol - comparatively, I'll bet I drank more the week I graduated from college than Rube has her entire life, and I almost didn't graduate from college because I was too busy getting drunk to write my senior thesis. I had a year to write it, and I finished it in three days. I got a D.
Alcohol made me fat. I got really, really fat. But I was fat, active, and strong, like a fucking ox that could put away a handle of Jack and twelve pack, no problem. Fucking watch me. I got this shit.
We would have drinking competitions, you know, twice a week or so using various mediums. My team always won. In the world of college drinking, we were goddamn Texas. We were a sorority full of Starbuck. We were fierce, competitive, smart, hard, and sexier than everyone because of it. Some of them were a bit slutty, and some were prudish. I don't know, I'm just rambling right now. Either way, after a while we started calling any competition that involved drinking "wrasslin." With a last name like Rossi, it wasn't long until everyone started calling me Rassles. The progression was natural.
In a small college, you can't just expect to be accepted into the High Drinking Culture because you go to parties. You have to handle your shit like a professional. Don't be a public slut, always stand up, don't talk shit behind anyone's back, never fight for the attentions of a guy, but don't be afraid of ruckus.
We were snobs about it. Jell-o shots were for pussies. Dancing was fine, but conversation was better. If you need to puke, ask for help and go gag yourself outside. No shame in the puke 'n rally as long as you fucking own it and don't blame it on Alcohol. It's your fault that you don't know your limits, not Alcohol's. All Alcohol ever did was taste delicious and make you popular. We entrenched ourselves in this ridiculous, idolatrous ethical dogma of pack-class, competition, and booze.
And we did it...why? To impress guys, basically. I mean that's what everything boils down to, right? We were hoarding all of them to us, so that when they talked about us it would be with respect and friendship, not the way they talked about all the gutterskanks and critters. We were fucking "cool", no question. Other girls were submissive fucking cake-bakers who giggled and couldn't think for themselves and spent all their time sucking up and sucking cock.
It was easy to look down on the girls who couldn't handle their liquor, it was easy to judge them and basically hate on them from up high without ever really talking about them. We basically ignored them with silent disapproval, and made a point to laugh louder and pal harder.
Sometimes I feel disgusted with how highly we thought of ourselves because we drank "as well as the guys" or better. Even still, hanging out with male college friends, they always talk about how we could party just as hard even though we were girls, like it was a handicap or something, and we fed off of it.
I regret having that mindset then, because I probably missed out on meeting a lot of very cool women. At the same time, I'm proud of the person I'm growing into, so much that I don't regret being a snob at all. Gyna, one of my best friends, went to college with me, but we became friends a couple years after graduation. We knew each other, sure, because our school had 2,000 people. But I exclusively paid attention to people who woke up, hit the bong, drank themselves stupid, paddled each other with stop signs and threw beer bottles at cop cars. She was an academic and therefore too serious. How many other girls did I ignore because they couldn't hang? Why was so much of my life focused on being someone who could hang?
Everyone was too serious, and we were hilarious.
But college was all about using. We used people constantly. Guys did not take advantage of us: we took advantage of them. When I lost my virginity - and I was the last one of like, all my friends to do so - I was bonked out of my gourd, but it was superfun and I bled everywhere and I didn't give a shit, I was just proud that I could fuck without shame and attachment. In the following weeks he didn't seem to understand that he was just a means to an end. He thought we bonded, but I really thought he was kind of an idiot.
That's something that the using culture solidifies: the last two people at the party, lurking over everyone trading war stories. That's what it's about. The Last Men Standing.
I thought I had a problem. I considered that I might be an alcoholic. Obsessed over it. I gained so much weight my senior year and slept so much over Christmas break that my mom thought I was pregnant and made me prove I wasn't by seeing a doctor. I couldn't get health insurance for four years because of that visit. I told my doctor, "I'm in college, I drink a lot and eat ramen and Taco Bell everyday," and the doctor wrote that I abused alcohol. I did, of course. But I couldn't get health insurance for years, and I couldn't get a job that offered it.
Sorry, I'm just kind of babbling here.
After college, I quit drinking for about a year, no problem. Working three jobs, one of them at an elementary school. I just kind of decided that I didn't want kids smelling booze and cigarettes on me, so I stopped completely. It was easy. Everyone was shocked. Again though, people thought I was pregnant because I stopped drinking, but I was losing weight so after awhile they caught on that I was serious about being sober as long as I worked with kids.
Before I forget: Don't tell me drinking is not a feminist issue. If it gets to the point where someone assumes I am pregnant because I am (1) female and (2) sober, there is a fucking problem. Not just with me, but with the people making that assumption. If people are looking down on girls for their inability to handle their alcohol, it's a problem. If girls feel the need to get drunk to get laid, if they think the only way they can prove their worth is by getting drunk so they can look as cool as guys, it's a problem. And the reason it's a problem is because they're judging their worth as individuals on the scale that men judge other men, not the scale on which people judge people.
It's a problem because I associate that drunken behavior with men instead of with women, when there are just as many women who have a drinking problem.
Stereotypically, a drunk girl is just plain visually easier to spot. She's got longer hair that gets messy, she's tripping over her heels, her make up streaks. When she passes out wearing a skirt and a skimpy top, she's bearing more skin, accidentally exposing more hidden parts. Because you can see her fail to live up to the class act she spent so much time prepping to portray, it's easier to judge her. It's a shame.
Anyway, I watched my friends pile up on DUIs, which pissed me off because I was sober and they were obviously fucking stupid. There's no reasoning with that. I'm not going to sugarcoat that, you get a DUI because you do dangerous, retarded things. Sorry Zen Mama, but it's true.
After that, I started bartending and moved to Chicago. Drinking again. Fortifying my position in the using culture of Chicago came easily since I was a bartender (fucking industry people think they're rock stars) and played in a locally successful band (fucking music people think they're rock stars). So I always hung out other bartenders and musicians, some escorts, professional fetish models, tattoo artists - and I was tame compared to those fools, even though I could outdrink the lot of them.
Keeping myself away from drugs and coke was easy because I never had the desire to do it, but I drank a shit-ton to make up for it. The scene pulls you in, and you start feeling nostalgic for a time that existed before you were born and you feel like this, this is what it feels like to be a part of a movement, this is seduction, this is living, we are special and everyone else is livestock. You're the Rat Pack, Studio 54, you're Hunter Thompson, you're Bukowski, you're at the Roundhouse in London, you're listening to blues on Maxwell Street.
Our culture fetishizes icons of the past who lived hard and died young. The role models of my generation are the insolent punks and swank, gutsy pop culture figures that had so much intrigue and defiance surrounding them. They defined rebellion and sexed it up; we are a poor imitation of such a controversial and world-changing lifestyle. And thirty years from now when writers have immortalized our exploits in novels and movies, a new generation will emerge obsessed with us. It's so weird.
Since last summer and my subsequent two-month sabbatical from imbibing, I've cut down on alcohol considerably. Mostly because I was actually scared about my health. Okay, and because the hangovers were getting unbearable. After blacking out twice in a month, it was time. Seriously, I never blacked out. In ten years of drinking, I'd lost time once, and then twice in a month? Never again. Never.
I still go out a couple days a week, and I won't pretend otherwise. But instead of the goal of getting fucked up beyond inhibition on a case of PBR and battling a hangover at work the next day, I slow it down. I'm there to socialize and have a well-honed brew.
I could never be anti-drinking. I made too many friends using alcohol as a bonding tool, some of whom turned to AA or NA eventually, but I firmly believe the key is moderation and responsibility. I love the taste of beer too much to give it up completely. Am I addicted? Yes. I'm just going to go out and say yes. I guess my newest outlook on drinking is enjoying the alcohol for what it is (in low doses like The Elder) rather than how much liquid courage I stock up. Sure, I plan on getting drunk on my 30th birthday.
The worst part is, I'm still disgusted by women who are all giggly and falling over each other, fawning and fighting over men like angry chickens. I don't understand the cat-fights because I was above it on principle, and therefore a way bigger snob.
I don't know. I have no conclusion or point to all this, I guess. Just adding my business. Does this even make sense?
Alcohol made me fat. I got really, really fat. But I was fat, active, and strong, like a fucking ox that could put away a handle of Jack and twelve pack, no problem. Fucking watch me. I got this shit.
We would have drinking competitions, you know, twice a week or so using various mediums. My team always won. In the world of college drinking, we were goddamn Texas. We were a sorority full of Starbuck. We were fierce, competitive, smart, hard, and sexier than everyone because of it. Some of them were a bit slutty, and some were prudish. I don't know, I'm just rambling right now. Either way, after a while we started calling any competition that involved drinking "wrasslin." With a last name like Rossi, it wasn't long until everyone started calling me Rassles. The progression was natural.
In a small college, you can't just expect to be accepted into the High Drinking Culture because you go to parties. You have to handle your shit like a professional. Don't be a public slut, always stand up, don't talk shit behind anyone's back, never fight for the attentions of a guy, but don't be afraid of ruckus.
We were snobs about it. Jell-o shots were for pussies. Dancing was fine, but conversation was better. If you need to puke, ask for help and go gag yourself outside. No shame in the puke 'n rally as long as you fucking own it and don't blame it on Alcohol. It's your fault that you don't know your limits, not Alcohol's. All Alcohol ever did was taste delicious and make you popular. We entrenched ourselves in this ridiculous, idolatrous ethical dogma of pack-class, competition, and booze.
And we did it...why? To impress guys, basically. I mean that's what everything boils down to, right? We were hoarding all of them to us, so that when they talked about us it would be with respect and friendship, not the way they talked about all the gutterskanks and critters. We were fucking "cool", no question. Other girls were submissive fucking cake-bakers who giggled and couldn't think for themselves and spent all their time sucking up and sucking cock.
It was easy to look down on the girls who couldn't handle their liquor, it was easy to judge them and basically hate on them from up high without ever really talking about them. We basically ignored them with silent disapproval, and made a point to laugh louder and pal harder.
Sometimes I feel disgusted with how highly we thought of ourselves because we drank "as well as the guys" or better. Even still, hanging out with male college friends, they always talk about how we could party just as hard even though we were girls, like it was a handicap or something, and we fed off of it.
I regret having that mindset then, because I probably missed out on meeting a lot of very cool women. At the same time, I'm proud of the person I'm growing into, so much that I don't regret being a snob at all. Gyna, one of my best friends, went to college with me, but we became friends a couple years after graduation. We knew each other, sure, because our school had 2,000 people. But I exclusively paid attention to people who woke up, hit the bong, drank themselves stupid, paddled each other with stop signs and threw beer bottles at cop cars. She was an academic and therefore too serious. How many other girls did I ignore because they couldn't hang? Why was so much of my life focused on being someone who could hang?
Everyone was too serious, and we were hilarious.
But college was all about using. We used people constantly. Guys did not take advantage of us: we took advantage of them. When I lost my virginity - and I was the last one of like, all my friends to do so - I was bonked out of my gourd, but it was superfun and I bled everywhere and I didn't give a shit, I was just proud that I could fuck without shame and attachment. In the following weeks he didn't seem to understand that he was just a means to an end. He thought we bonded, but I really thought he was kind of an idiot.
That's something that the using culture solidifies: the last two people at the party, lurking over everyone trading war stories. That's what it's about. The Last Men Standing.
I thought I had a problem. I considered that I might be an alcoholic. Obsessed over it. I gained so much weight my senior year and slept so much over Christmas break that my mom thought I was pregnant and made me prove I wasn't by seeing a doctor. I couldn't get health insurance for four years because of that visit. I told my doctor, "I'm in college, I drink a lot and eat ramen and Taco Bell everyday," and the doctor wrote that I abused alcohol. I did, of course. But I couldn't get health insurance for years, and I couldn't get a job that offered it.
Sorry, I'm just kind of babbling here.
After college, I quit drinking for about a year, no problem. Working three jobs, one of them at an elementary school. I just kind of decided that I didn't want kids smelling booze and cigarettes on me, so I stopped completely. It was easy. Everyone was shocked. Again though, people thought I was pregnant because I stopped drinking, but I was losing weight so after awhile they caught on that I was serious about being sober as long as I worked with kids.
Before I forget: Don't tell me drinking is not a feminist issue. If it gets to the point where someone assumes I am pregnant because I am (1) female and (2) sober, there is a fucking problem. Not just with me, but with the people making that assumption. If people are looking down on girls for their inability to handle their alcohol, it's a problem. If girls feel the need to get drunk to get laid, if they think the only way they can prove their worth is by getting drunk so they can look as cool as guys, it's a problem. And the reason it's a problem is because they're judging their worth as individuals on the scale that men judge other men, not the scale on which people judge people.
It's a problem because I associate that drunken behavior with men instead of with women, when there are just as many women who have a drinking problem.
Stereotypically, a drunk girl is just plain visually easier to spot. She's got longer hair that gets messy, she's tripping over her heels, her make up streaks. When she passes out wearing a skirt and a skimpy top, she's bearing more skin, accidentally exposing more hidden parts. Because you can see her fail to live up to the class act she spent so much time prepping to portray, it's easier to judge her. It's a shame.
Anyway, I watched my friends pile up on DUIs, which pissed me off because I was sober and they were obviously fucking stupid. There's no reasoning with that. I'm not going to sugarcoat that, you get a DUI because you do dangerous, retarded things. Sorry Zen Mama, but it's true.
After that, I started bartending and moved to Chicago. Drinking again. Fortifying my position in the using culture of Chicago came easily since I was a bartender (fucking industry people think they're rock stars) and played in a locally successful band (fucking music people think they're rock stars). So I always hung out other bartenders and musicians, some escorts, professional fetish models, tattoo artists - and I was tame compared to those fools, even though I could outdrink the lot of them.
Keeping myself away from drugs and coke was easy because I never had the desire to do it, but I drank a shit-ton to make up for it. The scene pulls you in, and you start feeling nostalgic for a time that existed before you were born and you feel like this, this is what it feels like to be a part of a movement, this is seduction, this is living, we are special and everyone else is livestock. You're the Rat Pack, Studio 54, you're Hunter Thompson, you're Bukowski, you're at the Roundhouse in London, you're listening to blues on Maxwell Street.
Our culture fetishizes icons of the past who lived hard and died young. The role models of my generation are the insolent punks and swank, gutsy pop culture figures that had so much intrigue and defiance surrounding them. They defined rebellion and sexed it up; we are a poor imitation of such a controversial and world-changing lifestyle. And thirty years from now when writers have immortalized our exploits in novels and movies, a new generation will emerge obsessed with us. It's so weird.
Since last summer and my subsequent two-month sabbatical from imbibing, I've cut down on alcohol considerably. Mostly because I was actually scared about my health. Okay, and because the hangovers were getting unbearable. After blacking out twice in a month, it was time. Seriously, I never blacked out. In ten years of drinking, I'd lost time once, and then twice in a month? Never again. Never.
I still go out a couple days a week, and I won't pretend otherwise. But instead of the goal of getting fucked up beyond inhibition on a case of PBR and battling a hangover at work the next day, I slow it down. I'm there to socialize and have a well-honed brew.
I could never be anti-drinking. I made too many friends using alcohol as a bonding tool, some of whom turned to AA or NA eventually, but I firmly believe the key is moderation and responsibility. I love the taste of beer too much to give it up completely. Am I addicted? Yes. I'm just going to go out and say yes. I guess my newest outlook on drinking is enjoying the alcohol for what it is (in low doses like The Elder) rather than how much liquid courage I stock up. Sure, I plan on getting drunk on my 30th birthday.
The worst part is, I'm still disgusted by women who are all giggly and falling over each other, fawning and fighting over men like angry chickens. I don't understand the cat-fights because I was above it on principle, and therefore a way bigger snob.
I don't know. I have no conclusion or point to all this, I guess. Just adding my business. Does this even make sense?
Monday, September 13, 2010
When It Comes to Long Smooth Stretches of Thought, I Always Go Off Road
There's no part of me that wants to say I'm different, but it's true. Of course, everyone says they are different. Everyone thinks they're special.
But the problem lies in their understanding of the concept of different, because if everyone who believes they are different gives the exact same fucking reasons, all we got are packs of liars. Their version of different has been defined by romantic comedies and crappy novels, where people are different because the author says so.
People, by the way, fucking love to tell me all about how different they are. They all roll their eyes hide their face with their hands and howl some bullshit about wanting to be normal, about how they're different because they haven't found A Job or The One, they do not Have Children or even Want Children, they have No Direction, they just Want To Travel and because of these things they feel like they Don't Belong. Then they get all frustrated with me when I laugh at them, because being different isn't the same thing as being unhappy. Idiots. Everyone feels those things at one point.
Of course, I'm reasoning from the perspective of a girl on the brink of thirty (problem: I still consider myself a 'girl' because 'woman' sounds dumb and 'lady' sounds silly) and I'm examining people that more or less fit snugly into my demographic, because it's what I know. Or at least they jigsaw niche-ly around my demographic.
And you, the readers, have levels of insight, evidence, and intimacy that I will never grow into, and I just hope you don't say things along the lines of, "you're young" or "it never goes away" or "don't worry, you'll get there" because these are very general terms of semi-encouragement that really help no one, that people use when they want to respond and they can't think of anything else to say because they're honest lies that stem from misunderstanding the problem in the first place and assuming that the answers are mysteriously evident when the problem is this:
Everything inside of me wants to scream out my differences, but I'm afraid. What if they just make me more of the same, and even typing this sentence makes me more of the same and you tell me everyone feels this way?
But I know I'm different from other people: whenever I let out something true, something honest, I'm countered with either the aforementioned general terms of semi-encouragement, or pause and confusion. Nothing is more frustrating than having people you trust trivialize and blunder over your supreme honesty.
Sometimes, though, they cast their eyes down and I can smell their guilt and embarrassment, and I'm met with some variety of, "you shouldn't feel that way" or "I didn't expect you to say that" or "why do you always have to be bizarre" or "snap out of this, because I don't know how to deal with it." Welcome to my fucking dimension, asshole. And I mean every word I write. Please believe this, and do not misunderstand.
...
Someone was shocked by me last weekend (surprise!), and I got that bullshit "I've never met a chick who appreciates the importance of fucking blahgiddy blahgiddy blahgiddy damn that is so hot why can't more women whatever" line, the line I get all the time, the one that is usually followed up by "how are you single? when are we getting married?" which is another bullshit line, and in the two seconds following that sentence my brain knotted and unraveled into annoyed understanding, because all at once Jeff was knocking women, specifically his wife, for not reading the right books; he insinuated that I, as a woman, can only offer sex appeal and that the highest compliment he could pay to me was offering marriage because that's what women desire; he lied about his feelings toward a woman's place, because if he wanted more women to be like me he wouldn't have married one that isn't (and she is definitely not); and he implied that something was secretly wrong with me because I am not in a relationship.
So I laughed at him, and explained why I wouldn't marry him for the reasons above.
And he laughed, and said, "Okay, that's why you're single."
"No, most of my options are idiots who think like you."
"See, you're thinking about it too much. I wouldn't have said anything if I knew you were going to go all bitch femi-nazi."
Now that makes me scoff and smile and walk away. "Dude, your brain? Is a fucking mess."
That's the kick, right there. I think too much. I am overreacting because I think too much. How am I overreacting by logically evaluating the implications of his words? It's not like I sat around an obsessed over it for two hours. He spoke, I reacted immediately. I wasn't angry about it, just kind of annoyed, like when someone takes too long at a cash register.
I told an acquaintance the story. She agreed with Jeff the Married Guy. "Well, he's right. This is why you're single. If you stopped getting mad about stupid little things--"
"Dude. Stop." I smiled at her. "The issue here is not me being single. The issue is the fact that this guy is an idiot and the conversation didn't make sense because--"
"But you know, I mean, if you just stopped thinking so much--"
And then she went on to talk about trying to find a boyfriend or something.
Do you see what makes me different? No one believes me, because conversations always digress into this. Always. And I am rarely the person to bring it up. Except for on the internet, because this is my place to vent about bullshit that my friends don't want to hear.
Are any of you single? I don't think so.
Not all single women are jonesin' to be in a relationship. But for everyone I have ever met ever, any problem I have has to boil down to a relationship, all the time, because I am single. Because I'm the type of person that comes up with a bajillion examples for everything and if one of them relates to having a boyfriend, that's the one they focus on. They don't focus on my lack of confidence in doing my job or trying to start a writing career. They read subtext that isn't there, like when I say, "let's go out and get a beer and talk to strangers" that doesn't mean "let's pick up dudes." I say what I fucking mean. I am not a girl with a dubious agenda.
Even if I don't bring it up, or if I mention that I'm horny or that some guy is hot or that I don't feel like working, everyone's response is that "you need to find a boyfriend because there is something wrong with you if you don't." Everyone's response, when I say something smart or funny, is like, "I don't know why you are single" or "I don't know why some man hasn't snatched you up." I asked a friend why no one would see Machete with me last week, and she laughed and said, "You need a boyfriend."
I just don't fucking understand why everyone tries to relate to me in respect to whether or not I have an Other since I never asked to be evaluated that way.
Now, see, people assume that because I'm talking about this it means that I secretly want a man and I can't wait to put my wifey shoes on and get to baby-makin' on the train to Husband Town or something. And it's like: of course I woudn't mind having a guy in my life, I'm not made of stone. But it is so much more important for me to keep on churning and reasoning and learning, and I'm fucking sick of no one getting that, and I'm sick of no one talking with me about it and breaking it down into logical statements about motivation, I'm sick of it being dismissed as thinking too much just because I'm thinking about shit they don't care about.
They think I'm thinking it just to be different. No. I'm different because I want to talk about stuff I think about.
Drives me fucking nuts.
But the problem lies in their understanding of the concept of different, because if everyone who believes they are different gives the exact same fucking reasons, all we got are packs of liars. Their version of different has been defined by romantic comedies and crappy novels, where people are different because the author says so.
People, by the way, fucking love to tell me all about how different they are. They all roll their eyes hide their face with their hands and howl some bullshit about wanting to be normal, about how they're different because they haven't found A Job or The One, they do not Have Children or even Want Children, they have No Direction, they just Want To Travel and because of these things they feel like they Don't Belong. Then they get all frustrated with me when I laugh at them, because being different isn't the same thing as being unhappy. Idiots. Everyone feels those things at one point.
Of course, I'm reasoning from the perspective of a girl on the brink of thirty (problem: I still consider myself a 'girl' because 'woman' sounds dumb and 'lady' sounds silly) and I'm examining people that more or less fit snugly into my demographic, because it's what I know. Or at least they jigsaw niche-ly around my demographic.
And you, the readers, have levels of insight, evidence, and intimacy that I will never grow into, and I just hope you don't say things along the lines of, "you're young" or "it never goes away" or "don't worry, you'll get there" because these are very general terms of semi-encouragement that really help no one, that people use when they want to respond and they can't think of anything else to say because they're honest lies that stem from misunderstanding the problem in the first place and assuming that the answers are mysteriously evident when the problem is this:
Everything inside of me wants to scream out my differences, but I'm afraid. What if they just make me more of the same, and even typing this sentence makes me more of the same and you tell me everyone feels this way?
But I know I'm different from other people: whenever I let out something true, something honest, I'm countered with either the aforementioned general terms of semi-encouragement, or pause and confusion. Nothing is more frustrating than having people you trust trivialize and blunder over your supreme honesty.
Sometimes, though, they cast their eyes down and I can smell their guilt and embarrassment, and I'm met with some variety of, "you shouldn't feel that way" or "I didn't expect you to say that" or "why do you always have to be bizarre" or "snap out of this, because I don't know how to deal with it." Welcome to my fucking dimension, asshole. And I mean every word I write. Please believe this, and do not misunderstand.
...
Someone was shocked by me last weekend (surprise!), and I got that bullshit "I've never met a chick who appreciates the importance of fucking blahgiddy blahgiddy blahgiddy damn that is so hot why can't more women whatever" line, the line I get all the time, the one that is usually followed up by "how are you single? when are we getting married?" which is another bullshit line, and in the two seconds following that sentence my brain knotted and unraveled into annoyed understanding, because all at once Jeff was knocking women, specifically his wife, for not reading the right books; he insinuated that I, as a woman, can only offer sex appeal and that the highest compliment he could pay to me was offering marriage because that's what women desire; he lied about his feelings toward a woman's place, because if he wanted more women to be like me he wouldn't have married one that isn't (and she is definitely not); and he implied that something was secretly wrong with me because I am not in a relationship.
So I laughed at him, and explained why I wouldn't marry him for the reasons above.
And he laughed, and said, "Okay, that's why you're single."
"No, most of my options are idiots who think like you."
"See, you're thinking about it too much. I wouldn't have said anything if I knew you were going to go all bitch femi-nazi."
Now that makes me scoff and smile and walk away. "Dude, your brain? Is a fucking mess."
That's the kick, right there. I think too much. I am overreacting because I think too much. How am I overreacting by logically evaluating the implications of his words? It's not like I sat around an obsessed over it for two hours. He spoke, I reacted immediately. I wasn't angry about it, just kind of annoyed, like when someone takes too long at a cash register.
I told an acquaintance the story. She agreed with Jeff the Married Guy. "Well, he's right. This is why you're single. If you stopped getting mad about stupid little things--"
"Dude. Stop." I smiled at her. "The issue here is not me being single. The issue is the fact that this guy is an idiot and the conversation didn't make sense because--"
"But you know, I mean, if you just stopped thinking so much--"
And then she went on to talk about trying to find a boyfriend or something.
Do you see what makes me different? No one believes me, because conversations always digress into this. Always. And I am rarely the person to bring it up. Except for on the internet, because this is my place to vent about bullshit that my friends don't want to hear.
Are any of you single? I don't think so.
Not all single women are jonesin' to be in a relationship. But for everyone I have ever met ever, any problem I have has to boil down to a relationship, all the time, because I am single. Because I'm the type of person that comes up with a bajillion examples for everything and if one of them relates to having a boyfriend, that's the one they focus on. They don't focus on my lack of confidence in doing my job or trying to start a writing career. They read subtext that isn't there, like when I say, "let's go out and get a beer and talk to strangers" that doesn't mean "let's pick up dudes." I say what I fucking mean. I am not a girl with a dubious agenda.
Even if I don't bring it up, or if I mention that I'm horny or that some guy is hot or that I don't feel like working, everyone's response is that "you need to find a boyfriend because there is something wrong with you if you don't." Everyone's response, when I say something smart or funny, is like, "I don't know why you are single" or "I don't know why some man hasn't snatched you up." I asked a friend why no one would see Machete with me last week, and she laughed and said, "You need a boyfriend."
I just don't fucking understand why everyone tries to relate to me in respect to whether or not I have an Other since I never asked to be evaluated that way.
Now, see, people assume that because I'm talking about this it means that I secretly want a man and I can't wait to put my wifey shoes on and get to baby-makin' on the train to Husband Town or something. And it's like: of course I woudn't mind having a guy in my life, I'm not made of stone. But it is so much more important for me to keep on churning and reasoning and learning, and I'm fucking sick of no one getting that, and I'm sick of no one talking with me about it and breaking it down into logical statements about motivation, I'm sick of it being dismissed as thinking too much just because I'm thinking about shit they don't care about.
They think I'm thinking it just to be different. No. I'm different because I want to talk about stuff I think about.
Drives me fucking nuts.
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