Captain Delusional, I Think We Found Your Defector

When I dislike someone with whom I am forced to share a significant amount of airspace, I have a solid, unshakeable belief in the effectiveness of taking the high road. I try to maintain a balance between professionalism and tolerance while striving to never totter into the arena of phony niceness. But it annoys the shit out of me to have to do it. In fact, the only thing that annoys me more than having to consistently tolerate someone I dislike is when that someone goes all "Christian in the coliseum" on me like I'm the fucking emperor of Rome. Some people just don't realize what a favor I'm doing them by pretending they don't exist.

About two months ago, a chick I used to hang with (she called me her "Best Friend" and I was bushwhacked into reciprocating by merit of her uncanny ability to dissolve into tears at the first hint of...well, pretty much anything) canned an already unstable friendship by lying, sneaking around behind my back, lying about sneaking around behind my back and then having the un-fucking-believable nerve to tell me it was all my fault. I won't go into details, but in truth, she'd been fraying the rope for months with her high-maintenance, low-culpability, "I'm so slick you can't make it stick" shenanigans, including but by no means limited to, shagging my little brother within 24 hours of introductions. (His friends can't remember her name but simply refer to her as "Morally Casual Girl" as in, "Hey, me and the guys are coming down this weekend. Can you hook us up with Morally Casual Girl again?" If she only knew.)

Anyway, regardless of how I feel about her now (mainly derision underscored by repugnance, occasionally punctuated with sharp pangs of disgust), I still have to work with her. I ignore her as much as possible and attempt to keep a professional distance, yet when I am forced to acknowledge her presence, I always walk away wondering why we were ever friends in the first place. She's a ditzy blonde and a champion flirt who can't keep her knees closed to save her soul, and now that she's shit where she sleeps, her chosen method of redemption is playing the martyr. She's begun to subtly manipulate everyone into believing that she wants to be my friend, but I'm just so mean that I won't even talk to her. Big, bad Axis has emotionally sucker-punched the poor, sweet little ex-friend, and if her hang-dog look and syrupy tone are any indication, in playing the role of the victim she's actually convinced herself it's true. She seems to have forgotten her revolting act of avarice and betrayal. Where, oh where is that goddamn holy sword of truth when thou really needest to rend thine enemy?

I suppose if I'm brutally honest with myself, none of this comes as a surprise. When your entire family raises you to believe that your happiness is the only ultimate matter of significance in the universe, how can you possibly blame yourself for your own fuck-ups? If you're only doing what you're told -- pursuing your own satisfaction regardless of the expense to others -- then the bad stuff must be all someone else's fault, right? In fact, the bad stuff must be the fault of the person you fucked over, lied to, and stabbed in the back.

I wonder what it's like to live like that; to be so blissfully irresponsible for your own actions. You can lie shamelessly, cheat guiltlessly, screw carelessly, and yet believe so thoroughly in your own innocence that you fool nearly everyone you lay your big blue eyes on.

I'm not sure if it's a blessing or a curse, but I'll probably never know the answer.

It's Kinda Like The Donald's Hair

Lately it seems I am often told by those around me that I’m angry. They call me ‘Pissy Missy’, and infer although rarely say outright, that I’m bitchy. And so what if I am? The entire effing city of New York is perpetually pissed off and no one’s hassling them about it. In fact, New Yorkers wear their irritation like a badge of honor, each “fuck off” and “go to hell” earning them another stripe in the city’s collective war against the artless optimism of invading Hicktown tourists. It’s the world’s biggest clubhouse and you have to present a convincingly cranky shitload of baggage and a filthy mouth to get in.

And you know, some of us even find that pissed-off brand of sarcasm funny. I just finished watching the entire second season of Dead Like Me, with Ellen Muth as a bitingly witty grim reaper. She’s mad at and about ev-er-y-thing, and I willingly gave up $40 and half my weekend to relish her searing one-liners and general grumpiness. Take into account the past popularity of pushy, sarcastic, angry broads like Roseanne Barr and Brett Butler (who didn’t love Rhea Perlman’s Carla Tortelli?), and you have to admit I’m not the only one to find this brand of humor entertaining.

So why the hell am I suddenly being hassled for committing similar offenses? Is it a local prejudice? Because I live in the South now I have to bat my eyelashes and kill with a syrupy smile? Screw that. I’m a Yank. When I pull my gun, you’re damn well going to get a good long look down that loaded barrel before I let you have it between the eyes. I’m not some wilting southern belle who’ll slyly slip a poison-tipped dagger between your ribs while you’re slurping down a graciously served mint julep. In the South they call that polite. I call it cowardice. I’d rather kick you in the nuts and call you the idiot you are than shake your hand and pointedly ignore you at church (ooh – I die a little inside at the mere idea of such a harrowing social slight). My sparkling rage is wasted in this cultural backwater. Even my brother, who I’m convinced has been lobotomized by black-eyed peas and blue-eyed belles, has taken to reproaching me for my attitude, especially in my writing. He acts surprised at the sarcasm woven through each sentence, as if he didn’t suffer seventeen years of screaming, scratching, bitchy sibling rivalry and live to tell about it.

I guess all I really want to know is why people I live and work with continue to comment on my every sarcastic retort like they’ve never heard me speak in anything but the demure, dulcet tones of a gentrified debutante. You’d think they’d be able to understand that you can’t show me a picture of a 300-pound woman in a Pucci muumuu and act surprised when I let slip a cutting observation on the inappropriateness of shower-curtain couture at a formal gathering. If they lie to me and sneak around behind my back, they ought not to act wounded when I describe in colorful detail the exact brand of fuckwittery they have achieved. And if I have to swerve to avoid their incompetent ass on the highway because they can’t put down the damn cell phone long enough to drive home with both hands on the wheel and their mind on the road, they shouldn’t look so horrified when I honk and flash a digit.

So I’m mad. I don’t know what I’m mad at, I just am. Why can’t people just leave it alone? I hate being sweet and nice and polite when I want to say what’s on my mind instead of what the rest of the thin-skinned, over-politicized, supersensitive world wants to hear. Christ, the way people carry on about my bitching you’d think they were all saints and I was the Anti-Christ. I’m not evil incarnate. I just don’t waste my energy hiding the fact that I hate shrink wrap, weak coffee, tamper-proof seals with no pull-tabs, screaming children in grocery stores, any children in movie theaters, the word ‘irregardless’, slow internet connections, double standards, office politics, mandatory ass-kissing (the voluntary kind I can live with, but only barely), people who live in America and refuse to learn rudimentary English, lazy lowlifes who abuse the charity of others, liars, bigots, pedophiles, televangelists, crooked lawyers with bad haircuts, cheap TV commercials for crooked lawyers with bad haircuts, chronic laziness, sloppiness, irresponsibility, disloyalty, phoniness, too-slick pretty boys with nothing upstairs, yapping dogs, noisy neighbors, people who refuse to show any concern for their fucked up life, their bratty kids, their lousy financial situation, their health, their attitude, or the old guy who lives next door and can’t make it to the mailbox without an oxygen tank and a note from the doctor. And that’s just for starters. A day rarely ends in which I have not added another item to my long list of pet peeves.

It's not like I'm proud of being angry. I don’t work at it or cultivate it. I don’t think it makes me a catch, or complicated or intriguing. I know it just makes me unapproachable and prickly and cold. I know my tantrums cause stress to those caught in the crossfire and I have at least enough decency and compassion left to feel a little guilty about that. But it’s a part of who I am and who I’ve always been and anyone who thinks I’m going to wake up one day and suddenly be Miss Mary Sunshine had better get comfortable with disappointment. I may mellow with age, but no one will ever mention my name in the same sentence as Ghandi and Mother Teresa unless it’s on a cautionary note.

But I’m not lost entirely. This past week I caught myself getting worked up over a particularly juicy rant and stopped in time to apologize to the party on the receiving end. And you know what he said? He said – and I’m aware this may have been either a thinly veiled attempt at zipper-burgling or a flat-out lie – “It’s okay to be passionate about stuff. It’s better than not caring at all.” He called it 'passionate'. That's a good one.

Something tells me he's not from around here.

Reason #423 Why Schizophrenia Sucks

There's a question I keep seeing and I don't know where, but it's probably in one of those stunningly inane chick-mag life quizzes (don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about, you who probably agonized over the How Adventurous Are You In Bed? quiz). It usually pops up in those questionnaires that attempt to discern through a series of over-simplified hypothetical questions how good a friend you are. As if the complex roux of my generosity with my wardrobe, font of ready dating advice and occasional pissiness could be reduced to a mere 25-question psych test, but whatever.

I don't even know why I look at the stupid things, because they always work completely backwards with me. I can't answer half the questions (which makes me happier? A) Expensive furniture in my apartment, or B) Quality time with a friend? Nowhere to be seen is "C) Spending quality time with a friend buying expensive furniture for my apartment", which would be a lot closer to the truth), but if I flip to the scientifically calculated psychological analysis in the back, BAM! There I am, all laid bare for the world to see in the '37-85 points' paragraph. Mostly B's? Oh, yeah -- reads like my horoscope. Average Jane? Totally pegged me. It's uncanny. Whoever writes those quizzes totally gets me. (It's probably a mustachioed Women's Studies major with a minor in Statistical Analysis, but I can still cherish the fantasy of a match that will one day translate seamlessly to a big-screen "Tom Hanks/It Girl of the Hour" dramedy.)

ANYWAY, back to my original point. There's this one question that pops up in every quiz and questionnaire and sometimes even in the Dear Guru letters. It always gets me thinking, and then brooding, and then eventually shoves me over the edge into full-on seething. It poses the query, "How would you react if your friend lost 20 pounds and got promoted in the same month?"

The truth? I get a cranky just thinking about having a friend like that. If I had a friend like that, I'm reasonably certain I'd be jealous and petty inside and die a little bit every time she touched a potato chip to her size-6 lips or swiped her hefty check card through the Target scanner. Which makes me a little miffed at myself. Am I really so small-minded that I get bitter because I'm fatter and poorer than the chick-like-a-sister I depend on for post-date dishing and critical wardrobe input?

Then the most unprecedented thing happened. Yesterday I weighed in at 20 pounds lighter than two months ago, and was told I'm being promoted, despite my dire pessimism on both counts. My week was made and I was walking on air. For a few minutes, I got to be That Girl in That Question. And I never get to be That Girl.

Which made me happy I'm not friends with me, because I probably wouldn't be speaking to myself.