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.