asshole repellant 17.02.06 4:52 p.m.
Lordy, am I tired. Two nights in a row of staying up waaaaaaay past my bedtime. I am forcing myself to update this page. I don't really know why, but I am.
It's just this very moment become apparent to me that I have control issues which I ought to deal with. I mean, before they become horrendous; right now they're still kind of repressed, but cause me much internal suffering (and subsequent bitchery on this page). I mean, I hate being toyed with, and so would anyone; playing games is not my bag, baby. But worse than this is realizing that if I am swept up in someone else's game, I need to be the boss. I feel no need to toy with others, but if I'm in a situation where there are obvious, tacit "rules," I wanna be the one making them, enforcing them.
I know, I know, too vague. An example is the way people interact at work. There's a certain amount of friendliness you can show, information you can give, or joking you can make with these people. Fine, I don't come to work to make friends, but I hate being subject to someone else's norms in such a situation. What if I do want to make friends from work? I have to behave in a certain manner, test waters, etc, etc. Believe me, I have respect for other people's boundaries (well, most of the time), but I hate being forced to tip-toe around someone. Hey, if you can't handle the odd occasion that "fuck" slips out of my mouth at the water cooler, just let it roll off, okay? You don't have to be my friend, but you don't have to freak out, either. I don't insult people (unless they ask nicely), I don't get into people's personal space - hell, I'm too scared to disrupt strangers' auras! But damnit, let me be my fucking self every now and then, eh? I don't want to play Miss Goody-Two-Shoes all the time.
What the hell kind of name is Goody-Two-Shoes, anyway? Is she the only girl on her block with more than one foot? Or did the kids on her block all come out with extra limbs? Or is she simply the only girl with shoes, and feels a sense of snooty morality about it? How about Mister Gentle-Ten-Fingers, or Missus Kindly-One-Nose? Are they stuck-up prudes as well? What office do they work in? Perhaps we should lump all the three-named snobs into one workplace, so those of us who enjoy humour and don't hide under unnecessary layers of formality to get a job done can all go start our own company.
This is all, of course, old hat, and I'm sure most people would share my sentiment to a certain degree. And yes, I understand perfectly well why we behave a certain, guarded way in society; I'm not a fucktard, thank you. It just gets my knickers bunged up to have to pretend I'm something I'm not. I'm not a bad person. I'm not an offensive person, except when I am, which can't possibly be any more often than the times everyone else is (no matter how paranoid I am or how poorly I perceive myself). And I am certainly not a malicious person. I'm entitled to my personality, yes?
I don't actually care all this much. It's really just an annoyance which I mostly tune out. It was simply an example of these games we play with our fellow humans, a never-ending round of Broken Telephone. Who knows who changed their information? Just pass the favour along; you may have made it up, you may be telling us what you believe to be truth. We'll never know entirely, will we? And that is precisely why the little games infuriate me at times. If we can't ever completely know a person, and can simply trust them (which is being vulnerable to them), why do we bother to tell lies? Fear of rejection. Why do we want to be accepted by people we can't be honest to? Because we dislike ourselves? Probably. Then why do confident people play the same game? To torture others? Possibly; or perhaps they're just accustomed to it. (Those are the type of people who give you that whole line about the world simply being that way, which I feel is a cop out. I feel sad for people of such mediocre intelligence.) (Okay, yeah, that was one of the few moments when I was being a deliberate jerk.)
The point of the matter is that if I have to pretend to be something I'm not, why can't it be fun? Why should I have to fret about fitting in with someone's notion of what I should be (and it seems like most of us disagree with many of the norms, so why are we bothering to continue the charade)? I'd rather be myself. When I was a teenager, I used to wear a spike-studded collar every day. I would be asked frequently what its purpose was, to which I'd usually reply that it was "asshole repellant." And it worked most of the time, too. There's the exception of boy-men who wanted to date me based on my novelty ("ooh! a cute girl who chooses to dress differently from the other girls! I must tame this rare bird!"), or the terribly insecure who felt the need to pick on me specifically because I chose not to play the game. (People like that were usually recruited by Neo-Nazi gangs, of course, so it was no skin off my nose when some big black dude beat one of them up. Sometimes Karma works.) For the most part, though, "asshole repellant" made me happy in the sense that the people close to me were genuine, and those who'd shun me, I was better off without. Of course, it did scare some well-meaning but shy people, and that's a shame. But if you're too scared by jewellery to see the big, dorky grin on my face, well, maybe you need to deal with your shyness a bit better, eh?
As if I was one to talk about shyness, of course. I'm the one with social anxiety which was once so bad, I flunked out of school because I was too scared to go to class. Ironically, learning to play social games helped me beat some of the anxiety. But once it subsided, I stopped feeling the need for both the panic attacks and the games. Now I'm more likely to get panic attacks because I'm not sure how a particular game is played, and I want to do it right. Which is how I was before I started being myself and sporting asshole repellant. For the literalists, I am not trying to say I want to wear fourteen pairs of strategically-torn fishnet stockings and studded wristbands to my office job (or anywhere else, most of the time), but that I would enjoy the freedom of behaving the way I feel like behaving, of saying things with impunity from time to time, the freedom to be comfortable in old corduroys whenever I please and to show my scars without having to explain myself. You know, it is just as often I am inclined to dress up for a night at the pub, and I don't always make potty jokes (in fact, I don't often). I like being ladylike, when it suits my mood. Yet I feel captive to the culture of fear and of keeping up appearances, the threat of losing personal material security because "polite" society don't approve of my sense of humour or my taste in clothes and penchant for bodymod. It's not about wanting to be Punx Rawk 4-Evah, it's about not feeling ashamed of who I am. Ever.
I think I've strayed past the original point a bit, but you get what I mean. If someone wants to fuck, they should simply ask nicely. If they don't like a joke I make, they don't have to laugh. And why anyone cares at all what other people choose to adorn themselves with is beyond me - hey, don't get me wrong, I still make fun in my mind or whispers to friends when I see someone wearing something that looks horrible on them, but I also don't have to be them, or their friend. Which is precisely my point: you're either in, or you're out. I don't want to bother having fake friends anymore. Consider this the newer, more adult model of "asshole repellant."
listening:
reading:
ingesting:
(see entries before 20.11.05)
previously on Smothered Hope:
unreal - 20.05.08
in which our narrator kinda just babbles on a bit - 15.05.08
drank several margaritas last night. they were great. - 04.05.08
spacey - 29.04.08
i will most definitely regret posting this in public - 28.04.08