Sunday, November 22, 2020

Venting

I'm angry. And frustrated, and extremely annoyed. With everything, and all of you. Most of you, the vast majority of you haven't done anything to piss me off. But EVERYTHING is pissing me off.

There are real world reasons of course; the re-emergence of white supremacists, a raging pandemic that's only raging because of intense stupidity, getting rejected by literally the only woman (well one of 2)I like, Venture Bros getting cancelled. These things cause me intense anxiety.

My patience is as thin as rice paper. In a little over a week I'll be 43. Ever since I was a teenager I was interested in being 42, because as some of you know, 42 is the meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything. My friend Janine loved the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as much as I did, and in the Spring of our 42nd year she passed away. In my 22nd year my mother passed away, in her 43rd year. I've been dreading my 43rd year for 20 years and now it's here. Well, almost here.

I'm terrified and alone. I've been terrified of this year for years because I hate tears. And now it's here. I'm afraid of becoming my mother,  I know lots of people are but especially me, and I AM SO MUCH LIKE HER. It's scary. Alone is a relative term. I'm alone in that I feel like a boat with a big hole in the bottom. It's like, you still have a big fancy boat but that missing part is REALLY important.

So I'm really tense. And on edge. And testy. And annoyed. And I'm sorry I really am. And my heart races and I don't sleep. And I'm miserable but also not miserable because of the fact that so many people care about me living and I'm also miserable but happy with people and I hate you all and all of these things can and are true at the same time because that's being what being human is and being human is aggressively,  beautifully stupid.

"I am large. (literally) I am filled with multitudes."
Shitty, shitty multitudes.

Wednesday, May 16, 2018

Confessions of a Crazy Ex - A letter from S

I received an email from "S" the other day that went like this:

“I never thought I would be a crazy ex but it just happened and I didn’t realize until after. Basically my ex started seeing another guy a couple weeks after we broke up but she’s clearly just using him for hook ups because he’s going to be leaving May 16 to go to the military and she’s only known him for about a month and Snapchat has wonderful thing that you could see peoples locations. I saw she was at his house for hours and I got upset and started sending her her location and saying “how could you” and “I’m never going to be your friend”. And all she did was just block me on Snapchat and then Ignore me. So the next day I went to her college which is about three hours away for me to apologize and I bought her a rose and when she saw I was there when I knocked on her door she didn’t answer and I waited for hours for her to show and during that time she started blocking me on Instagram and Facebook and she wasn’t answering any my messages. Until she sent her friends to tell me to go away and go home. I didn’t do anything else after that but send her a message saying that I was basically they are to apologize and she was making me look bad by not replying to me. I know this sounds crazy but I just wanted to get a second opinion on how bad it is?”


Operational definition : Crazy Ex
A person whose actions, triggered by a the emotional fallout from a recent breakup, go above and beyond the normal response to save a relationship that has already ended. In other words, doing entirely too much.

As with all undesirable behavior, the first step to addressing it is to identify it. It is very positive and encouraging that you have self-identified that you may have gone a bit batshit here. While that does not make any unstable behaviors acceptable, it will go a long way towards making sure that you don't repeat such mistakes. Saying I'm sorry does so little in the real world of adults to heal emotional wounds. The most important piece of advice I give anyone is don't be sorry, do better. Words really mean very little in the big picture, but actions really do speak volumes.

You don't want to be on... either side of this really.
Now to address the reason why you wrote me, let's breakdown the tape, so to speak.  I think you already know what your first and biggest mistake was here; staying connected on social media. HUGE MISTAKE, but you have probably realized that by now. The entire point of social media is to let you know what someone else is doing at all times, whether they want you to or not. When you break up with someone, it is your responsibility to block them IN ALL WAYS POSSIBLE. I cannot stress that enough. You must be swift, thorough and you must not hesitate. And we all know what happens if you hesitate; if you hesitate then you will become dead Marine. That's what they said in Full Metal Jacket, and I'm fairly certain that's relevant here. She blocked you, and once that happened any possibility of a future relationship with her, in any form, was gone. Block first if for no other reason than it feels good to quit rather than get fired. Trust me, I know what it's like to unintentionally glean information about an ex when you really weren't trying, which is why you have to be diligent about protecting yourself from any unwanted revelations.

We live in such a connected age you will find things that remind you of her everywhere. Here are just some of the places you have to block her; Google, Gmail, LinkedIn, Facebook (obviously) Twitter, Instagram, SnapChat, Spotify, Gchat, Messenger, everything. Clear all of your browsing data. Erase all search history. Erase and block not only her phone number but the numbers of all of her friends and anyone who may know how to reach her. You have to protect yourself from future you, because at some point future you is going to be drunk, or tired, or lonely, or all three, and will want to try to contact her and you have to take away all of his options. An undervalued facet of any breakup is protecting yourself from yourself. You had two weeks to burn all bridges. If you had done all of the blocking immediately, you'd have saved yourself a lot of time, heartache, and gas money. If you haven't done so yet, please burn everything (figuratively speaking) immediately.

The next error you committed is in reconstructing her motivations for her current actions. It is none of your business what (or who) she is doing now, and here's why; how is anything you learn going to help you? It doesn't matter if she's seeing this guy for sex, for a relationship, or for paving her driveway (not a metaphor.) There is no scenario where you knowing about her current activities works out well for you. Look at this from a cost/benefits analysis point of view. You and her are newly broken up, and one of the ways people cope with breakups is by hooking up with someone else immediately. A human mind in the midst of a breakup is a terrible thing; it will only replay the worst outcomes over and over, and the longer you dwell on your ex the more your perceived reality will conform to fit your fears. You have to save yourself from inquiring into her new life not for her, but for you. The best motivation to mind your own business is to avoid further pain. The chances are high that she won't be doing anything you're happy about, so why put yourself through further grief? On the surface you may say that you're trying to reach her out of guilt or to apologize for some offense, but really you are just looking for an excuse to see her again. By the way, a good way to figure put if you're engaging in obsessive ex-boyfriend behavior is if anything involving your ex takes “hours.” You knew she was at his house for “hours”, you drove for three “hours”, you waited outside of her dorm for “hours”. Nothing involving an ex should take more than 5 minutes, long enough to curse them out one last time or just say goodbye forever. Anything longer that that and you are probably straying into crazy territory.

Not knowing that you were out of control is a real thing. In my personal experience, there were many times that I didn't know that I was being crazy until after it was over, which is why it is very important to have someone in your life who is boring. A completely boring, average person is absolutely essential to the life of an emotionally adventurous person. Whenever I'm very upset about something I have friends that I talk to before I act just to make sure that my response and level of emotional excitement is proportional to the stimulus. In other words, I have people to tell me if I'm overreacting. We all need a point of reference for “normal” so we don't go off and do something stupid, kind of like a lighthouse in a sea of madness. When we are operating in a heightened emotional state, it becomes difficult to think rationally. Some people's neurons are wired so that their logical thoughts are interconnected with their emotional impulses in such a way that they literally cannot think straight when they're upset. If you don't have a person like that in your life, I highly suggest going to a therapist. In fact, go to a therapist anyway. I cannot overstate how important a good therapist can be is providing you with unbiased insight into your behavior.

Let's review; she blocked you so block her on everything. Engage and feel your feelings, remember they're your feelings and it's your responsibility to resolve them, not anyone else. Block her on everything. From what you've written you did go full crazy ex, but you can pull back before any more damage is done. Work on healing you. Read this article that goes into more depth on why breakups hurt so much. It helped me to know that a lot of the pain I was feeling wasn't heartache or missing love, but stupid brain chemistry. Good luck “S”, and remember; everything RomComs tell you is a lie and they should all be burned.

Monday, July 31, 2017

Re-zoning the Friend Zone

I’ve been male for 39 years now, and in that time I’ve learned a thing or two about other males and how we function. For the good of all I’m writing a three part series about why men generally do what we do. I write “generally” because there are many broad generalizations in what you are about to read; generalizations, anecdotal evidence, conjecture, and my own personal insight as a straight male of color. I hope you find this somewhat useful. 
The rock is your self-respect

     I have often been in the Friend Zone; I own land there, I pay taxes there. I'm part of the Friend Zone Homeowner's Association. When I used to complain about the friend zone it was a generally accepted “thing.” It was harmless joke, something people referred to when they were down in the dumps. It wasn't necessarily gender specific, although it was applied to and primarily used by men. Everyone knew what you meant when you said that “I’m stuck in the friend zone.” There was no controversy surrounding the phrase back then. “Friend Zone” referred to a certain relationship state where person A is romantically interested in person B, but person B is not interested in person A the same way. Hence person A is stuck in the friend zone. It is a state in which Person B has genuine affection for person A, but not enough to be in a relationship. There is a nuance here that is lost on many people, specifically men, and specifically me. I’ll elaborate.

     I’m 39, which means that I formed all of my opinions about how relationships with women work in the 80’s. This was a terrible, terrible thing that happened to many men in Gen X and should never be repeated. John Hughes basically fucked up an entire generation of men (and women, but in a different way.) I never actually saw any of his movies but Hughes's work was part of the 80's zeitgeist. It was impossible to evade the effects of his works.I’m not sure how things worked in the cities, but in the Suburbs my generation was often left to its own devices when trying to figure out how to deal with interpersonal relationships. Our parents, the “Boomers,” were discovering that the American Dream needed constant upkeep and repair, and without such care it turned into American alcoholism, American Divorce, and American Major Depressive Disorder. They had their own shit to deal with. So, starved and desperate for romantic direction we had to figure out a blueprint for life from pop culture. The teen comedies, they ruined us. I’m talking about Porky’s (1982), Risky Business (1983), Heathers (1988) and countless others. I never saw those, but I watched a shitload of 80’s sitcoms. If there’s one thing I learned from 80’s television is that being a sincere, sensitive, caring “nice guy” who listened to a woman’s feelings was a sure way to get some vag.
Will they or won't they?
     As I discussed in "The Nice Guy Paradox" the Nice Guy lie negatively influenced male behavior for 30 years. I was often called “a nice guy” mostly because I wasn’t a dick to people. At least, I was rarely a dick. At least, I thought that I was rarely a dick... I'm going to change topics now. Anyway, I thought this was a positive thing. Men really are toddlers with guns, angry machines of destruction with little to no insight into our emotions or motivations. There I was, trying to become the sensitive caring-but-charming guy that got the girl instead of the antagonist of the story who was always an objectively better choice for a relationship than the protagonist (me.) Steve Urkel couldn’t get Laura the way he was, so he became Stephan. How many seasons did Kevin blow trying to feel up Winnie Cooper?
Really, could you blame Kevin?

     Think of the role models I had: Saved by the Bell, Who’s the Boss, Growing Pains. Sam and Diane, Jack, Chrissie, and Janet, Alf and Willie, Tony and Angela, Whitley and Dwayne, Peg and Al, Harry and Christine, Maddie and David… these wildly contrasting couples were all I had to go on. Is it any wonder I came out with my dating head up my dating ass?  I was confused. All I knew for certain is that I really, really, really wanted to be near girls, touching girls, looking at girls. To be honest from 10-13 I wasn’t absolutely certain what I would do with a girl when I got one, but I figured I would cross that bridge when I came to it. I had a point A and a point C and no idea what point B was, or how to get from one to another. I had one piece of rock-solid knowledge, one plan, one egg that all my baskets were in. If I had never picked up this faulty cognition who knows how differently my life would have turned out. If you want to be a boyfriend you have to be her friend first. Believing that was my first and biggest mistake.

     As it turns out, if you become someone’s friend they tend to think of you as a friend. Go figure. Building to a relationship through friendship made sense to me because it’s how I would ideally start going out with someone. Who wants to date someone they don’t know, I thought. Honestly I think many relationships fail because people become genital friends before they become emotional friends, but I digress. Many of the women I’d come to like in life were friends who I fell for. When I would broach the subject of dating, or try to set up that perfect romantic set piece, it would always blow up in my face.  The woman would often say “I never thought of you that way” to my eternal consternation. Sneaking into a relationship under cover of Nice Guy often meant that the girl I liked, never being approached romantically, never thought of me in a romantic way. This is how 98% of Friend Zone situations happen. Now I know to make my intentions clear within the first few times I meet a girl, and then take things from there; only took me 20 years to figure that out. In this way I avoid the friend zone but often get told that I'm too aggressive. Sigh.

     Boys are taught to never give up, that if you really believe and work hard enough, you can win anything you want in life. We never take no for an answer. When you look at men’s approach to women it all makes sense now doesn’t it? My generation was raised to believe that if you put enough work into winning a girl over, you would persevere. You would win. And in 99% of life, this is the correct course of action. Hard work and perseverance will often bring you your heart’s desire; what it can’t bring you is someone else’s heart. It took me a very… very long time to figure out that you can put effort into making a relationship work, but you can’t work to get into a relationship. You can’t work on someone else anyway. What they should have been telling us is that if you work on making yourself a better man, then women will come on their own accord. Now that I think about it, maybe someone did tell me that, but it was probably too late, I was obsessed; I still am. I’ve always been obsessed with women (Ironically before I hit puberty I hated girls.) Once I thought they were inferior in every way, and then I thought that they were superior in every way. Some of you may recognize this pattern of thinking as “Splitting.” Splitting is a cognitive distortion that pretty much defined much of my youth. It’s the tendency for a person to only think and perceive in absolutes; people are either all good or all bad. I thought women were all good; I often elevated chosen women to the status of goddesses or what people refer to today as “Beyoncé.” When I liked a girl she was Beyoncé, and when, inevitably, she disappointed or let me down (rejected me) she became the exact opposite of Beyoncé, Lena Dunham. Only in the mind of a screwed-up lust fueled boy could one woman go from Beyoncé to Lena Dunham in the space of one day.

Did I really need an excuse to insert a picture of Beyonce?
     You see this behavior everywhere from men. Watch any emotionally dysfunctional man get rejected from a woman. She goes from B to D in a heartbeat. The Virgin-to-Whore Express runs 24 hours a day in some guys minds. Unfortunately I still do this in my head, but I’m aware enough to spray myself with a water bottle and hit myself on the nose with a rolled up newspaper when I realize that I am thinking this way. “No! Bad Id! No!” If you are a guy reading this and don’t understand why it is a problematic way to interpret the world, walk with me talk with me. I once was strongly in like with a girl, let’s call her Rachel. I’d talked with her for a while and discovered that we had everything in common (in my mind.) Let’s say she’s a nerdy, geeky WoC who is intelligent, and funny. She gets all the weird malfunctions in my personality and actually finds them endearing. We talk for hours about what it’s like to be Brown people in White Nerd World. I feel like we are bonding on a molecular level. She’s beautiful and has all my preferred secondary sexual characteristics in abundance.* At this point I am idealizing her. She has flaws certainly, but I’m not being realistic about that. I make my move eventually and tell her that I want to be together, and she blocks my shot like Marty Brodeur. Turns out that she had already evaluated me as a partner and didn’t think it was a good fit. Now, nothing about the relationship has changed, not in the way she sees me. I respectfully disagree, and now am feeling three extremely strong emotions at the same time:

1.       Confusion
2.       Hurt
3.       Anger

The confusion comes because I honestly don’t see how she doesn’t see that we SHOULD (see there’s that word again) be together. The hurt comes because it always hurts when someone tells you that they prefer the company of other’s to your specific company. Anger, because that’s the only emotion men are ever really allowed to express. So now I have an abundance of hurt and confusion rolling itself up in anger with nowhere to go. I did everything the right way so all of this pain must be her fault. Since it’s HER fault and SHE destroyed MY vision of who I thought she was, now she is the enemy. She’s stupid for not seeing how great we could be together. Bonus rage; she gets together with a Nice Guy who I find to be inferior to me. Sometimes I will react in this situation by thinking “I didn’t try hard enough. I just have to work harder to MAKE her love me. I have the Touch. I have the Power!” So now I’m doing increasingly desperate gestures to win her heart, gestures that to an outside observer seem unhinged and psychotic. When you look back at 80’s pop culture, The Grand Gesture always worked. Think of the movie trope of a Person B leaving Person A’s life because he can’t commit. In the climactic scene, Person A confronts her at the gate to her flight wild-eyed and short of breath. He proclaims his undying love for her, and the woman always says “I love you too” and purposely misses her very expensive flight out of town. It’s such a guy way of thinking; if she doesn’t like me the way I am ROMANCE BIGGER AND HARDER TIL SHE LOVES ME! In reality these actions often frighten women away, and the rejection intensifies. Now I am devaluing her and directing anger at her. Since my behavioral pattern is to take anger on women out on myself, I would get depressed and stress eat or do something else self-destructive.

     Sometimes if I could stand it, I would still be friends with the girl, hoping that whenever her relationship ended (because these things happen) that I would be there to score her on the rebound. I specifically got this message from Seinfeld (“The Wait Out” Season 7 episode 23.)

JERRY: But we gotta make it seem like we're not calling for dates.
ELAINE: Then why are we calling?
JERRY: Good question. (More to himself than to Elaine) Why are we calling?
(Both start chanting "why are we calling..", thinking deeply)
ELAINE: (Loud) Oh! (Jerry has a surprised look) I've got it! I've got it! We're calling just to say, "I'm there for you."
JERRY: (Nodding, trying it out) "I'm there for you."
ELAINE: Then, after a period of being "there for you", we slowly remove the two words "for you", and we're just (Makes a "ta-da!" gesture) "there".

I’ve heard this works, but only if the person you’re waiting on has already run a dating sim of you two together in their head. If not It’s never going to work. I’m not going to get into whether it’s a morally right or wrong way to go about getting a date because really, all’s fair. I’m saying it’s not an effective way to go about winning someone’s heart. I’ve done all of these and none of them have ever worked, not because I wasn’t trying hard enough (believe me, I did) but because there wasn’t going to be a relationship there. Apparently when a woman identifies a guy as a friend a friend he shall stay unless some unforeseen circumstance changes the way she sees you. The trick is guys, that what changes her mind is not something that you can consciously manifsest. You are wasting financial and emotional resources on her when they could be better spent on yourself or someone who is actually interested in you. Changes may be needed yes, but change things about yourself not for her but for you. The hardest part to write here is that no matter how much self-improvement you do, you still may not get the girl of your dreams. That frustration and loneliness is incredibly hard to live with, I know that better than most. The thing is you have to live with it because it is NOT her fault and she is NOT a monster for not wanting to go out with you. One of the biggest emotional growth spurts I ever managed was seeing women as people; not angels or demons, but people with their own merits and flaws just like everyone else. Not dating you may indeed be a mistake, but it’s her mistake to make and her mistake to fix if she ever sees it that way. The fact that it took me, a guy with an extremely high emotional IQ decades to realize women are people shows you how distorted the average man’s perception of the average woman must be.
One of these people murdered the other minutes after this picture was taken.

Finally we come to the nuance that I, and I suspect many men, have never been able to master. A woman can like you as a friend; and that’s OK. You’re friendship may mean the world to a woman, and without it she could possibly be devastated. But she only specifically sees you as a friend. The fact that I keep typing “only a friend” shows my only cognitive distortion that friendship is not a desirable relationship status with some women. In the past 10 years of my life I realized that I’ve actually had to stop remaining friends with women that I’m romantically interested in because I do not possess the emotional maturity necessary to be able to handle seeing her with another guy. I know it’s childish and petty, but I’m just not there yet. Knowing my limitations is where I am, and for now that has to be good enough because what else is there? I’ve never been able to wrap my head around the idea of a woman finding me very date-able but not wanting to date me. A friend once told me that I was attractive but she was not attracted to me; my head still gets swimmy when I think about it. There are probably lots of women reading this who are thinking “yeah I get that” and lots of guys reading this saying “WTF?!?!” And you are all right. I don’t get that nuance. I did eventually realize that a friendship can be just as intimate as a relationship, and that allowed me to hold on to many friendships that I wouldn’t have been able to before.


This is pure speculation, but I think male behavior states that if you are attracted to a woman and she wants to have sex with you, you have sex with her, whether you want to be in a relationship or not. It seems that modern women are subscribing to this philosophy more and more as they feel less constrained by societal definitions of “ladylike” behavior. But what do I know about that. What I do know is that the Friend Zone is a real status, and no more good or evil than any other arbitrary definition of the emotional space between two humans. What men need to understand is that no one is ever “trapped” in the Friend Zone. I own a condo and some beachfront property in the Friend Zone. People know my name there. I run the Friend Zone like Diddy runs the city. The key is one day I realized that the only thing trapping me in the Friend Zone was me. It's not the Hotel California, you can leave anytime you want to. If you cannot handle being a woman’s friend and not her lover, you need to be open and clear about that. Skulking and sulking and trying to win her heart will only breed animosity and mistrust. Being open and honest about feelings, while painful in the short term, is vital to long term emotional health. If you can’t do that, and the shame and hurt and confusion and rage just won’t let you move on, talk to someone. Get a therapist, or email me, I always answer my emails.Talk about it before the Friend Zone becomes a War Zone.

It is my firm belief that unless you have the necessary insight and maturity to handle such an arrangement, you (men) should not stay friends with a woman they are in love with. All of that love will eventually turn into proportional rage. I know that I still on occasion have a lot of difficulty being friends with a woman I really like, and if I recognize I am moving in that direction I bail out as soon as possible. Neither of us wants those problems. There is a reason that throughout human history the tale of the spurned and jealous lover is a constant throughout all peoples. If you are not aware google haw many women are victims of assault or murder at the hands of men they have rejected. It's staggering and frightening and we will cover this exact issue in part 3 of this dating trilogy for men, "The Crazy Ex-Boyfriend."

CONTINUE? [YES]  NO

Sunday, June 25, 2017

The Nice Guy Paradox

I’ve been male for 39 years now, and in that time I’ve learned a thing or two about other males and how we function. For the good of all I’m writing a three part series about why men generally do what we do. I write “generally” because there are many broad generalizations in what you are about to read; generalizations, anecdotal evidence, conjecture, and my own personal insight as a straight male of color. I hope you find this somewhat useful. 
Neither Russell Crowe nor Ryan Gosling appear in this essay
There is a popular saying that Nice Guys Finish Last, and they usually do. Gen X was taught that if nice guys persevere and are nice enough, we would win in the end. In the minds of the undersexed girl-crazed teenage boy, winning meant getting the girl and living happily ever after. Of all the problematic outcomes of this train wreck of thinking, one of the worst is the Nice Guy/Bad Boy Paradox. The Paradox is that in trying to be a Nice Guy, many men end up becoming a worse person than the Bad Boy. The Nice Guy Lie, that being a nice person will bring you sex, has negatively influenced male behavior for 30 years. It was a lie that I chafed against and caused me no end of cognitive dissonance. Changing yourself to fit what someone else’s idea of the perfect person is puts you on the fast track for emotional implosion, but many men don’t figure that out until it’s too late. If you were a guy for whom attracting women didn’t come easily or naturally (like me) you were always looking for some kind of an edge to make up for whatever your perceived shortcomings were. Over time as our desperation increased jealousy and anger at the more fortunate but seemingly less deserving men of the world increased in kind. We could not understand how seemingly intelligent women could choose unevolved pond scum over Nice Guys like us. Eventually we were filled with directionless rage magnified by society, men and women, telling us that we are single losers because we don’t want to change. Instead of help, society invalidates the negative feelings of men who by society’s standards don’t qualify as men. Guys like me thought that changing into something we weren’t was the only way to succeed, because being ourselves wasn’t getting us anywhere.
I didn’t choose the Nice Guy life, the Nice Guy life chose me, and it rubs me the wrong way to this day. I am not a nice guy. I’m an angry, self-centered, hedonistic, gluttonous, ball of negativity masquerading as a real live boy. I was slapped with the Nice Guy label mostly because I always try to do the right thing, whether I want to or not, and most of the time I don’t want to. I was often called a Nice Guy mostly because I wasn’t a dick to people, and I hated it. I can’t tell you how many times girls told me they weren’t romantically interested in me because I “was too nice.” Nothing is more confusing than telling a teenage boy that being a good person is stopping him from being able to touch a boob. Trust me; no teenage boy is choosing altruism and a life of servitude over touching a boob. It’s not outlandish to think that a Nice Guy shouldn’t have trouble dating but for guys like me that was often the case. I believed that if I became friends with a girl I liked and was the Nice Guy that people said I was eventually she would let me touch her boobs. Simple guy logic. If you glean nothing else from this exercise in apologist narcissism, remember that guy logic is simplistic, almost infantile. Lots of boys saw being a sensitive, caring, and sincere person as a means to an end, not a goal itself. It didn’t matter if you actually were all of those things or if you even believed in them; if you could become (or fake) those traits women had to want you. “I SHOULD be able to get a woman as a Nice Guy” is what we were told and told ourselves. The word “should” has caused more and bloodier violence than any other word in any human language.  If you wanted a girl you had to be the kind of guy you thought she wanted.
The problem every Nice Guy encounters is that at some point the Bad Boy comes along and easily scores the woman you’ve been plotting on for months, sometimes years. Inevitably the target of your affection will Uber over to your swanky apartment in the Friend Zone and tell you all about how Bad Boy screwed her over. After she has soaked your shirt with her tears, you’ll get a hug and stuck with the Uber bill as she goes straight back to Bad Boy. You discover that you overplayed the Nice Guy thing, and now that trait is seemingly all that’s holding you back from getting to second base. The frustrated energy this cycle generates could power Las Vegas for a month.  Being the simple creatures that we are we think “well if that’s what she likes, that’s what I’ll be.” The tragedy is that a lot of times it works! I speculate that there is some horrible lie that woman are told that attracts them to the Bad Boy, but whatever the cause it’s bad for society on general. The only thing worse than a fake bad guy is someone who overshoots Bad and hits  True Evil.
This guy never ended up in the friend zone. Be like this guy.
This is the Nice Guy Paradox; in trying to become a Nice Guy many men become actual bad people. The lying and pretending behavior becomes second nature, and gradually more and more shady behaviors become acceptable in the name of “love.” Guys at this level will see the Bad Boy with the girl they like, and think that they will do anything possible to separate those two because, after all, we know who is best for that girl right? Sometimes, like with me, this frustration and anger turned into depression and self loathing. In other cases men take that anger and frustration out on the target of their affection, with violent results.
The truth is that although the Bad Boy is 9/10 a genuine piece o shit, he is genuine. People like authenticity, even if it’s a negative sort of authentic. People know what they’re getting with a terrible person, and when things inevitably end in tears and lawsuits, no one is really surprised. When dealing with a guy who is an objective piece of shit a woman at least has the option of keeping her guard up, though whether she does or not is varies because human brains hate their human hosts. The guy who is secretly an awful person masquerading as a Nice Guy is seen as an affront, a violation, a fraud. A lot of times these Nice Guys have so lost track of who they really are they feel more and more victimized every time one of their manipulative efforts is ineffective. I know that cycle; the obsession with women and the compulsion to do anything to win her over creates a cycle of frustration, rejection and rage that often bubbles up into emotional or physical violence towards any women available.  Men really are toddlers with guns in many ways. I was out there trying to become the sensitive caring guy that got laid all the time which, shocker, may not even be a thing. Crazy thing is I do possess those traits naturally, but I still felt I had to manufacture a me that women wanted. We do this because we are never really told what women want. I was raised by all women and I still had (and possibly have) no clue how to be in a relationship with one. Men focus so much on how to get women and never talk about how to be with a woman. 
look at this sociopathic piece of shit
John Hughes lied to us. He lied to you, to me, to everyone.  If 80’s pop culture taught me anything, it’s that all women go for the rich/handsome/athletic guy, but what they really yearn for in their heart is the nerdy, awkward sensitive guy.  All we, the awkward, homely/unpopular nerds of the world had to do is try, try hard, and never give up. The Grand Gesture always seemed to work, and the girl-of-our-dreams would immediately leave the guy who by all traditional standards of success was the far superior choice, and fall in love with us forever. When you look back at 80’s pop culture, The Grand Gesture always worked. Think of the movie trope of a Person B leaving Person A’s life because he can’t commit. In the climactic scene, Person A confronts her at the gate to her flight wild eyed and short of breath. He proclaims his undying love for her, and the woman always says “I love you too” and purposely misses her very expensive flight out of town. It’s such a guy way of thinking; if she doesn’t like me the way I am I’LL ROMANCE BIGGER AND HARDER TIL SHE LOVES ME! In reality these actions often frighten women away, and the rejection intensifies. Now I am devaluing her and directing anger at her. Since my behavioral pattern is to take anger on women out on myself, I would get depressed and stress eat or do something else self-destructive.
when Nice Guys snap you get Michael Douglas
Nice guys don't finish last, or first. Like everyone else who has ever lived, all nice guys do is finish. If you finish alone and unloved or surrounded by family is up to you. And further also, when we come across guys who complain about not being able to meet women, the exact wrong answer is to call them losers for not fixing everything about themselves to make themselves more attractive to women. One of the reasons we are all crazy is that society sends us mixed signals. Being gay has always been used as a pejorative for men. Sharing your emotions with other men was “gay.” As such we are strongly encouraged to not share our feelings or ask for help. When men do complain about the difficulty they have with women, they are belittled, especially by those calling themselves feminists. Many times the insults are warranted because of the way men complain about things, but consider this;
I've only had one teacher who every got me, and his name was Nathaniel J. Pallone. He told us a story in class that was relevant here. People who try to eat lobster and crabs use tools to do so. You need tools to crack open the shells to get to the delicious meat inside. If you don't have tools you have to use your fingers and fists, smashing, breaking and tearing the meal apart until you and all your dinner companions are covered in crustacean goo. Lobsters are like emotions; if you have the proper tools., you can deal with them clearly and efficiently. If you don't you're just going to make a big mess. Many men do not have the social and interpersonal tools necessary to deal with the opposite sex and consequently make a big damn mess everywhere they go. And that's what we do. 
One of the most confusing aspects of reality to me is that no one ever believes me when I say that I have INCREDIBLE difficulty attracting and retaining women. It's one of the most traumatic areas of my life, but no one has ever been what I'd call sympathetic to my issues and with few exceptions I've always had to deal with them on my own. It's hard. I'm a pretty modern insightful dude though so therapy has helped in this area. At this point in life it's pretty hard to unlearn all of the mistakes and faulty cognitions, but progress has been made. For many men it's too late to see that the problem isn't everyone else, but sometimes honest listening can do a lot to humanize a Nice Guy. It's a start. This whole clusterfuck of good intentions and shitty strategy has to end somewhere. I think the only way to start is for men to be more transparent and for society in general to stop making us feel shitty for it. Trying to be a nice guy to get sex hurts everyone, and often leads to the unfortunate circumstance of being trapped in the friend zone. Speaking of...

CONTINUE? [YES]  NO

Tuesday, January 24, 2017

My "Dear White People" Fanfic

Now I don’t want to get off on a rant here…
Actually yes I do. Shut up, It’s been a while.
     Some people have wondered about my notable silence since the election. Actually I've been relatively quiet since the Mike Brown murder (yes this has been me quiet.) When Trump won the election, I was angry and sad, but not surprised. My anger was directed at you who were surprised. I really don’t want to make this a race issue but of course I will. I like flinging around the Race Card like my name is Gambit. I’ve been angry, Black angry, which if you have been paying attention is really fucking angry. I’ve been angry, not at the Trump supporters but the White people who were in denial, who turned a blind eye to all the signs that trump was going to win. Over the last 4 years police have been murdering Black men and women in the streets and receiving cash compensation for it. There were hate crimes against Muslims just going about their days that were written off as lone nuts with a grudge instead of racially motivated slayings. There were blatant attempts at voter suppression in the South and blatant poisoning of PoC in Michigan. College kids in the Midwest wore racially offensive costumes every chance they got. Women couldn’t be on the internet without being threatened with rape and murder (Gimme Shelter) regularly.
     Speaking of internet threats, every Black person who dared have an opinion about the shitty way we have been, are, and will be treated in America woke up every morning to hundreds of tweets and posts from White people telling them that everything they think, know, and feel is wrong. Over Thanksgiving, Facebook was rife with posts about people being afraid to go home and deal with their families who were inevitably filled with Trump supporters. White “liberals” for lack of a better term were utterly convinced of their victory, and to an extent I understood. The idea of Trump winning, on the surface, was laughable at best, implausible at worst. But then, 4 years ago I would have thought it improbably that police would murder a 10 year old and refuse him medical treatment, or murder a Black man for wielding a toy gun in a store full of toy guns. But, here we are. And on November 9th, 2016 yea there was much gnashing of teeth and beating of breast. “How could this happen!” the people cried. And I looked at them and said “how could it not?”
     Who, exactly do you think those people voted for? The people who donated money to George Zimmerman and Darren Wilson? The Gamergate people. The Tea Party. “The 1%.” Those people from the suburbs who never met a Black person in their life who go to work in the worst parts of the city. The people who complain that “illegals” are abusing the Medicaid system. The White teachers who only deal with the most troubled and disadvantaged Black children. The people who blame the decline of their town/shit-kickerville state on Obama. Those people who blame every cramp and hangnail on Obama. The people worried about “the gays.” Those people who have more cops in their families than Black acquaintances. The people who think Facebook started racism. The dregs in middle management who are so miserable with their failed existences they they take out their impotent fury on their far more talented Brown coworkers and curse “affirmative action.” The conspiracy nuts, the anti-vaxxers, the doomsday preppers, all the heavily armed fringe-White psychos, who do you think they voted for? Who do you think they are?
     So yes, I’ve been angry. Then a weird thing happened; I started seeing people who had never expressed an opinion about any of the horrors of the world start opening their mouths, or at least, taking to their keyboards. Many of you got a real ice-bucket challenge, the cold reality that a lot of your so-called friends actually don’t give a fuck about your feelings or your welfare. It was funny for me to see people posting about having to unfriend “friends” who were all for taking rights away from everyone. I laughed. I didn’t unfriend anyone last year, because I unfriended every one of those assholes who posted anything about “All Lives Matter” or “Blue Lives Matter.” Turns out they seemed to have a high correlation with Trump voters. Shocking right? I had no sanitizing to do; it had been done, because I saw all of this coming. “But John” you say, “if you were so all-knowing and wise, why didn’t you do anything to stop this?” While it’s true that I am all-knowing and wise, I can’t do everything myself. In fact there is one thing I specifically can’t do; change white people’s minds. These Trump voters have no real understanding or emotional connection with anyone who doesn’t look or think like them, so it is the people who look like them who have to change the way the conservative Trump voter thinks.

     Hell I couldn’t get the people on my side to take the necessary action to head off this disaster, what can I do about the people who don’t? And here’s the kicker; the Trump voter is invisible. Yeah you can spot the fanatics from a mile away, because they want you to see them. But your boss at your publishing firm, your dry cleaner, your mailman, the people who you have a pleasant relationship, the people who send you Christmas cards, the people you think have Black friends, those are the Trump voters. They weren’t going to any inauguration. They weren’t proud. They’re happy enough knowing that their local, state, and federal government is busy taking civil rights away from minorities, women, and in many cases themselves. You know who voted for Trump? Women with BCBS, Aetna, Cigna, Humana, they don’t have to worry about Planned Parenthood, or abortions, because no one will fuck those unfuckable hags.
     Sorry. That was uncalled for.
     My point is that White women with financial privilege don’t give one spare fuck about White women who don’t have the same financial privilege. Lately I’ve been seeing White women go to war with each other over reproductive and civil rights, and it’s been lowering my blood pressure. These arguments are what will save America, because the last push the Sanity Party needs is for White women to, as a group, get on board with taking down conservative White male rule. The highbrow reason that I love these fights is that I feel like we as Black people are finally getting the help from so called allies that we have been asking for decades now. The lowbrow reason is I like seeing White people fight among themselves. But seriously, now is not the time for silences. A war can be won with words... mostly violence, but words too. Words change minds and most importantly, can change votes. Words can inspire empathy and compassion. Words can humble even the most ill-informed Trump supporter (redundant.) White women have to take a long hard look at themselves and really figure out if their priorities are to women or to preserving White supremacy, because those are not two great tastes that taste great together. Are your allegiances to your race, to the “patriarchal” institutions that oppress you or to other women? Are you vocal for PP but silent about Sandra Bland? You, you reading this, know a woman who is all for Trump and for stripping women of all civil liberties and access to healthcare, because those are things they never worry about. I don't know how to change that. Maybe before marching against men, some of you need to march against each other. I don't know, these aren't questions I have answers to. The rest of us PoC got our shit together to stop Trump, but y'all dropped the ball.

     In short, Dear White People; please unfuck yourselves before over half of you get the rest of us killed. BTW if you're reading this I am totally not talking about you. You're one of the good ones.

Friday, December 9, 2016

Saves 9

When I was a little girl the world seemed gigantic to me. Just like, really overwhelmingly huge. One place in particular always left me with a mixed feeling of awe and dread; University Hospital in Krakow.  It was a castle, maze, galaxy, hospital, and whatever else I could imagine it to be. My mother was the Queen of it all, which was a little intimidating to me. When I was 11 my mother started taking me there to volunteer taking care of the elderly patients and sick children while she worked in the ICU. She was... is, a nurse, and a really good one. Some called her a legend, because none of her patient’s ever died on her shift. Maybe before or after she left, but when she was on she worked her hardest to save every life. She was an inspiration, and like the hospital, she was bigger than life. When I grew up and became a nurse myself, everything seemed smaller. The world got really small, the hospital wasn’t as vast, but the legend of Marynia was larger than ever. She was something of a celebrity, and sharing her name and profession was a bit much.

After I finished secondary my mother really wanted me to take the Matura test and go to Wein like she did, but that seemed like... a lot for me to process. So instead I traveled and bounced around Europe for a while. She was the exact opposite of ecstatic about that. I did get an education in my own way, learning this and that, directionless but observant. I wanted to be a nurse but I wasn’t ready to take up the responsibility that would come with being the daughter of Marynia Majchrowski. I studied lives and experiences I never knew existed and gained skills I never imagined I’d need.  Sometimes I would get into trouble just to see if I could get myself out of it. I thought it was too hard living up to the impossible standard my mother had set, but those few years gave me the confidence to believe that I could handle anything she could. Now as an adult I am a little more jaded and a lot more realistic, but my mother was and always will be a giant to me.

I however, was not a giant, so Marynia K. Majchrowski decided to move to the US to make her own name. I went to school in California and ended up going into nursing after all, since the expectations of an anonymous girl new to the US weren’t so high. I work in the Emergency Department of another University Hospital, USC. It’s not as big as my mother’s University, but I look forward to making it my own. It’s a trauma center, so we see some pretty messed up people. It doesn’t bother me because in the last 6 years I had seen and done some pretty messed up things, most of which I’m proud of. Not all of it, but most. On the night shift we had little to worry about, because Dr Walker was there. He was by far the most talented, gracious, humorous, and intelligent Emergency Department doctor in the state. He knew 3 languages fluently and another 2 conversationally. He was very handsome and very, very married with two kids, but that didn’t stop all the nurses from flirting with him. He accepted the attention graciously, but it was very apparent that he was happy with his life. He radiated that happiness to his patients. I’ve seen patient’s pulse and blood pressure fall just being in his presence. He would laugh when a patient recovered, cry when they didn’t. This is the story of a crazy few months were no one laughed.
 
There’s a little crew of us who all work overnights, and we arranged it so we work the same nights as much as possible. Coincidentally those nights were almost always the nights that Dr Walker worked. About 3 months ago we got a call that a 23 year old female was coming in by ambulance. When she got to us she looked like she’d just fought a pack of wolves. She was bloody, battered, broken, like, a total mess. She was missing teeth and her face was near unrecognizable. We called a code and most of the ED rushed to her side; her vitals were terrible and she was crashing fast. Walker was a blur, barking out orders, and directing traffic. Dr Walker had a great record when it came to saving lives himself. He was nowhere near my mother’s mark, but his reputation in the city as being an expert was well known. We work in a rough area, so seeing victims of violent crimes was an unfortunate but all too regular part of the job. This was different somehow. Her name was Joanne. She wasn’t much younger than me, 24 years old, White, just an average girl, nothing spectacular about her. Her wounds were from far from average and way more than I’d seen in the worst domestic violence victims. This woman had been abused and beaten for some time. The EMS crew said that she was dumped on the street a few blocks away from the hospital. She was bleeding from several different types of wounds, and Dr Walker was determined to stop them all. He did his best, we all did, but by the morning the best we could do was stabilize her. For most doctors this would have been considered a victory, but Dr Walker set very high standards for himself, so by extension the rest of us did too.  Dr Walker stayed with her until the family came and he explained what happened. He was shaken… we all were, because as a team we went as he went. It was a shitty way to end my shift, my third in a row. My only consolation was I would have a few days off to de-stress. The next night I worked, the mood in the ED had returned to normal for everyone but Dr Walker.

He did a great job managing things as usual, but we could tell that his thoughts were somewhere else. The charge nurse that night was Juliet, my best friend, ass-kicker, and unapologetic ginger of the ED. She was in her mid-40’s, worked overnights, and ran the lives of her 3 teen aged sons in the daytime, but you would never know it by the energy she brought to the job. She was great at managing all of the different personalities and characters in the ED staff, which was very much like herding cats. She kept us in line by being so empathetic that she could tell when one of us was going to lose our shit before we did. This was great for me since I tended to lose my shit frequently. Another reason why I chose to start my career in America is that I had a bit of what people call a short fuse. I like to say that I enjoy spirited conversation. The police called it "assault." Whatever.

In between patient’s I went and asked her what as up with Walker. “I don’t know” she said “I guess you noticed how he isn’t as focused as he usually is. Maybe he needs to get laid. I’d be happy to take him in the supply room and relieve his stress. With my vagina.” Did I mention that she had the filthiest mind in Southern California?  Dr Walker walked by and gave us a weak but genuine grin. “But your right, he definitely isn’t his usual hyper-chipper self.” She came over to my side and said “I think he’s not over that girl from last week. You know how detail oriented he is. There’s something bothering him about that girl and he won’t tell anyone what it is. Personally I think she was just 4 hours into a night of heavy S&M and forgot what her safe word was. Mine is banana.” I looked at him down the hallway, and all the signs I had missed up to that point were crystal clear. He was distracted. This was more disturbing to me than anything I’d seen in the worst neighborhoods of Hungary, Poland, and France. Seeing such a strong man so shaken gave me the chills. I put it out of my head. In most ways nursing is just a job like any other except every now and then we see patient desperately trying to die, and we have to stop them.

I was two days into my next three day stretch, and the grind was wearing on me. Coffee wasn’t working to keep me awake anymore, and for the first time in my life cocaine seemed like a viable alternative to Starbucks. I had just finished wrestling a psych patient down so we could give her 5-and-2, which always puts me in a festive mood. Just as I was catching my breath we had another EMS crew sprinting through the ambulance doors with a critical patient. My heart froze as I ran to assist; it was another young woman, one who looked frighteningly like me if I hadn't just been run over by a train. She had broken bones, spiral fractures, clean breaks, puncture wound, and lacerations. It was like someone went down a Reddit list of 13 great ways to hurt someone without actually killing them. Her name was Gloria. She was a Music major at the school. She played piano. The fingers on her left had been systematically broken one by one. If there was no nerve damage she might be able to play again one day. One day in the far future. I was on autopilot as we slid so easily into our appointed roles. As an ED team we were kind of a well-oiled machine. It was that speed and efficiency that saved lives.

Dr Walker should have been proud of himself; this was not an easy one. She had a deflated lung and a lacerated spleen. We patched her up well enough to get her to ICU. She would leave the hospital 3 weeks later, in a wheelchair. She would need that wheelchair for another 6 months. He was there when she left. One of the day shift nurses, Maureen, watched the whole thing. For the first time ever I was grateful that she was exceptionally nosy. She told me every detail, how she thanked him, and how her parents thanked him. She recited the whole scene as if she were a court stenographer. I held back tears as she told me in her thick West Indian accent how he, for all of his effort, and for the fact that she was sitting there in front of her, alive, could not stop apologizing. She was alive, not physically well, but emotionally and spiritually she had been healed. She could not describe what had happened to her more than she was returning home from a late class, and was abducted somewhere between her bus stop and her apartment. There was torture; there was pain, and a ruthless, sadistic coldness to everything he said to her. She told the detectives that he kept blaming her for what happened, blaming her for what “she made him do.”

Two weeks passed and we didn’t have one patient like that. I spent more time with Juliet after work; she would make sure her kids got off to school then we would process the events of the night, and by "process" I mean drink a bottle of wine each and share impure thoughts about the male ED techs.  It helped, and we needed the release; the whole hospital did. No one said it but that break gave us the greatest relief you can imagine, greater than taking off your bra after a long day. We relaxed, we exhaled, we let our guard down, and naturally you know what happened next.

This time it was early, so early in my shift we had barely put our things down. The day shift was giving report to the overnight nurses coming in. In the middle of report an EMS crew bursts in, panicked. They were kids, and this was obviously their first trauma victim. There were two shifts of nurses there, which meant that we were all in each other’s way. Fortunately Juliet was there too and herded the cats. She has a voice slightly more peaceful than a train wreck, so she is great at getting people’s attention. She directed traffic and made sure that no one was doing anything redundant. For all her insanity she was the calmest person in an emergency; mothers are good for that. We ran in all directions like dutiful children finishing up our chores.

Her name was Elysian. She looked as artful as her name was. She was pale and graceful, like one of those elves from the movies. She had long jet black hair and crystal blue eyes. Her left arm was covered in tattoos of vines with thorns. She told me later they were catbriar vines. They were intricate; she said it took for 8-hour days to finish. She had no broken bones, just deep purple and black bruises all over her. She seemed like the type to bruise easily anyway.

Unlike the others there wasn’t much to do with Elysian; once we had made sure there was no internal bleeding, there was nothing we could do for the tissue damage other than make sure that she was comfortable while she healed up. She had been walking home from one of the buildings over at the art school, and just like the others she had no idea what happened next. Just like the others she woke up to a nightmare of a beating, all the while her attacker blaming her for what she had made him do. There was no finesse to this one, no subtlety. It was hurried and sloppy. With the other victims he took his time, starting the damage out slowly and building to a crescendo of violence until the victim blacked out from the pain. The scars were both emotional and physical. He never raped any of them... I guess he thought THAT was the line not to cross. Psychopaths are funny that way.

It turned out to otherwise be a slow night, so I had some time to talk to her. She said that she didn't know where she was, but she had been unconscious for about an hour; she managed to look at her watch at some point. People really need to wear watches more often. They come in handy when being kidnapped my a serial killer. She said that as soon as she woke up he started hitting her with all of his might.  At one point she played possum so he would stop hitting her. He turned the lights on, and she peaked at the walls. They were covered in a wallpaper of blood-spattered newspaper clippings, website articles, and photographs of one person. A couple of times he wore himself out from exertion, and she called him an out of shape pussy boy. She told him that the newspapers on the wall were not only cliche, but tacky. He beat her harder. I liked this girl, she was a badass. Anyone who risked getting their ass beaten worse just to taunt their attacker while he has you tied up to a chair can be my BFF forever.

"I couldn't read all of the text, but the guy was murmuring to himself the whole time, and I distinctly heard him say 'Dr Walker'" she said.

I bit my lip; my suspicions were confirmed. There was no way that it was a coincidence all of these girls ended up on our doorstep the same nights when the same crew was working. This guy must have stalked us to find out our schedule. I knew this wasn't random, but I was missing this last piece of the puzzle. This guy was hurting these woman to get at Dr Walker. It worked; Dr Walker had been a nervous wreck since all of this began. I think he figured this out long ago but he didn't want to worry the rest of us. He's probably been trying to fix this himself. That's his way, to help everyone else and never ask for help. "Did he say anything else?"

Something about "just as long as I did. Just as long six more...."

Six more. Six more. That would be nine. I prayed to God that he would be caught before then, but me and God aren't exactly on a first name basis. Not anymore. Over the next 3 months we got 5 more victims, all around my age, all beaten within an inch of their life. The only pattern was their age; 2 were Black, one was Asian, and two were white. They had jobs in all different locations; it seemed like they were kidnappings of opportunity, which would explain why the intervals were random. Some of the nurses stopped working our shift. Police and news crews hovered around the hospital all the time now. At one point Dr Walker, knowing that he was the cause, went on long term leave. It killed him that he wasn't there to help these girls, but he couldn't deal with the guilt of knowing that he had some part in all this. Him leaving just made things worse though; the month he was gone, the victim went into a deep coma; her injuries were too severe. Her name was Jenny Chang and she was a pharmacy tech working her way through the pharmacy program at USC. She had a large family and most of them were there when they decided to take her off of the respirators. The family asked that Dr Walker be consulted before the final decision was made though; he said that they should wait a little longer. He thought that due to the nature of her injuries her body might take a while longer to sort itself, and there was still a chance that she could come out of the coma. The rest of the attending doctors said it was impossible, right up to the day when she woke up and smiled at her parents. He saved her life from home. Dr Walker came back soon after; he figured if he couldn't stop this guy at least he could save the victims. After number 8 the entire hospital was on edge. Everyone from maintenance to executives were going sleepless. This one man had terrorized most of Southern California, and he was building to his grand finale. I was pissed, I was angry, and I felt helpless. I had had enough. It wasn't enough to patch these girls up, someone had to stop him.

I had a hunch, an instinct, a feeling, and I had to act on it. As I said before, I was a woman with a certain set of skills you wouldn't know by looking at me. In my time bouncing around Europe I learned some things to keep myself safe, like how to handle a knife. For two weeks before my shift I walked alone to The In-n-Out near the hospital, and got a burger and fries; unhealthy I know, but it was all in the name of vigilante justice. I made sure to walk the same rout every night, and was always alone. I knew from the various descriptions I pieced together from this guy that I could take him; he was only a real threat if you were tied to a chair. After a couple of weeks I started to think nothing would work, until one night a felt a sharp pinch on my ass. No one was around so it shocked the shit out of me. I thought maybe it was a Wasp. When I reached back there was no wasp there, but there was a tranquilizer dart.

"Son of a....*"

I was gently awakened with a hard right cross to the chin. I heard more than saw one of my teeth skitter across the floor. The love tap was followed by three more to the face, and another two to the abdomen. He had certainly refined his attacks. It actually looked like he was in better shape than what the other victims had described. I knew that taunting him makes him sloppy, and I was Oh so good at it.

“You know, if you’re going to hit me, you may want to get a weapon. A crowbar or brass knuckles maybe. I’m from Poland; my people survived 2 World Wars, the Germans and the Russians. You’re from the Valley yeah? I doubt you’ve survived anything worse than unexpected rain." He cracked me again on the side of my face; I almost felt my cheekbone give way, but it held. I have to admit, he was literally knocking the sass out of me.

“You think your funny bitch? I’ve been watching you. I’ve been watching you this whole time. I knew I would end up with one of his own, but it took me a while to figure out who. Then I saw you, how he looks at you. I knew you were the one, the one that would hurt him the most.”

My left eye had swollen shut, and he stayed to that side so I couldn’t see him clearly, but his voice definitely sounded familiar. Before I could open my mouth again I heard my left collarbone crack. Well, there goes that arm.

“You know I can see why you’re his favorite, you have good ideas.' He walked to my right side so I could see him more clearly. “A crowbar is way more efficient.” He pulled back and slammed the crowbar down on my right thigh. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of hearing me scream but it hurt like a MOTHERfucker.

“Vinny?” It was Vinny, a lab tech that worked overnights He left the hospital after his daughter was diagnosed with cervical cancer. His 25 year old daughter…

“You’re probably shocked. I don’t fucking care if you see me now. You’re the last one, the 9th one. Nine lives for the nine months that incompetent asshole did his experiments on my little Suzy before he finally murdered her. Did you know he used to do oncology? I know. He was supposed to be the best. I counted my lucky stars that we worked in the same hospital so our insurance would cover it. Suzy was getting real bad so they admitted her here. For 9 months Walker did all these tests and chemo and anything else he could think of to get her better, he said. I think he was just trying to get his name in the papers for curing a girl of cancer. Well he fucking didn’t, and my little girl suffered every single day of those nine months. He quit oncology for the ER after, probably fucking ashamed at being a total torturing failure. He got away scot free and I had nothing left but 9 months of agony and my little girl’s dead body. But we’re going to be even now.”

He put down the crowbar and picked up a very dented aluminum baseball bat. “See, the Asian girl was supposed to die, but SHE. JUST. WOULDN’T. DIE.” With every word he swung the bat nearer and nearer to my head. He wanted me to flinch. I didn’t.

“But you will. I’ve had a good amount of practice, and I think I’ve perfected my craft to where you’ll get far enough into the ED to die right in front of him. Then maybe I’ll go to Mexico. Or shoot at some cops, I haven’t decided yet.”

I was finally ready. “I have been working with Dr Walker for a long time. He feels every patient’s death like it was his own child. He was probably devastated when your daughter died, and I really am sorry for your loss. But if this, all of this is your response… If you really thought that taking away nine other daughters from their fathers would somehow make you even with the universe, then you’re really the fucking failure in this situation, not him. Hopefully in her next life Suzy gets blessed with a competent father…”

He roared and came at me, blind with rage, just what I wanted. While he was monologuing I got the knife I taped to my lower back out and had cut the plastic ties he put on my wrists. He swung wildly with the bat and I leaned back easily. He missed by a mile. I dropped to one knee and jammed my knife right into his right knee, severing his ACL and PCL (I hoped.) He screamed like a banshee and immediately went down. I went to work on that leg; cut his ACL down near his ankle. He probably wouldn’t ever use that leg again. When he reached down to grab his knee I took the opportunity to stab my knife into his shoulder. Well, there goes that arm. I got up unsteadily. I wasn't sure how deep the damage was to my thigh, but it felt like someone dropped a truck full of anvils on it, so I guessed it wasn’t OK. I pulled myself up, one arm and one leg completely functional, and grabbed the bat.
“You know what’s the saddest fucking part? For all this shit you’ve put everyone through, he saved them. He saved EVERY. GOD. DAMN. ONE OF THEM.” It was my turn to accentuate my words with stabbing pain. I slammed his disabled knee and shoulder over and over again with the bat. “Isn’t it ironic? Dontcha think?”

He cried. He rolled around. He screamed. But I didn't stop. All I heard were the cries of those girls, and I hit him til the cries stopped. I wasn't sure if he was silent or I had quieted the memories in my head, but either way it was quiet. I felt nothing and heard nothing. I found my phone in a corner of the basement. Through my good eye I blearily took in the history of what he had done. He wasn't really careful with covering up evidence; he obviously didn't have a long term plan. I called 911. I fell into a corner and started to cry, big heavy tears. I wasn't crying because I was scared, or sad... I was angry. I was still full of rage, and he wasn't moving and I couldn't beat him anymore and I couldn't stop wanting to hit him. It felt good, past the revenge, past the fact that there would be no more broken girls, it felt good to hurt someone. That part wouldn't make it into the newspapers when they interviewed me over the next few months. But I knew it. I know it and I am completely fine with it.

The EMT's allowed me the honor of rolling the piece of shit's unconscious body through the ambulance doors. They applauded me like the conquering hero I was. I only had full use of one arm and 1 1/2 legs, but I did it. I didn't kill him. It wasn't on purpose; turns out I passed out right after I called 911. Who knows what would have happened if I could have stayed on my feet. I know, but again, the media didn't need to know that. Juliet came over to help me to a stretcher. "You attention whore, you look like dog meat." She went about addressing my wounds, tears smacking me in the face the whole time. "I may look like dog meat but it's better than being an ugly crier." I tried to laugh, but it hurt when I laughed. Or breathed, or existed really. Juliet moved over as Dr Walker looked over me. "It's over" I said "he only got eight. He didn't get me. I got him, you see that? I got the fucker." He put his finger to his lips "I know Mary, I know. Now be quiet while we get you patched up." He smiled that special smile of his, "You look like shit."

That was the first time I'd ever heard him curse.

Thursday, September 29, 2016

Personalities, Ordered

Nerds and geeks are often labeled as troubled, weird or “having something wrong” with us. I’m here to tell you that this is probably true, but it is not a bad thing. I wear it as a badge of honor; who wants to be normal anyway? The idea that we are weird and troubled does not mean that everyone else is somehow more functional than we are. Even so, people who are aware that they are broken and dysfunctional are the sanest ones because we have better insight into ourselves and by extension people in general. The crazy ones are the people who ardently believe that they are completely sane and rational. Trust me, I’d rather be socially awkward and under control than “normal” and a raging alcoholic. Yes, those are sweeping generalizations and yes there will be more.

Accepting the hypothesis that as nerds and geeks we are all mad here, let’s delve into the ways we may be mad from a psychological perspective. We have talked before on this site about mental illness, mostly focusing on psychotic, mood, and anxiety disorders. We talk about these diagnoses (what I refer to as “The Big Three”) the most because they’re the most disruptive to the lives of the sufferer and those around them right? I do not find this to be true. The Big Three are the disorders that people can most readily identify, but I contend that Personality Disorders can have more insidious and long-term effects on a person’s life and social environment. A personality disorder has 5 key elements according to the DSM-V which are:

1. An enduring pattern of inner experience and behavior. This pattern manifests in two or more of the following areas:
a. Feeling
b. Thinking
c. Interpersonal relationships
d. Impulse control
2. This pattern deviates markedly from cultural norms and expectations.
3. This pattern is pervasive and inflexible.
4. It is stable over time.
5. It leads to distress or impairment.

Personality disorders also have 4 common elements common to each diagnosis. These are:
1. Rigid, extreme, and distorted thinking patterns (thoughts)
2. Problematic emotional response patterns (feelings)
3. Impulse control problems (behavior)
4. Significant interpersonal problems (behavior)

Personality disorders are further divided into three groups called “clusters” (I know this seems a bit obsessive itself, but people who study psychology LOVE grouping things. It’s like, our pastime.) These clusters are:
Cluster A - the “odd, eccentric” cluster
Cluster B - the “dramatic, emotional, erratic” cluster
Cluster C – the “anxious, fearful” cluster

I’m sure it won’t be hard to figure out what group your specific personality type is in. Chances are that people have been calling you one of these descriptors all of your life. I usually get Cluster B myself, though anyone who has been around me for more than 3 minutes usually classifies me as “odd” as well. I cannot make this point strongly enough; just because you find that you have some of these symptoms IT DOES NOT MEAN that you have the disorder. All human behavior exists along a spectrum, and all people will exhibit some disordered behavior at some point in their life. Just because you like to clean does not mean that you have a pathological illness. Maybe you just like the lemony fresh scent of Pine Sol. A lot. It is fine if you identify so much with some of these behaviors that you strongly suspect that you may have one, but I urge you to see a mental health professional before self-diagnosing. Personality disorders are hard to diagnose because they can be difficult to distinguish from normal transient states without proper training and experience.

I would say that many nerds and geeks would trend towards Cluster C disorders, particularly Avoidant PD. Many times people who would fall into this category identify themselves as introverts. There is a point when mere introversion can become a crippling inability to excel in interpersonal relationships both professional and personal.

In Cluster B, which I have extensive experience with, I would say many nerds and geeks *cough LARPers cough* could fall into this category as well. I say LARPers and tabletop RPG players because those are games that cater to extroversion and being able to express emotions openly and freely. These behaviors become problematic when the person is unable to regulate their behavior, that is, know when to turn it off and on. Its fine to be a manipulative, conniving scumbag in your Vampire LARP, but you should not also be one at work the next day. People in this cluster tend to have the least insight into their problematic behaviors, instead constantly blaming others for the problems that they themselves cause. In stark contrast to Cluster C types, Cluster B types rarely think about their own internal states, so they most often are encouraged to seek help by those around them. Cluster B disorders can be the most destructive of all the personality disorders as they are most often described as being “toxic,” and their behaviors take a great emotional toll on those around them. Healthy Cluster B traits can make someone the life of the party; pathological Cluster B traits can cause someone to be the inevitable cluster-fuck drama bomb of the party.

Finally Cluster A traits can be shown in the quiet reclusive geeks and nerds, the ones who retreat into their hobbies because they are unable to relate to others. These are the types, such as the Schizoid PD, who you can only connect with through their hobbies. You may only see them at conventions where they can indulge in their particular area of interest in the company of like-minded individuals.

This is all just some information to get you thinking about if a personality disorder is negatively affecting your life in ways that you may not realize. If you have more questions about these disorders, information about them is available almost everywhere on the internet. It’s easier to become curious about a diagnosis than to come to a conclusion about whether you have something or not, so please see a therapist. Maintaining good mental health is a communal activity and the more we talk about bit the better we can help each other. If you have any questions or you need direction, you can tweet me or email me at exit.eleven@gmail.com