26 October 2021
As a lifelong asshole I think it is very important to tell as much of the truth as I can bear (which is generally more than is advisable, but I’m retarded, so I err on the side of caution) and to put the highest hurdles in the front. By “hurdles” I mean my personality flaws that most people interpret as “looking down” or “acting superior.” Like most of my favorite literary characters (Sherlock Holmes, Mark Duquesne, Stringer Bell, or Brainiac 5), I have a very hard time sustaining the pretense that people are not fools. That usually filters out the most of humanity from giving a shit about what I might be all about, but still allows the very finest people to get through and actually talk to me. I also don’t pretend that I’m not a fool, either, but that seems to be of little help. It’s no guarantee that they’ll still put up with my crap, and of course it’s always going to be my fault, but I still feel a lot less guilty about tricking anyone. I’ve managed to convince a couple of brilliant and talented women to bear my children, but eventually, they’d had enough, too.
For a while it is very rewarding. I never made any conscious effort to “meet people.” I just did what I loved, and I met people who loved what I loved. I guess that was the first and highest hurdle they cleared. Still, common interests can make for a firm foundation for a relationship. Telling the truth (but not too much) can also help, but that’s trickier.
But most people are awful, and I can do without them, though a rarefied minority are well worth the effort. Eventually they realize that I am not. But when they bail on me, it is generally for smaller causes than larger. It often turns out I’m not as funny as they thought, and sometimes they wonder why they ever thought I was worth their time in the first place.
But at least I don’t feel guilty about lying to anyone.
I feel badly about telling them the truth.
(Just in case this escaped you, let me repeat: I also don’t pretend that I’m not a fool, but that seems to be of little help.)
211026 – After the Refuge
“With their hearts they turned to each other’s hearts for refuge.”
Diva Dearest may have had a point, and I was not blind to it at the time, but I didn’t think that that was the case. She had begun to regret her agreement to the open basis of our marriage, and violently at times, when Sugar and I were still in the throes of fresh infatuation. This of course like Early Riser‘s objections before her, was after her own presumably satisfying (or embarrassing) trysts. As long as it worked for them, it was a good idea, but once it showed signs of working for me, it wasn’t.
Anyway, at the time, as I struggled to balance my desires and adhere to my commitments, she began to insist that I was “exchanging love’s bright and fragile glow for the glitter and the rouge” of disappointment. Sugar has since had her fill of me, and neither Early Riser nor Diva Dearest are clamoring to take me back. Diva Dearest has remarried, and even died, and Early Riser is content to dandle her grand-babies and to bask in the glory of her lord Christ Jesus.
And me? I’m left with “the glitter and the rouge.”
Thanks to Jackson Browne for the stolen lyric (“Before the Deluge.”)
He said it best already, so I shan’t attempt to improve on it.
in re illustration by Gene Gonzales: Tinya Wazzo (Phantom Girl, ®WarnerCom) & Kitty Pryde (Shadowcat, ®MausenKorp) demonstrate why “Tag” never caught on on Bgtzl,
home world of Tinya‘s phantom race.