Fantasy
Conversation #108, Joined In Progress ...
Telemarketer:
... So if I can verify your name and address, we can send this MasterCard®
right out to you, OK, buddy?
Me:
No, "buddy".
Telemarketer:
No?
Me:
No. I don't want the card, "buddy."
Telemarketer:
But with all the benefits this MasterCard® offers, cash-back
rewards, rental car discounts -- I don't think you want to pass
up this limited-time introductory offer.
Me:
You don't think so?
Telemarketer:
It's a really great deal.
Me:
So you think you have a pretty good idea of what I want and
need?
Telemarketer:
I uh ...
Me:
You're sitting there telling me that I don't want to pass up this
offer. Are you an expert on what I need and what I want?
Telemarketer:
I just ...
Me:
Need I remind you that you are a telemarketer?
Even if you were now fulfilling your lifelong ambition of
being an inflamed boil on the collective tuchus of humanity, only
a lunkhead would consider your current profession to be the quintessential
monument of success in modern society.
Telemarketer:
Me:
So where were we? Oh yeah, you were about to tell me -- in all
of your cosmopolitan sophistication and erudition -- what you
think I need and want. Go ahead.
Telemarketer:
Me:
Hello?
Telemarketer:
No, sir. I mean, yes, sir. I'm ... I'm ... very sorry to have
caused you this inconvenience. Please forgive the interruption and
have a nice day.
Walking
With a Lisp
Part
II of the ‘Is It Me?’ series
It
could be my imagination, but then again, why would I want
to imagine such a thing? Maybe it’s more common among men than
I realize.
Here’s
the thing. I try to be maintain the awareness that I am not as attractive
as my seemingly indomitable male ego wants me to believe.
But
despite this effort, my knee-jerk assumption, whenever an attractive
woman smiles at me, is that she finds me attractive. It couldn’t
possibly be that she was just being friendly and nice to a stranger.
No, the male ego immediately assumes she is responding to my irresistible
animal magnetism.
Thankfully,
the rational part of my mind has remarkable success in suppressing
that irrational assumption, and it’s getting better all the
time -- probably because I'm getting older and less attractive with
each passing year. At least that’s the argument the rational
mind uses to persuade the male ego to stop being so stupid.
Note,
however, that I do not make this same assumption whenever someone
of my own gender happens to smile or act friendly toward me. My
first thought is not that this male finds me attractive.
I just assume he is being courteous and friendly. Nor is it my wish
to be found attractive by another male. In fact, nothing could be
farther from my mind.
But
occasionally, I find myself in a public setting, for example, at
a Barnes & Noble bookstore, and I suddenly realize that I’m
being followed. Not by a store employee, but by a male I just saw
browsing in the Gay & Lesbian Issues section.
Suddenly,
everytime I turn a corner, he’s there, pretending to be looking
at books on philosophy (my vice) and religion (my curse). Our Barnes
& Noble is huge. He has the whole store to wander. Why does
he follow me around? Did I inadvertently make eye contact? Did I
accidentally brush up against him on the way in? What makes him
think (a) that I’m gay, and (b) that I’m even interested
in someone who prefers stalking to just walking up and speaking
to someone?
This
is nothing new. I’ve had this effect on gay men throughout
my life. I’m a guy magnet. A gay-guy magnet. What is it about
me? Aren’t gays supposed to be able to spot other gays easily?
Aren’t they supposed to have Gaydar™ and accurately detect
when another gay person flies into their airspace? If all that’s
true, then their skills are somehow rendered dysfunctional by my
presence.
When
I was a waiter, male customers would occasionally give me their
phone numbers. I’ve had male friends in college who I later
found out to be gay. That kind of thing makes you begin to question
all your male friendships.
I’ve
asked my wife: “What is it about me that makes gay men think
I would be interested in them? Is it the way I carry myself? My
haircut?”
“It's
because you walk with a lisp.”
Presumptuous
Potty-Mouths
Part I of the ‘Is It Me?’ series
When
I meet someone for the first time, or see someone I know that I
haven't seen in years, I am sometimes taken aback by how soon into
a conversation he or she decides it is okay to use vulgarities with
me.
Is
it a sign of disrespect? Is it arrogance? Are they just trying to
impress me? Is it a indication that they want to be my “chum”?
Whatever
the case, it is something I notice. Don’t ask me why. I’ve
experienced this with people of whom, at first blush, it would seem
to be a least likely behavior. In some cases, it comes from someone
that I perceived or remembered as being quite genteel. Perhaps I’m
not as skilled at sizing people up as I like to think I am. Is it
just my naïveté? [Or is it that I just like typing words
like naïveté so I have an opportunity to use
that funky ï or that accented é?]
For
example, I’ve experienced this with former classroom instructors,
on both high school and university levels. In every case, it has
struck me as odd, if not shocking.
Me:
Hey! Mrs. Jones [Not her real name]! How are you?
I haven't seen you in more than twenty years!
Mrs.
Jones:
Me:
It’s ME! Jim Hilston [my real name]. Remember?
12th grade social studies at Girard High School?
Mrs.
Jones: Ah -- yes, Jimmy Hilston! Of course, I remember
you. How are you?
Me:
Fine! How are you? Still teaching at GHS?
Mrs.
Jones: Sure am. I'll be retiring next year.
Me:
Retiring? Wow.
Mrs.
Jones: Well, look at you!.Jimmy Hilston, all grown up!
What the !@#$% is going on with you?
Inside
voice: Excuse me—did Mrs. Jones, my high school
social studies teacher, just say the word !@#$%!?
I
felt all the blood run out of my face.
This
is Mrs. Jones, right? She hasn’t seen me in more than
two decades and she just said !@#$% to me.
Mrs.
Jones: Jim?
Me:
Mrs.
Jones: Jim? You OK?
I just stood there, slack-jawed and dumbstruck, not hearing her
question. I put my hand up, averted my eyes and started backing
away.
Think
of Keanu Reeves as Neo in the Wachowski brothers’ film, “The
Matrix,” right before he vomits, after hearing the “white
room” explanation of the Matrix from Morpheus for the first
time.
Mrs.
Jones: Jim? What the !@#$%! is wrong with you?
Crikey!
She said it again! What the !@#$% is with Mrs. Jones? What’s
happened to her? How did she become such a potty mouth?
I
backed slowly away, unable to speak, eyes now clenched shut, trying
desperately to recapture the innocence of !@#$%!ing 12th grade.
I knocked over a deodorant display, turned around and kept going,
marching briskly out of the pharmacy and toward my car in the parking
lot, never looking back.
But
I digress. What was it that made Potty-Mouth Jones think it was
OK, not having spoken to me in twenty-plus years, to drop !@#$%ing
!@#$%-bombs on me, just three sentences into our conversation?
My
guess is she wanted to be chummy with a former student. With all
the hegemonic ACLU-policed mandates of political correctness that
have been built around the fragile minds of students today, she
probably felt more free and relaxed around a former student and
welcomed the opportunity to show that she isn’t really the
uptight and prudish persona that she conveys in the classroom.
Obviously,
not everyone who manifests this phenomenon is trying to be chummy
with a former student. So what is it about those other occasions
where such an explanation doesn't apply? Is it me? Do I invite potty-mouth
behavior? I've had salespeople and telemarketers use vulgarities
with me. Is there something about my personality that gives a person
the thumbs up on the gutter language? What about cashiers and customer
service people? They do it, too.
Here’s
one theory: It’s the chin. No, that’s not some
eastern mysticism creeping into my worldview. I mean “chin”,
as in, the bottom front corner of my skull, under my cake-hole.
I’m thinking the goatee may have something to do with it. This
is what I would like to think is going on in the mind of
presumptuous cusser:
Customer
service guy: Hey, look at this guy. He‘s got an unconventional
sort of hair growth on his chin. Clearly, he is not one of those
snobbish, uppity, conservative types who would get offended if I
dropped an !@#$%-bomb here or there. He'd probably think I was pretty
cool and drop a few himself. We'll make our own connection and give
the collective finger to the standard stuffed-shirt conventions
of customer service etiquette.
Of
course, the above scenario assumes that he gives a rip about impressing
someone so obviously cool as I am. But that’s probably not
a likely scenario. Here's what is really going on in the mind of
the presumptuous cusser:
Customer
service guy: Hey, look at this guy. A weasely push-over if
I ever saw one. Watch as I just casually drop an !@#$%-bomb or two
or three and this wuss won't say a !@#$%-ing thing about it.
Oh
yeah?!
OK, yeah, he's right. I won't say a thing about it, but I will
write about it in my blog. So there!
In
the western world they say, “The pen is mightier than the sword.”
But the samurai say, bunbu itchi, “Pen and sword in
accord.” I still need to work on that “sword” part.
So maybe there is some eastern mysticism creeping into my
worldview after all..
Who
Was The Proto-Pedophile?
Last
night I watched the premiere of the new television drama, "Medium."
The basic premise is that a thirty-something female law student
(Patricia Arquette) is able to see and communicate with the ghosts
of the dead, Sixth-Sense-style. This first episode was about a pedophile
who molested and killed a young boy.
In
the final confrontation, in the county jail, the "Medium" tells
the accused pedophile that she knows what he did and where he hid
the body. He is unfazed. She then tells him that she knows he was
also molested, and proceeds to tell him when, where and by whom.
Now
he's freaking out a little bit and yells for the guards to escort
him back to his cell. She begins pleading with him to listen to
her. She then says, “The man who molested you is here in this
room, right over there. So is the man who molested him back
in 1966. To the left of him is the man who molested him in
1955.”
The
moral of the story? Morality has nothing to do with it. No one is
really to blame. They're all victims of someone and do not have
to take personal responsibility for their own violence, evil and
sin. Thank you, Hollywood. As long as I have someone to blame for
my behavior, I don't have to be held fully accountable.
A
nagging question remains, however. Who was the proto-pedophile?
Who started it all? And does he get to take responsibility for all
those victims of victims of victims of victims who victimized other
victims? And if, being the progenitor of all subsequent pedophiles,
what is the explanation and source of his “original
sin”? Probably religion, right? And not just any religion,
but the religion ridiculed in movies like “The Butterfly Effect”
and “Saved.”
Pathology:
I Am Not Dead Yet
Here's
the diagnosis: I've got "non-alcoholic steatohepatitis,"
or NASH. I don't know what that really means or what the prognosis
for such a condition is.
I
will visit the specialist on Feb. 17, at which point I hope to get
more detailed information and suggestions for dealing with my condition.
In the meantime, thanks for reading this quasi-blog. All three of
you (Hi Sis).
