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Guilt

For as long as I’ve been doing this blog, the number-one question I am asked is as follows: “Pleas to be give me e-mail of Mr. Robert Kelly.” This relates to an entry, which apparently people are very excited or confused about. But that’s not really the issue.

The issue is this: I’ve received countless complaints from my fan about the distinct lack of entries that intrude upon my social life. “Come on,” they generally misspell, “if you don’t start letting us in, everyone will abandon your boring old site in favor of sites that are full of drunken debauchery, like the brilliant Tucker Max. Also, they’ll think you’re some androgynous, overweight, social misfit who still lives with his parents.”

I’m here to tell you, gentle reader, that nothing could be further from the truth. While I am an overweight social misfit who still lives with his parents, I am certainly not really all that androgynous. And I’m also not afraid of baring all — gone are the days in which I simply rambled incoherently about my classes and random girls on whom I form arbitrary social crushes because I’m so verbally crippled that I can’t go out and meet women on my own. Now, and forever more, or at least for this one entry, I’ll divulge all the dirty laundry I’ve kept hidden in a hamper of pain.

For once, by God, Stan will have a real issue.

After that tremendous build-up, I’m not sure I can follow up with anything genuinely interesting. But dammit, something’s on my mind, and I’d like to reach out to the many fellow bloggers who read my site and think to themselves, “Huh. My site design is better than this guy’s.” I’m gonna give it my all — all seventy percent! — and see what I can do.

So here’s the sitch (see, I use slang that was invented within the last two decades when I’m more open): I had dinner with some friends from high school last night. We were having what I’d like to think was a good time. The dinner went well, and then afterward, everything went to hell. Yeah, you guessed right: it was all my fault.

At this point, I would like to keep the anonymity of those involved, mostly because if I named names, they would deny any association with me faster than you can say “HUAC” (which is a relatively easy acronym, so you understand the great speed involved with their denials). With that said, it’s time to invent some clever and cloying fake names. I’ll keep it real, and we’ll say one of them is named John, and the other is Lucy.

So, after dinner, John was supposed to go to the mall with Lucy so he could follow her around while she went clothes shopping and then they could go a-drinkin’. I was bored, so I volunteered to join them, which I probably shouldn’t have done. I don’t really have a lot of foresight, though, and it did seem like a good idea at the time.

We went to one of those irritating women’s clothing stores that play obnoxious music and have bare-midriffed 14-year-olds talking at you with mild, adorable lisps. John decided to urinate to make room for the eventual consumption of more important liquids, so he disappeared and I was left, bored, following Lucy around and making fun of the various articles of clothing that people seem to think is stylish. (Should I talk? My wardrobe consists of faux-Hawaiian shirts that I get off the rack at Target for $8.)

Then, I said something really, unbearably stupid. It was one of those things that you say, and as it’s leaving your lips, your brain starts shouting at you, “STOP, YOU FOOL! FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT’S HOLY!” But it’s too late. The sentence is out, and suddenly you’re looking at The Look. You know The Look. It’s that one women have, and they wield it very carefully. They only give you The Look when you’ve really, possibly irredeemably, fucked up.

Needless to say, I’ve gotten The Look a lot in my time. I consider myself fortunate that she didn’t have a mai tai handy, or I’d probably still be washing rum and triple sec out of my eyes. (Note to writers: if you don’t drink, it’s always a good idea to attend a four-hour bartending/drink-mixing seminar so you can put in little details like that.)

What did I say to get The Look? It was a fairly simple and horrible exchange. Lucy was browsing through a variety of blouses she seemed to like, and she said, “Dammit, they don’t have any small or extra-smalls.”

To which I pithily and stupidly responded, “Well, that’s a good thing. You’ll probably need to go up a size, what with all that weight you’ve gained.”

It was around the word “you’ve” when my brain finally caught up with my mouth, and a mental “WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING?” ricocheted around my fairly echoey skull chamber. I find it ironic that the part of my body that technically does all my thinking was asleep on the job, and as soon as it woke up, it immediately blamed itself. It’s like an M.C. Escher drawing, except this will probably cause my brain to implode at some point.

But that’s really the question that continues to bounce through my head: what the fuck was I thinking? I broke the cardinal rule of talking to women: never, ever, ever joke about weight, even in the jestiest jest of Jest Town. Just don’t do it.

In fact, don’t even bring up weight. Pretend people are massless and are not in any way bound to the earth’s graviational force. Women are just floating, bobbing heads who often have admirable body parts that only exist momentarily when it’s necessary for the male.

These are things I know. I learned them mostly the hard way, as I was ducking and covering my eyes to avoid various breakable dishware, and therefore I should know better. At one point, I had trained myself — or, more accurately, had been trained — to know better. But I’m slipping. It’s been nearly nine months since the last time I’ve had a non-liquid thrown at my head by a woman, and I guess I’m out of practice.

But that’s not really it. I have many female friends who, like Lucy, won’t give me the time of day (with good reason). But with every single other person I know, I can treat them like a civilized human being. My mental censor does not fall asleep; it’s always on red alert, screening the various things I think but should never say and making sure I don’t, in fact, say them. With other women, I’m pleasant almost to the point of utter disinterest.

So, what makes Lucy different? That’s what I’m trying to figure out. I haven’t apologized yet — well, I haven’t formally apologized yet. I apologized approximately 800 times between The Look and us parting ways. But, come on, like that’s gonna do any good. I said what I said, and Lucy not accepting my apology is pretty much par for the course, especially when it’s basically a half-hearted, “Gosh, I’m sorry I said that.” That doesn’t even indicate that I’m sorry for hurting her feelings and wounding her self-esteem or body image or what have you — for all she knows, I’m just sorry my dumbass mouth doesn’t work.

But how am I supposed to decently apologize when I can’t even figure out what possessed me to say what I did? Being that I’ve gained 22 pounds since November, and I was never quite the looker (or quite thin) to begin with, who am I to insinuate anything about anybody else’s weight? What right do I have to say a single word about somebody else’s physical appearance, even in jest? I mean, if I joke about it, I just open the floodgates for thousands of jokes about myself that are most likely funnier and more biting.

And I certainly didn’t mean it. I maintain, whether she’d ever believe me or not (she probably wouldn’t) that she’s one of the most attractive women I know. But that probably has something to do with it. I get irritable around her and no one else, and I say really hostile things under the guise of humor, and it probably has to do with the fact that, in the words of Lester Flatt, she don’t pay me no mind.

To her, I’m a big, fat, neurotic loser. This is mostly accurate, so it’s not like I can fault her perception. But it doesn’t stop that bitterness from forming, and it obviously doesn’t stop me from saying stupid shit I don’t really mean (yeah, I’m bitter, but that doesn’t make it true). And yeah, maybe the way I feel about her is a bit deeper — and therefore more volatile — than I’m willing to let on. Maybe that’s why, on the few occasions she’s gotten under my skin, I’ve found myself able to forgive her almost instantaneously.

Ugh. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing anymore. But this rant has helped, I guess. I have a better idea of what’s wrong with me now than I did last night, when I drove around for an hour, seething at the depths of my own stupidity. Maybe now I can apologize and really mean it. It’s a start, anyway.

On a more positive note, I think I just single-handedly increased the emo factor of this blog fiftyfold. That means my dexterity increases by two, and if I roll 11, I finally get the mythril chainmail I so desperately desire.

(Also, this is not, contrary to my introduction, going to become a regular thing. I just needed to vent and I figured, just this once, I’d spare Gina the torture.)

Tags: anger, clothes, comments, fun, guilt, high school friends, issues, R. Kelly, shopping, weight gain

Posted by Stan on July 29, 2003 8:21 PM  | Permalink | Stories of Pain and Humiliation | Digg It