May 19, 2004
Velocimisogynist
I'm going to cop to a sinful pleasure. I have so few in life I trust you will not begrudge me this one. Kelley's post on trooping to a new job in college after being pole-axed by a Bradford Pear tree triggered it, but I must declare at the outset I am in NO WAY conflating this terrible mishap with my guilty sin. You will understand.
I enjoy it when a haughty girl experiences pain. Wait. Hear me out. I enjoy it when anyone experiences pain, but it's not joy enjoyment. It's There but for the Grace of Allah enjoyment. Schadenfreude. And if you don't you're a damnable liar. But I'm not talking about seeing a decent person, a friend, get hurt. That's sick, and you should rebury those thoughts you mistakenly thought I was eliciting right now, you sick fuck. Let me explain by way of example:
St. Patrick's Day, Savannah, 1978. I am downtown heading for River Street with The Later To Be Bride and a friend of hers, M. We are very young, but it is 9 am on St. Patrick's Day in Savannah, so we are already drinking.
M is fine. Very fine, but I won't dwell on that. She is also a stuck up bitch, and eager to go place the hearts of several beaux in the already piss-soaked Port-a-Lets, out of unbridled vanity and malice. I have no problem with this, because I am a disinterested party.
M is wearing a tank top and tight white jeans, which barely encase her fine firm ass. But I am a disinterested party. So, just as we cross Broughton Street M lands her heel in a sewer grate, and plunges into the muddy filth the prior night's rain has left behind. Here is where it gets good. M is not hurt, but her white pants are a disgusting mess on one side, and the biggest social day of the year has just begun.
Well, actually, she was hurt. That's the beauty. Seeing a vain, proud woman brought low by pedestrian (no pun intended) short term pain. All the barriers drop. All the mincing snobbishness is forgotten in an instant. "Fuck!Shit!Goddam! OWWWW!"
Music to your boy's ears. I helped her up, and we continued, but her day, and game was ruined, and I later peeled off to seek psychedelic enlightenment with the boys. Who needs to hang with a muddy chick?
See, the whole point is not misogyny, or callow amusement at another's misfortune. It's the hard, base thrill, that shiver, that runs up your back when you see Karma dispensed to the deserving. Physical pain? Sucks, but I've felt infinitely worse over the death of a puppy than a root canal. Of course, the vet doesn't dope me up when he puts my pet down, but the metaphor obtains, I think. The gem is seeing how the pampered deal with it. [Fuck!Shit!Goddam!OWWWW!]
Consider: seeing someone break off a nail about 3 centimeters below the quick is a defining moment. Stoic, or crybaby? Pain hurts, of course, and it sucks, but it is what it is.
What it is is how one handles quick and sudden adversity. Okay, it's also about humiliation. And, yes, I take a vicarious thrill in that.
I'm going to Hell for this post, aren't I? I imagine a special grotto in Hades, wherein I am strapped to a smouldering boulder and demons dressed as Dynasty and Falcon Crest doyennes abuse me with rigor and purposeful intent.
Forever.
All because I couldn't quite explain myself, but was determined to spill my guts anyway. Karma dispensed, indeed.