Weird
At a happy hour on Tuesday, I was part of conversation in which a very drunk woman said, “…and so now I feel weird after tongue-kissing my boss because I just found out he’s married.”
As I left the bar, her friends remarked that the story was certainly odd, but it was simply amazing that she completely missed what was truly weird about the story. Who makes out with their boss? Who does this at work? Who the hell uses the term “tongue-kissing?” The most banal part of the story is that he’s married. What’s weird is that she somehow missed the fact her boss was married and yet got to the point of making out with him at work.
Weirdness is funny thing (by definition). We’re all weird in some way and if we weren’t, we’d be horribly boring. But there are two types of weirdness- the weirdness we know and the weirdness we don’t know.
Most of know that there are aspects of ourselves that don’t fit in with the rest of society. Maybe one has a mole or one really loves horseradish. Maybe one secretly has a thing for Australian aborigines. Whatever-the-case, we are usually aware that the rest of society does not share our trait. Even truly deranged Nazis, pedophiles and murderers are smart enough to know that they don’t fit in and hide their differences, usually in their basements.
But then there are people that somehow think that their difference is normal and go on with life completely unaware of it. There are those people who freely use racial slurs and somehow don’t notice everyone cringing. There are those people with exceptionally bad haircuts. Its not that they know and don’t care; its that they somehow don’t know.
Another story. I went to Valencia when I was 20 during a festival called Las Fallas. I hadn’t planned ahead very well and every hotel in the city was completely booked. Luckily, I befriended this guy Dante that was part of a group of Americans who were studying in Switzerland. They had a room and he said I could crash on the floor. He warned me of something first, though. He said, “I have to wake up early and catch a boat to Majorca. There’s a couple I’m staying with who are the cheapest human beings I’ve ever known. They are fucked-up human beings.”
So, after partying, I tried to sleep on the cold tile of the room Dante and this couple shared. After Dante left, I caught a few hours sleep in his bed. I awoke to the sound of the couple whispering about how much money they were going to ask me for. I could see that Dante had left 800 pesetas ($5.50) on the table as his share.
“So,” said the girl, “We really hooked you up, you know. We were thinking that you could pay 1600 pesetas for the room.”
“I’m going to pay what Dante paid.” I said. I put down 800 pesetas and promptly left without any goodbyes.
I met up with Dante a day later in Majorca and told him the story.
“Ha, we paid 2400 for the room. They wanted to pay nothing.” He shook his head and said “You know what the most harmful thing in the world is? When fucked-up people get together. A fucked-up individual by himself isn’t too dangerous. When he’s alone, he keeps those ideas to himself. You get two fucked-up people together and they start feeding off each other. They convince each other that somehow the way they live and the way they think isn’t fucked up.”
He was right. Freaks with freaks, assholes with assholes, Republicans with Republicans, fundamentalists with fundamentalists. They spend time with each other and they feed off each other until the weird becomes the status quo. Of course, weird is relative, so we are all doing this by hanging out with peers. Guys with mullets come from groups with mullets. Goths come from groups of Goths. Our friend who was making out with her boss must have been part of a group where that was normal.
Pedantic dilettantes come from groups of pedantic dilettantes.
As I left the bar, her friends remarked that the story was certainly odd, but it was simply amazing that she completely missed what was truly weird about the story. Who makes out with their boss? Who does this at work? Who the hell uses the term “tongue-kissing?” The most banal part of the story is that he’s married. What’s weird is that she somehow missed the fact her boss was married and yet got to the point of making out with him at work.
Weirdness is funny thing (by definition). We’re all weird in some way and if we weren’t, we’d be horribly boring. But there are two types of weirdness- the weirdness we know and the weirdness we don’t know.
Most of know that there are aspects of ourselves that don’t fit in with the rest of society. Maybe one has a mole or one really loves horseradish. Maybe one secretly has a thing for Australian aborigines. Whatever-the-case, we are usually aware that the rest of society does not share our trait. Even truly deranged Nazis, pedophiles and murderers are smart enough to know that they don’t fit in and hide their differences, usually in their basements.
But then there are people that somehow think that their difference is normal and go on with life completely unaware of it. There are those people who freely use racial slurs and somehow don’t notice everyone cringing. There are those people with exceptionally bad haircuts. Its not that they know and don’t care; its that they somehow don’t know.
Another story. I went to Valencia when I was 20 during a festival called Las Fallas. I hadn’t planned ahead very well and every hotel in the city was completely booked. Luckily, I befriended this guy Dante that was part of a group of Americans who were studying in Switzerland. They had a room and he said I could crash on the floor. He warned me of something first, though. He said, “I have to wake up early and catch a boat to Majorca. There’s a couple I’m staying with who are the cheapest human beings I’ve ever known. They are fucked-up human beings.”
So, after partying, I tried to sleep on the cold tile of the room Dante and this couple shared. After Dante left, I caught a few hours sleep in his bed. I awoke to the sound of the couple whispering about how much money they were going to ask me for. I could see that Dante had left 800 pesetas ($5.50) on the table as his share.
“So,” said the girl, “We really hooked you up, you know. We were thinking that you could pay 1600 pesetas for the room.”
“I’m going to pay what Dante paid.” I said. I put down 800 pesetas and promptly left without any goodbyes.
I met up with Dante a day later in Majorca and told him the story.
“Ha, we paid 2400 for the room. They wanted to pay nothing.” He shook his head and said “You know what the most harmful thing in the world is? When fucked-up people get together. A fucked-up individual by himself isn’t too dangerous. When he’s alone, he keeps those ideas to himself. You get two fucked-up people together and they start feeding off each other. They convince each other that somehow the way they live and the way they think isn’t fucked up.”
He was right. Freaks with freaks, assholes with assholes, Republicans with Republicans, fundamentalists with fundamentalists. They spend time with each other and they feed off each other until the weird becomes the status quo. Of course, weird is relative, so we are all doing this by hanging out with peers. Guys with mullets come from groups with mullets. Goths come from groups of Goths. Our friend who was making out with her boss must have been part of a group where that was normal.
Pedantic dilettantes come from groups of pedantic dilettantes.
posted by American Dilettante at
11:40 AM
1 Comments:
Years ago, an ex-girlfriend tried to make me jealous by informing me that she had had sex with her boss, 3 days before his wedding. She was pretty flattered that this good looking, rich older guy would include her on his checklist of "things to do before it's too late".
Weirdly enough, I was not overcome with the urge to try and win her back at that moment.
By
mizerock, at 2:29 PM
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