ice 5.31.02

“I've had this feeling ever since I graduated. This kind of compulsion that I have to be rude all the time...It's like I was playing some kind of game, but the rules don't make any sense to me. They're being made up by all the wrong people. I mean no one makes them up. They seem to make themselves up.”
-Benjamin Braddock, The Graduate

Last night, I went to a club in Fremont with Layne and Marjorie. As I stood there on the fringes of the dance floor, sipping an amaretto sour, I watched people draw attention to themselves like well-lit billboards. A waif-like Latin girl wandered through the crowd with a T-shirt the read: “JUST LOVE ME, DAMMIT!” I gave her hug and told her that she had moxie. When she walked away, I realized that everyone else I met that night should have worn the same thing. It’s unfortuante that pride is so often mistaken for pleather skirts and poor attitudes. I mentioned this to Layne. He told me that before we dated he thought I was chilly, which I guess both put him off and attracted him. “Good,” I replied. Then he leaned over to whisper in my ear: “But now I get it… you’re not cold at all... you just take the game way too seriously.”

Say the word “nice” out loud. It feels cheap, sterile, watered-down. It’s a word that you wish had a more potent syllable to give it some backbone. As a character trait, “being nice” is a virtue, yet it contradicts the things we would all like to be... a person of depth, persistence, conviction. When you’re a child, the most powerful thing you can hear is no. Hear it enough times and the negation can take over to the point where life is completely inaccessible. Being on a pedestal is not all it's cracked up to be. Get high enough above the ground and all you see are clouds. It's a lonesome place to be. Funny how much harder it is to get back down.