Slag

Sometimes I get the feel­ing that people just don’t read me right… or maybe I don’t read them. It seems to me that people feel okay saying incred­i­bly rude things to me – things that they don’t expect to come out as rude, how­ever when it hap­pens they seem com­pletely sur­prised by their choice of words. I don’t get it.

For exam­ple, when I was work­ing at an inter­net ser­vices firm last year, upon shak­ing a client’s hand, he remarked some­thing like “Jesus, what are you, still in col­lege? This looks like the B-team. You look 18.” To which his part­ner remarked, “more like 14, Jim”. Nice to meet you two, I’ll be the person you’ll be speak­ing with on a daily basis for the next 4 months. I mean, I was wear­ing an expen­sive brand-​name suit and I even parted my hair which is some­thing I never ever do. I thought I looked the part.

Now, this week­end, I finally met Kate, some­one I’ve known online from time to time. She was vis­it­ing from dc with her sister, so pres, danno and I met them for coffee. The whole thing was weird before we even got there for rea­sons that I really don’t want to get into. And so we met, and sat and pro­ceeded to chat for about an hour. Now, admit­tedly I was a bit with­drawn mostly due to my mood ear­lier that day and to those unmen­tion­able fac­tors, so I was quite happy lis­ten­ing to the two of them carry on – they were very enter­tain­ing and I remem­ber think­ing that it felt good to finally put this inter­net friend into real time and space – it felt very good.

And then, some­where near the end when we were wrap­ping every­thing up, Kate summed me up with one word: poser. or poseur, as I’m sure she’d put it. I don’t remem­ber how it hap­pened – but I’m sure that I reacted badly. It hurt. It was one of those stupid things that I’m sure she wishes she hadn’t let slip out.

And so another slag has been added to my psyche. I think my girl­friend sees my reac­tion to inci­dents like this as para­noid and noth­ing more, but maybe that’s her job to be unre­lent­ingly supportive… I don’t think it would do much good if she agreed with me. Still, I’d be dead-​surprised if some­one that she knew were to tell her unso­licited that she’s a poser, or some­thing equally as low. It just isn’t done. I’m the most judg­men­tal person on the planet, and I can’t imag­ine saying such a thing in a semi-​serious tone. Yet, I must give off some kind of vibe that screams “tell me what you really think of me…”

What to make of it? The answer that always quiets my mind is to say fuck it. I can’t waste my time wor­ry­ing about it, whether it’s true or not. I’ll have to give people the ben­e­fit of the doubt.