I’ve been carrying around a ball of angry frustration for over a week now, and it’s not exactly causing writer’s block but more like writer’s inarticulation. It is unlike me to take a direct route to the point, but it is equally unlike me to be unable to get there after some 3000 words. Which is what I clocked when I tried to write down what exactly was bothering me. And so I set it aside and decided to let it marinate a while.
So I’m trying again, here, because I need to set this down. It’s this huge thing, and has to do with conversational shorthand; the making over of oneself into a simple, palatable person. Bitten off with a smile and squeezed into a ball. It’s to do with how while I realize there are situations in which this is necessary, I find it … I don’t know, insulting when it is done amongst friends. It’s maybe to do with the desire to be accepted, and I understand this desire, but I don’t get this solution.
The older I get, the more specific I am, and the more I want to distance myself from anything that isn’t exactly precise in myself and others. I recognize that the task of defining oneself precisely can be exhausting to the point of boredom, and I don’t suggest that we all run around explaining every damn thing, but I think that pretending to be simple for the sake of avoiding complexity is a cheap trick.
It’s like: drawing a caricature of yourself in order to make yourself more easily identified by strangers that you’re only encountering briefly is one thing, but holding up this caricature for your friends seems more like either you think your friends are stupid or you think they’re not paying attention. I understand that this "nobody pays attention to me" thing is all part of the joy of self-deprecation but it’s insulting to me because believe me: I’m paying full price attention and I do not like finding myself in the cheap seats.
It’s not like this hasn’t bothered me before. I don’t know why I can’t even get close to where I want to say. Maybe some concrete examples. Okay: I’m tired of the idea that your kids are a burden. First because it is not remotely novelty: kids are a lot of work. Second because if you did not want them you should not have had them. Or: I am tired of the nudgey joking that your spouse is unbearable. Either you love the person, warts and all, or you married a giant wart, in which case you are a terrible judge of character, and complaining about the person you chose makes you look stupid. Or: I am tired of hearing how much you hate your boss because it is not that hard to format a resume and lick stamps. They even have peel off stamps now. Or, and this is maybe where I’m heading: the recurring announcement that you belong to whatever group you belong to, of parents or spouses or employees or women or whatever, and whatever your feelings about the fact that it’s part of who you are, when you start making it bigger than you are, you’re making a caricature of yourself when you could be making art.
I don’t mean it’s not okay to complain (or brag) sometimes, as long as you balance it. Sometimes your nose feels like it’s bigger than your whole face and it’s reasonable to talk about that feeling, as long as talking about it doesn’t make you start thinking it’s true. This is what we do, we talk it out or write it down and it becomes a little further away. We Erma Bombeck the hell out of what happened until we can laugh at the moment and at ourselves. I understand that articulating a problem is sometimes 50% to solving it; please, have you not heard me whine louder than an unoiled gate? The complaining is not the problem, Rodney Dangerfield. It’s the failure to go one inch beyond the caricature you’ve drawn around yourself.
I actually never really found Rodney Dangerfield funny. Gar, come on. Or okay wait, maybe I can work with this. The reason that Rodney Dangerfield wasn’t funny is that I knew it wasn’t true. I knew that he had kids, that he was married and probably genuinely loved his wife. He was complaining about them in order to be liked, and caricaturing parts of what might have been real to the detriment of things that were also equally real. This is why, when you start to define yourself in one way, as having one particular problem, as having one specific feeling, as belonging to one special group —if that one thing is less than the whole story, and especially if that one interpretation is less than real—it feels wrong to me. Because we’re not stand-up comedians and we’re not caricatures. And this isn’t funny. And it doesn’t look like you.
tuckova 
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