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It is difficult, being a moral paragon. When my friends invite me to go out to a spot of a certain marketing specialist-cum-restauranteur, I have to nip that particular Grey Gardens bud before it blooms, as it were. It's for their own protection. If they'll fall for that nihilistic old truism that "vibes increase the perceived value" and pay more to sit next to the retro 90's miami-chic flamingo mural while eating, they'll fall for anything. If they are with her in the belief she intimates that taking pot-shots from the comfort of your 2nd husband's money is the same as being a strong woman then, I'm sorry to say, it is kindest just to put them out of their misery. Sure, I want to "just be present with you", but I can sniff out when, over glasses of Special Selection BIODYNAMIC wine, the genuine humanity of the conversation has been overwhelmed by the therapy speak embedded in the substrate and drawn up by the cold of my presence.

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trying to suck iron from a stone

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The young Woman In STEM said she wanted to get ahead on organizing her presentation because what if she got hit by a car and had to recover? What if she got bacterial meningitis? (her choice of peril, not mine) At least she'd have something to present. I said, "at that point, wouldn't you have bigger things to worry about?" The old Woman In STEM said, "she's dedicated!" beaming with pride. Also beaming, but with self-satisfaction, the young one bent my ear about yet another Woman In STEM she admires who gave a lecture over Zoom in a hospital while she was there for a loved one. Apparently the hospital staff could be heard in the background telling her she was making a nuisance of herself (and I suspect, filming herself somewhere where sensitive medical information might be seen or heard, but this is only my inference of course, it would not be implied by an admirer) - and the lecturer huffed and pleaded to be able to continue. "She's dedicated!" The old one told me about another old one apologizing for the noise around her as she gave a presentation from a hospital bed after having a heart attack. "She's dedicated!"

I suppose they've shown me so. However I'm not really sure of the why, or what it is that's so important. In my mind, this isn't hard work it's monumental self-involvement, insecurity. Like when you play peekaboo with a child, these people are truly afraid they will disappear if no one is looking at them. And if they stop being productive no one will look at them. If they stop, no one will remember to pay them attention. "Better to do something poorly than not at all!" makes me feel ill. It isn't a mantra of private practice, it's a mantra that excuses mediocrity in the public eye. You don't need an excuse to suck in private, but you need an excuse to subject people to your pointless shit when you never intend to improve. When you don't want feedback.

When really, it's the least you can do. To just give the lecture regardless of if you are conveying information at all. Regardless of how distracting your environment is, how much the stress of your situation is preventing you from being clear - from getting your point across. If you didn't just half-ass it now you might be forced to do it later. You might be forced to come up with an alternative way to convey information that would be better in this scenario. So that the people you're talking to learned something or got some information. So that the whole thing isn't a self-congratulatory exercise in futility. You care, you're dedicated. It's obvious by the self-immolation and not by the content of your work.

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At an event in the casino auditorium on the First Nations Indian Reserve I heard Marx quoted by a 3 million dollar (of public funding) baby, Churchill quoted by the president in purchased beads, and Mandela quoted by a man who promised a life sentence with a smile. The cute, young graduate among them threw scare quotes around her own definition of utopia.

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This is how you do it, it must be this way and no other, regardless of what you might think it is the truth, I know because I'm Type A and the A stands for Absolute, I know because I have a Dismissive-Avoidant attachment style and that means I am unemotional enough to be perfectly rational, I know because my MBTI category is INTP and so was Einstein, I know because I have passed through to the Genital Stage and so fuck you and not just myself

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Just remembered that I am no longer fictional. Feeling blessed. I escaped the tale. Hashtag, my tale.

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I should become a new person

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As long as you read the code on the back of the Apple gift card your online boyfriend is fine doing rp on whatsapp as the sub to your awkward, burgeoning dominatrix fantasy power-play because the employment broker from Shenzen took his passport when he got to the block of newly-built apartments just outside of Dubai. He sits shoulder-to-shoulder with his coworkers. Beads of sweat roll down his chest as he types.

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Miriam Stone, the psychologists' daughter, takes her compulsive action as a point of pride. "When someone asks me to do something I just can't say no!" Self-effacing tone proven insincere by a glance in your direction from under her eyelashes. In the parking lot outside some building, adjacent to where the action will surely begin, you stifle a yawn. The next thing is coming up in a bit, the downtime is a moment to prepare.

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what happened to the fucking noblesse oblige

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Once, when I was younger I made a young man red-in-the-face, tears-in-the-eyes angry because I characterized Green Day as "pop punk". He wanted to argue with me about it. I thought my statement had been an unassailable fact but I also like to argue. We got loud in the mall downtown. Now he lives in a house in a little rural town, works for his wife's father, and has traded his Funko Pops for pure-bred dogs. I wonder if he also feels his life has been a strange, regressive continuum from (what was then) ultra-modern to what is essentially like the turn of the century nouveau-riche elite.

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I had a dream that I was following the manager of a bank to the back office to pick up a letter with a cheque or something but the back office was through this labyrinth of concrete foundation and pipes all painted in that sticky white paint commercial buildings have. I had to keep squeezing past pointless juts and crawling through little openings. At first I was doing it because the manager was also doing it, but then I felt this intense, overwhelming dread. There was not enough room for me to move my arms from my side. I was almost at the office, I somehow saw the back of a woman in a polo shirt sitting at a desk. But to get there I would have to lie on the poured concrete floor on my back and pull myself in. I stopped here, and I said, "this hallway is insane, what if there's a fire? Can you just bring me the letter? I'm going to wait upstairs." The manager and the woman laughed dismissively and told me everything was fine and they come through the hallway multiple times a day, everyday. I crawled back out and never got the letter because the bank manager got too busy.

Not to scry too hard with the mirror of the unconscious mind, but tell me money and work hasn't left me feeling trapped and disempowered.

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Bad day to be a Deer Mouse.

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A vignette: my downstairs neighbour is in the backyard painting the patio swing that came with the apartment. She has the bucket of white paint on the swinging part where you sit. I'm doing work upstairs lording over her and salivating and rubbing my hands together with anticipatory glee.

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Born for indentured servitude forced to Grapple with Questions