I can't keep crying. I can't change the collective hearts and minds of the people. We're talking about people who think that by not eating meat I'm putting on airs (whatever that means) -- people who view my food choices as a personal affront. Dial-up is the norm here because when people long for contact with the outside world it's because they think they're better than others. Being (or convincing others that you think you're) too good -- that's the real sin in the heartland. Here I thought it was listening to Bob Seger. There I go again.
I am too good for dudes with highly impressive moustaches and white cotton t-shirts under flannel covering "Down on Main Street," but only because they are not being intentionally ironic. What a shame. True irony is so hard to come by these days. I was at the Mermaid Parade in Coney Island a month or so ago when one of my compatriots pointed out that, in fact, drag queens dressed as cans of tuna are sexually ironic. Kudos, Owen.
I had this sense growing up that everyone hated me for being idealistic. Then I grew up and found out it was true, here anyway. I used to tell people to fuck off on the school bus when they picked on this kid Jeremy for having non-wrestling-related cauliflower ear. The wrestling variety would've been perfectly admirable -- proof that he wasn't an 11-year-old pussy. Really, it was probably proof that his dad beat him in the head every day, something I'd heard rumored at the time. Jeremy would grow up to steal his Christmas tree from my dad's field every year. I guess that makes him kind of a pussy, notwithstanding the mildly amusing manner in which my dad COMPLETELY flips out every time it happens.
The point is that I've never been one to sit by and watch while people behaved truly horribly toward one another. Because of it, I am loathed. I was once called a race traitor for saying "I want to go home now" when these backward, troglodytic hickfolk in Jackson carried on for more than 10 minutes about how black people run the world. I was 22, old enough to know better than to even try to assert any of the infinite flaws underlying and comprising this inspirationally ambitious hypothesis. Fuck it. I'll just go home. Of course I didn't drive. "You're not going anywhere, race traitor." Who SAYS that?
In order to survive, I have to let go a huge number of things that make my blood boil on a daily basis. Survive is actually a bit broad. I have to let go a huge number of things that make my blood boil on a daily basis just to preserve some semblance of a working relationship with my own family ... the family with whom circumstance saw fit to force me to live again. And we've come full circle. Perhaps this is simply a tirade on my self-dissatisfaction. I live with my parents. Whoa is me.
I guess I could just send them an e-card. Perhaps something in a sad, remorseful animated duckling holding a flower of truce? The message could read:
Dear Mom and Dad,
Sorry I let you down. In the future, I will try not to care about poor people.
Love,
Jodi
I looked for a picture of Bob Seger in flannel to include at the beginning of this post, but then I would owe you a remorseful duckling, and I think I'm in deep enough.
