Wednesday, 27 August 2008

• Currently Reading The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists By Neil Strauss see related

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  There is a popular feel-good saying that goes, “Dance as if nobody is watching.”  I generally agree with the sentiments of liberation and un-inhibition expressed by this phrase.  Of course, I don’t take this expression literally.  I’m not a dancer.  But, I do like to sing, and I mostly like to sing in my car when nobody is watching.  This is probably why the person in the Ford Taurus next to me was laughing at me while we were stuck in gridlock on the freeway today because seeing a spectacled geek singing passionately to rock music is always amusing.  I was listening to Weezer’s new album Weezer (fyi:  it’s red).  It is currently occupying slot #5 in my car CD player, and I have no problems playing songs like Pork and Beans loudly with my windows rolled down on a hot summer day while motoring down the Hollywood freeway.  Weezer makes music which I generally like, despite the fact that I can’t stand Rivers Cuomo.  Don’t get me wrong.  He’s not a bad guy at all.  I like his fashion sense.  I like his brand of music.  I like his overall demeanor.  And I know that if he and I were to ever hang out at Barney’s Beanery or any other quasi-cool spot in the Southland, we would probably get along blissfully.  He’s probably a great human being, but there is no doubt in my mind that I hate that asshole.  If the Weezer is supposed to be the epitome of geek-rock, and if Rivers Cuomo is supposed to be the lead singer of the Weezer, then I suppose Rivers Cuomo should be the epitome of geekdom.  But therein lies the paradox.  He’s not a geek at all.  He’s one of the coolest dudes in rock-n-roll.  He will never get sand kicked in his face by a musclebound beefcake at Venice beach, and he’ll never get rejected by ridiculously gorgeous supermodels hanging out at The Standard.  He can go wherever he wants to go and do whatever he wants to do (and do whomever he wants to do, too) without any consequences.  I’m not buying his mild-mannered shtick.  He makes veritable geeks like myself feel more crummy about our lives, because no matter how hard we try, we will never be cool.  If a geek like me were to become “cool,” then he would no longer be a geek.  Only rock stars (or famous people, in general) can be “cool geeks,” and I resent them for that.  I have the same feelings for nerdcore rock/hiphop group N.E.R.D.  They’re fantastic musicians, but I undoubtedly secretly despise Chad Hugo.  I probably hate Woody Allen, too, for similar reasons.

  If being a dweeb is part of Rivers Cuomo’s art, and if life is supposed to imitate art, then I guess a geek like me should aspire to be a rock star.  Being at least moderately famous appears to be the only way that geeks could be considered socially tolerable.  Ostensibly, I’m a dweeb, and this is manifested in my utter lack of social skills.  Furthermore, I am so socially retarded that I’m completely oblivious to the extent of it.  I was made aware of my social ineptitude last month when it reached its pinnacle at a Starbucks store in Los Angeles.  I had been going to this particular store every work day for several months, and it wasn’t until recently that I started talking to the employees.  There was one employee in particular, Stephanie, who I conversed with more than the others and who, coincidentally, I was mildly attracted to.  I had never outright flirted with her, mostly because I don’t know how to do stuff like that.  So, all of our conversations were short, casual, and usually about coffee (and occasionally passion fruit iced tea).  Because I was a frequent customer, I was always under the impression that there was nothing significant about any of our interactions. 

  One fateful day last month I walked into the store and ordered as usual.  Stephanie was working the bar but didn’t greet me with her usual exuberance.  Instead, as she handed me my drink she looked me straight in the eyes and said with extreme earnest, “Shane, I just want to make something very clear to you.  I’m only going to say this once because I don’t ever want to bring it up ever again.  Over the past couple of days I’ve been getting the impression that you’ve been trying to come on to me.  I just wanted to let you know that I’m not sending you any signals like that at all.”

  The emotive impact of these words cannot be understated.  I felt as if Stephanie had just hijacked my heart and was executing a pre-meditated terrorist attack on my dignity for everyone to see.  I looked to the middle-aged female customer to my immediate right and she looked as if she had just seen a ghost.  I looked to the rotund male customer to my immediate left and he looked as if he just seen the murder of a hundred innocent (handicapped) children.  I looked around the entire store and it seemed as if everyone had stopped to witness the worst act of terrorism to ever occur on San Fernando Valley soil.

  I looked back to Stephanie bin Laden and she continued with her assault.  “I mean.  I have a boyfriend.  So, there’s no way that there is anything between us.”  The second plane hit the second tower.

  I’m not sure if things like this happen to real people in real life.  This kind of stuff should only happen to fictional characters in Ben Stiller movies or CW television dramas.  I’m clearly not a real person because real people don’t get publicly castrated at their neighborhood coffee vendor, or at least they don’t deserve to be.  Now, I’ve had some embarrassing moments in my life.  I crapped my pants in kindergarten.  I cried in the middle of The Karate Kid Part II (and that was just last week).  I had sex with a woman with a massive unibrow.  However, these were things that I could have actively avoided and prepared for and, therefore, they were partially (or wholly, I suppose) my fault.  Nothing could have prepared me for Stephanie’s blindsided kamikaze air raid.  So, I did the most graceful thing a man could do in the face of adversity:  I lied like a dog.  I told her that she “got it all wrong,” and that it “wasn’t like that at all.”  Additionally, I told her that I knew she had a boyfriend because I’ve seen him at the store many times (this was true).  She responded with, “Oh, okay,” and I left my dignity on the floor and fled Ground Zero.

  I don’t suppose that public degradation is a pleasant experience for anyone, and I’m not convinced that I handled the situation appropriately (I feel pretty wretched for lying to her).  I’ve replayed this incident in my head every day since it happened, and I’ve reached two conclusions as to why Stephanie behaved the way that she did.  The paranoid explanation is that she has been intercepting my wi-fi internet connection while I’m at Starbucks and has been reading my IM conversations with my friends about her.  This scenario is highly unlikely, as Stephanie doesn’t seem capable of performing such a despicable act.  The fact that I had IM conversations about her might classify me as “creepy,” but if she was reading those conversations that would make her fundamentally immoral.  If this situation were true, then she should die of gonorrhea and rot in hell.  The other and more likely explanation is that I was, indeed, obviously flirting with her but I was completely unaware of it.  Because I am a social moron, this is probably the most plausible scenario.

  After that day I kind of felt like Fred Durst in that nothing good can ever come from anything I say.  So, I decided to shut the fuck up for the rest of my life.  I stopped writing, quit blogging, and refused to talk to anyone who was not a friend or family member.  People may think that I overreacted to an insignificant incident of public humiliation, and as time goes on I’ll probably realize that these people may be right.  However, I’m the type of loser who is incapable of rational emotive reactions when dealing with matters of the heart.  As petty as it may sound, this has everything to do with being unceremoniously dumped by someone I love (Sarah) three years ago.  That event planted a virus in my psyche that has plagued my social development for the past three years.  My relationship outlook is this:  I will never be with anyone that I care for, and the ones that care for me I will never want to be with.  And even if ten or twenty or thirty years from now the girl of my dreams, Sarah, walks back into my life, I can only hope that I will be honorable enough to tell her, “No thanks, I’m married.”

  Despite my attraction to Stephanie, I never intended to pursue anything more than an employee-customer relationship with her.  But, as a despondent individual, my life is chronicled by episodes of transient happiness.  My friend John was enthusiastic that I experienced this because he felt that it showed that my feelings were capable of moving on from Sarah.  My other friend Paco said that the events in my life play out like consecutive scenes in a Hollywood movie and I should take pride in the fact that my life is exhilarating.  I don’t understand how excitement can be found in mortification.  I don’t understand my friends, but they’re probably right.  Stephanie made me happy for a little bit, even though it ended in a spectacular disaster on a Saturday morning over an espresso machine.  Perhaps I should be happy about things that I know I should hate, which kind of  describes my feelings about liking music by Daughtry.

  I have, evidently, gotten over myself because I am liberally writing again and am now 1500 words into this post.  This effectively means that all the stupid people and fair-weather subscribers have stopped reading.  (I employed a conniving literary technique called “Writing A Lot” that dissuades dumb people from reading and leaving comments.)  If you are reading this, then you are one of the following:  (a) a critical thinker (or you purport to be one), (b) pathologically obsessed with me, (c) bored, or (d) death_by_chocolat.  But most importantly, if you’re reading this then you must have inexplicably invested some thought into my existence.  For reasons that I will never understand, you have taken some sort of interest in a dork like me.  So, you might be delighted that this social outcast is back and he’s writing mad. I’m not socially acceptable.  I’m not socially comfortable.  I’m not cool.  I’m not a rock star.  I’m just a geek, but I’ma do the things that I wanna do and eat my candy with my pork and beans, anyway.  What’s past is prelude.  I’ll sing as if no one is listening.  I’ll live as if I’ll die tomorrow.  I’ll dream as if I’ll live forever.

  And I’ll blog as if no one is sniffing out my wi-fi signal.

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