I've been in fandom a long damn time. Probably longer than is acceptable. So I've read my share of Mary Sue stories. Mary Sues don't always follow a specific pattern but there are certain traits that writers tend to gravitate towards. They're things the (often very young) Suethors wish they had. Here's the thing. Not all of them are all that great. Some of them really suck. And I can tell you that from experience. So here's a list of traits that frequently pop up in Mary Sue stories that I also happen to have and know for a fact are not nearly as cool as people think they are.
1. Big Boobs. I used to be a D-cup from a combination of my birth control and being overweight with a very high body fat content. A lot of women have a D-cup, but on me it was fairly oversize because I'm not otherwise terribly big. I also know a lot of women with variously enormous gazongas. Some of them have needed surgery to reduce their breast size because it causes back and shoulder problems. No, seriously, it does. It's unbelievably painful. It's like walking around with twenty extra pounds or more hanging off your chest that you can never ever put down. Also, your tops have to all be way big because you need to accommodate your boobs and your bras are, of necessity, built like bridge trusses and have no consideration for aesthetics. Big boobs are nice, I guess, and sometimes I miss having a D-cup but I really like being able to buy tops that actually fit the rest of my body, and being able to have a conversation with people without them conspicuously not looking at my face.
2. Really Long Hair. Actually having superlong hair is quite nice. I wish I still had it. Mine used to be down to my thighs before I cut it up to my lower back and sold the thirteen inches I chopped for wig hair. (It was gas money.) Really long hair is low-maintenance and doesn't require much care. No, really, it doesn't. But Mary Sues tend to have superlong hair that their writers very clearly have no idea how to take care of. Hair that long can't be worn down very often. Braids and buns are your default hairstyles. You can't put hair that long in a ponytail and leave it. You shed all the time. Drying takes time. People bug you about donating or cutting it or ask you if you're a member of a cult. And you suffer from an unfortunate phenomena known in the long-haired community as 'butt floss'. I'll let you decide exactly what that means. It is precisely as bad as it sounds.
3. Clumsiness. You see this a lot because Sue writers feel that they should get points for making their characters have some flaw. But it's a superficial one. And clumsiness is usually the only 'fault'. Especially in the 'Twilight' series and everything that came after. Bella is so adorable-clumsy, she falls on everything!! Look, I am clumsy. I am the only person I know who can trip and fall walking across a perfectly clean and empty kitchen. Stairs are my enemy--I've gotten so bad around them that sometimes I get really nervous about climbing or descending and fall anyway because I've started to get all shaky. I've never met another person who can trip without even walking anywhere. This is not fun. It is not cute. I have learned to laugh at myself but it still embarrasses me when I fall off a step and have to grab for dear life to the guy in front of me and cling to him like a baby lemur and we haven't even technically met. This happens a lot. I wish it didn't. It doesn't make me look cute, it makes me look kind of pathetic.
4. Big Butts. I fucking hate my ass. Everyone else loves it but having a huge butt presents the same problems as having huge boobs, but lower down. My pants all have to be way too big in the waist and way too long to accommodate my ass. People stop and stare. Guys think they are being suave by telling me I have a 'badonkadonk'. People feel the need to quote 'Baby Got Back' at me. Any skirt I wear will be conspicuously shorter in the back because it has to climb over the tremendous mountainous summit of my ass and unless I pull it up higher in the front, the hem is three inches lower in the front than in the back. I am horribly self-conscious about it. Also, because it's so big, it has dimples. I really, really hate having a big butt.
5. Weird Eye Colour. My eyes are green and yellow. No lie, no exaggeration, no flagrant misinterpretation of my natural pigmentation. My eyes are green and yellow. People think I have contacts. Most are disinclined to believe they are real.
6. Low Self-Esteem. Mary Sues, despite being perfect, tend to have shitty self-images. This makes them cute and less perfect. And everyone reassures them. But it doesn't work this way. When you have low self-esteem, you will do anything anyone asks you in hopes they will accept you. You hate yourself unconditionally, which makes you extremely depressed and self-critical in ways that pretty well just cripple you.
7. Past Abuse. No. Just.... no. This is awful and in no way an attribute. My abuse wasn't even all that bad and it still basically destroyed me. I have no idea how to act like a person. I don't know how to control myself, or my temper, when I get angry because nobody around me ever did. I am myself predisposed to abusive tendencies and have to carefully watch myself. Believe me, this is a really shitty thing to put in your story and unless you handle it really maturely and sensitively, you are going to seriously upset some people because of the way you've written a very painful aspect of their reality.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Monday, March 26, 2012
In Translation
Here's what is potentially the most bizarre thing about me.
I can speak and understand exactly one language: English. My first and only tongue. It is not for lack of trying, you understand. I spent four years taking Spanish and three taking French and all I can remember from either language is how to say, 'I can't speak Spanish/French, does anybody here speak English?', 'Where is the bathroom?', and 'I'm not American, I'm Canadian.' (Because I gotta cover my butt when I leave the country, I don't want to get spit on by Europeans.) Spanish is spoken far too rapidly for me to really understand it and French is so ambiguous in its pronunciations and constant streams of vowels that it mostly seems to depend on accents and context rather than, you know, actual words.
I can only write one language. English.
But.
I can read five.
I can read English, naturally, but I can also read French and Spanish. And I can do so at a reasonably functional level. I might not be able to stop and ask for directions in the heart of Madrid or Amboise, but I could read some directions from Google Maps in the local tongue. I can read children's books and simple papers and written messages in both languages even though I have less than no grasp of their spoken words. To a lesser extent, I can also read a bit of German and some Italian, mostly because my parents speak German and Italian is like French and Spanish's half-cousin.
But I'm not wired to be able to really grasp another language. It's probably because I never began to learn until I was way too old--the way American schools mostly work (unless they have a language program, which is exclusively confined to private schools with programs in other countries) is that foreign languages aren't touched on at all until at the earliest middle school, and sometimes high school. At any rate, the earliest most schools are going to offer a foreign language class is when the students are eleven or twelve, a time at which neurologists and sociologists believe that the brain has lost its ability to easily pick up a new language. It is believed that the reason babies pick up languages so easily when they're babies is because, when their brains are still developing (which continues many years after birth--your brain doesn't actually stop developing completely until you are in your twenties and sometimes close to thirty), the brain is actually wired and programmed to learn language. Nobody is quite sure how or why, and theories abound and are wildly variant, but it does rather appear that human beings are born pre-wired for language and inherently understand and grasp the concepts of whatever language (or languages) they are brought up around.
You don't retain this ability forever, though. Since the experiment involved in getting academically and scientifically viable results is absolutely forbidden (it is actually sometimes referred to as a 'Forbidden Experiment') and completely unethical, no such study has been done formally and research is gleaned exclusively from a handful of isolated, extreme cases. What I'm talking about here is the 'isolated child' or 'feral child' phenomenon. Remember Mowgli from 'The Jungle Book' who was reared by wolves? What about Tarzan, raised by apes? Believe it or not, this sometimes actually happens. It is never a good thing and is always the result of some horrible abuse, abandonment, or worse. But there are reported, legitimate cases of children left to fend for themselves who find some kind of familial love in pack animals--typically dogs or primates or other social animals that live in groups. Usually it's dogs, because even feral dogs are likely to have some trust for humans since they tend to live alongside us since we provide so much garbage and the occasional handout for them to exploit.
What happens is that these children take on the behavioural characteristics of their adoptive nonhuman family. In one semi-well-known case, a young Ukranian girl called Oxana Malaya spent five years from the age of three living with feral dogs in her poverty-stricken town. When she was finally recovered at the age of eight, she ran on all fours, manipulated objects with her mouth, and barked. Now in her twenties, she has re-learned the ability to speak but displays social retardation (similar to the social shortcomings of people with autism) and when stressed will occasionally revert back to canine behaviour.
Oxana was a lucky one though. She was three when she was abandoned and had learned how to speak before then, though through lack of use she fell out of practice just as you fall out of practice with any acquired skill you don't regularly use.
More extreme cases are ones such as the famous psychological study known only as 'Genie'. Genie was born in California in 1957 and was completely isolated. She never heard a spoken word, never recieved physical affection or interaction of any kind, was regularly beaten, and confined to a potty chair or cage until she was thirteen years old. She was completely deprived of any social interaction at all and at the time of her rescue had become profoundly mentally handicapped--though nobody is quite sure whether she was born with some mental disability that her isolation further aggravated, or whether she was neurotypical at birth and her retardation was entirely the result of her abuse. While she eventually learned to interact successfully with people in social settings and speak a few words, she never learned to speak properly. Her mental age was determined to be that of a toddler.
The point neuroscientists make is that it appears the brain is only wired for a short period of time to learn language. It's believed that after about the age of eight, the brain is no longer programmed this way--and if language isn't learned by then, it may never be.
Which is why some schools now are introducing language immersion programs for younger students, because the younger you are when you try and learn a language the more successful you are likely to be and the more comfortable you will be with it.
Of course people are still able to learn languages after this time and do so all the time, but only after they have already mastered one language. It just appears to be one of those things that some people are wired to do and others aren't. Not everyone can draw. Not everyone can write well. Not everyone is good with numbers. It only makes sense that not everyone can learn a language. (It's for this reason I firmly oppose mandatory langauge courses in higher school levels. If you aren't capable of learning language, as I'm not, it is tremendously difficult and extremely unfair to be graded on your proficiency in a subject you are just plain not wired to understand. I also don't think math or English or anything else except what a student is interested in and good at should be required after about the age of fourteen.)
But clearly something, somewhere in my head has some way of pulling meaning from words I'm not entirely familiar with.
Actually, I'm not able to glean understanding from something unfamiliar simply by exposure. Especially not a foreign language. I've been exposing myself to Japanese for a dozen years but have never managed to grab a single word from it. The reason I can read four languages I don't even understand is because they happen to be four languages that have a lot in common with English. English is basically French's anal rape child and features many similarities with the Germanic tongues; Italian, as I said, is just a combination of French and Spanish, and Spanish I studied in school and did retain a small amount of understanding.
I'm told what I can do is comparative linguistics, but I don't flatter myself to think it's that complicated a process. All I can do is find cognates--words that look or sound like something else in another language. And anybody can learn how to do that if they can bother learning it. If I can do it, anybody can do it.
I bring all this up as an extremely long-winded roundabout way of talking about what may be my absolute favourite internet meme of all time.
'Differenze Linguistiche', which shows how different words are similar in many languages and then come up with a totally different word for the same thing in another. What makes it funny to me is that the 'dissenting' word is usually German.
My parents both speak German. My uncle is German and speaks German to his sons; his whole family speak almost exclusively German, which made the wedding a bit awkward because only a few of the people could actually talk with the other half of the guests. So I'm around it a lot and I can attest that it is indeed as angry and unnecessarily consonant-heavy as it looks.
And as angry as that little rage-face appears to be.
I dn't care what you say in German. You could be telling me to have a wonderful day and it'll still sound like you're trying to rob me. I might just hand over my purse anyway. I won't understand what it is you're saying and I'm a big pussy.
I can speak and understand exactly one language: English. My first and only tongue. It is not for lack of trying, you understand. I spent four years taking Spanish and three taking French and all I can remember from either language is how to say, 'I can't speak Spanish/French, does anybody here speak English?', 'Where is the bathroom?', and 'I'm not American, I'm Canadian.' (Because I gotta cover my butt when I leave the country, I don't want to get spit on by Europeans.) Spanish is spoken far too rapidly for me to really understand it and French is so ambiguous in its pronunciations and constant streams of vowels that it mostly seems to depend on accents and context rather than, you know, actual words.
I can only write one language. English.
But.
I can read five.
I can read English, naturally, but I can also read French and Spanish. And I can do so at a reasonably functional level. I might not be able to stop and ask for directions in the heart of Madrid or Amboise, but I could read some directions from Google Maps in the local tongue. I can read children's books and simple papers and written messages in both languages even though I have less than no grasp of their spoken words. To a lesser extent, I can also read a bit of German and some Italian, mostly because my parents speak German and Italian is like French and Spanish's half-cousin.
But I'm not wired to be able to really grasp another language. It's probably because I never began to learn until I was way too old--the way American schools mostly work (unless they have a language program, which is exclusively confined to private schools with programs in other countries) is that foreign languages aren't touched on at all until at the earliest middle school, and sometimes high school. At any rate, the earliest most schools are going to offer a foreign language class is when the students are eleven or twelve, a time at which neurologists and sociologists believe that the brain has lost its ability to easily pick up a new language. It is believed that the reason babies pick up languages so easily when they're babies is because, when their brains are still developing (which continues many years after birth--your brain doesn't actually stop developing completely until you are in your twenties and sometimes close to thirty), the brain is actually wired and programmed to learn language. Nobody is quite sure how or why, and theories abound and are wildly variant, but it does rather appear that human beings are born pre-wired for language and inherently understand and grasp the concepts of whatever language (or languages) they are brought up around.
You don't retain this ability forever, though. Since the experiment involved in getting academically and scientifically viable results is absolutely forbidden (it is actually sometimes referred to as a 'Forbidden Experiment') and completely unethical, no such study has been done formally and research is gleaned exclusively from a handful of isolated, extreme cases. What I'm talking about here is the 'isolated child' or 'feral child' phenomenon. Remember Mowgli from 'The Jungle Book' who was reared by wolves? What about Tarzan, raised by apes? Believe it or not, this sometimes actually happens. It is never a good thing and is always the result of some horrible abuse, abandonment, or worse. But there are reported, legitimate cases of children left to fend for themselves who find some kind of familial love in pack animals--typically dogs or primates or other social animals that live in groups. Usually it's dogs, because even feral dogs are likely to have some trust for humans since they tend to live alongside us since we provide so much garbage and the occasional handout for them to exploit.
What happens is that these children take on the behavioural characteristics of their adoptive nonhuman family. In one semi-well-known case, a young Ukranian girl called Oxana Malaya spent five years from the age of three living with feral dogs in her poverty-stricken town. When she was finally recovered at the age of eight, she ran on all fours, manipulated objects with her mouth, and barked. Now in her twenties, she has re-learned the ability to speak but displays social retardation (similar to the social shortcomings of people with autism) and when stressed will occasionally revert back to canine behaviour.
Oxana was a lucky one though. She was three when she was abandoned and had learned how to speak before then, though through lack of use she fell out of practice just as you fall out of practice with any acquired skill you don't regularly use.
More extreme cases are ones such as the famous psychological study known only as 'Genie'. Genie was born in California in 1957 and was completely isolated. She never heard a spoken word, never recieved physical affection or interaction of any kind, was regularly beaten, and confined to a potty chair or cage until she was thirteen years old. She was completely deprived of any social interaction at all and at the time of her rescue had become profoundly mentally handicapped--though nobody is quite sure whether she was born with some mental disability that her isolation further aggravated, or whether she was neurotypical at birth and her retardation was entirely the result of her abuse. While she eventually learned to interact successfully with people in social settings and speak a few words, she never learned to speak properly. Her mental age was determined to be that of a toddler.
The point neuroscientists make is that it appears the brain is only wired for a short period of time to learn language. It's believed that after about the age of eight, the brain is no longer programmed this way--and if language isn't learned by then, it may never be.
Which is why some schools now are introducing language immersion programs for younger students, because the younger you are when you try and learn a language the more successful you are likely to be and the more comfortable you will be with it.
Of course people are still able to learn languages after this time and do so all the time, but only after they have already mastered one language. It just appears to be one of those things that some people are wired to do and others aren't. Not everyone can draw. Not everyone can write well. Not everyone is good with numbers. It only makes sense that not everyone can learn a language. (It's for this reason I firmly oppose mandatory langauge courses in higher school levels. If you aren't capable of learning language, as I'm not, it is tremendously difficult and extremely unfair to be graded on your proficiency in a subject you are just plain not wired to understand. I also don't think math or English or anything else except what a student is interested in and good at should be required after about the age of fourteen.)
But clearly something, somewhere in my head has some way of pulling meaning from words I'm not entirely familiar with.
Actually, I'm not able to glean understanding from something unfamiliar simply by exposure. Especially not a foreign language. I've been exposing myself to Japanese for a dozen years but have never managed to grab a single word from it. The reason I can read four languages I don't even understand is because they happen to be four languages that have a lot in common with English. English is basically French's anal rape child and features many similarities with the Germanic tongues; Italian, as I said, is just a combination of French and Spanish, and Spanish I studied in school and did retain a small amount of understanding.
I'm told what I can do is comparative linguistics, but I don't flatter myself to think it's that complicated a process. All I can do is find cognates--words that look or sound like something else in another language. And anybody can learn how to do that if they can bother learning it. If I can do it, anybody can do it.
I bring all this up as an extremely long-winded roundabout way of talking about what may be my absolute favourite internet meme of all time.
'Differenze Linguistiche', which shows how different words are similar in many languages and then come up with a totally different word for the same thing in another. What makes it funny to me is that the 'dissenting' word is usually German.
My parents both speak German. My uncle is German and speaks German to his sons; his whole family speak almost exclusively German, which made the wedding a bit awkward because only a few of the people could actually talk with the other half of the guests. So I'm around it a lot and I can attest that it is indeed as angry and unnecessarily consonant-heavy as it looks.
And as angry as that little rage-face appears to be.
I dn't care what you say in German. You could be telling me to have a wonderful day and it'll still sound like you're trying to rob me. I might just hand over my purse anyway. I won't understand what it is you're saying and I'm a big pussy.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Mismatched
I do something a bit weird.
I used to draw, a lot. I also make jewellery. Whenever I make an art project I have to do the same thing: I have to make it symmetrical. Like, I am obsessive. It drives me nuts when the halves don't match. And I've always done this. It has never not bothered me. The level on which it causes me anxiety when I can't make both sides the same is completely disproportionate. I wasn't one of those kids who had to have a symmetrical dinner plate but I have to, have to, have to make everything match.
But at the same time, asymmetry is my 'thing'. When I create things they have to be symmetrical, but where I myself am concerned I love it when the two sides don't match.
My two halves were never going to match anyway. I have a birthmark on my right shoulder. It shows fairly prominently. It also looks like a hickey.
I think I used to obsessively make myself symmetrical as well. But at some point I stopped trying and have since embraced mismatched halves. I used to wear mismatched shoes in high school on purpose. This is a list of all the ways in which I currently apply asymmetry to myself:
-My earrings. I have five earrings on each side--enough to wear two and a half pair of earrings in each ear. Out of necessity my earrings stopped matching on each side after I had three earrings. I briefly had six but got a staph infection and the last ones had to close. But because I have to wear so many earrings at once (ten in all), I stopped caring whether or not they were the same on both sides. On one side I have five graduated silver rings. On the other I have two stars, one moon, a plain silver bauble, and leave the bottom one open for whatever I feel like. I only ever wear one 'statement' earring at a time, in that ear. I make it big on purpose so it stands out and is immediately apparent that I'm wearing it, and that there is only one.
-My tattoo. My tattoo is monochromatic and at a glance looks unremarkable--a set of small purple wings. But one is a faerie wing and the other is a dragon wing. The style is similar but once you realize they don't match, you will always notice they don't match. All of my planned tattoos are similarly mismatched. A peacock and phoenix, a dove a hawk.
-My nails tend not to match when I paint them. This is common now but it used to stand out. I would do one hand one colour and get bored and do another for the other hand.
-My socks are usually mismatched. Mostly because I can't be fucked to match them when I wash them.
I also have every intention of getting my lip pierced, but only on the right side. Like half a snakebite piercing. I might get a nipple ring. But only the left.
I don't know why I do this. I just really love it when my halves don't match.
I guess I'm just embracing a fact of imperfection. I am never going to match on both sides. I might as well really not match.
I used to draw, a lot. I also make jewellery. Whenever I make an art project I have to do the same thing: I have to make it symmetrical. Like, I am obsessive. It drives me nuts when the halves don't match. And I've always done this. It has never not bothered me. The level on which it causes me anxiety when I can't make both sides the same is completely disproportionate. I wasn't one of those kids who had to have a symmetrical dinner plate but I have to, have to, have to make everything match.
But at the same time, asymmetry is my 'thing'. When I create things they have to be symmetrical, but where I myself am concerned I love it when the two sides don't match.
My two halves were never going to match anyway. I have a birthmark on my right shoulder. It shows fairly prominently. It also looks like a hickey.
I think I used to obsessively make myself symmetrical as well. But at some point I stopped trying and have since embraced mismatched halves. I used to wear mismatched shoes in high school on purpose. This is a list of all the ways in which I currently apply asymmetry to myself:
-My earrings. I have five earrings on each side--enough to wear two and a half pair of earrings in each ear. Out of necessity my earrings stopped matching on each side after I had three earrings. I briefly had six but got a staph infection and the last ones had to close. But because I have to wear so many earrings at once (ten in all), I stopped caring whether or not they were the same on both sides. On one side I have five graduated silver rings. On the other I have two stars, one moon, a plain silver bauble, and leave the bottom one open for whatever I feel like. I only ever wear one 'statement' earring at a time, in that ear. I make it big on purpose so it stands out and is immediately apparent that I'm wearing it, and that there is only one.
-My tattoo. My tattoo is monochromatic and at a glance looks unremarkable--a set of small purple wings. But one is a faerie wing and the other is a dragon wing. The style is similar but once you realize they don't match, you will always notice they don't match. All of my planned tattoos are similarly mismatched. A peacock and phoenix, a dove a hawk.
-My nails tend not to match when I paint them. This is common now but it used to stand out. I would do one hand one colour and get bored and do another for the other hand.
-My socks are usually mismatched. Mostly because I can't be fucked to match them when I wash them.
I also have every intention of getting my lip pierced, but only on the right side. Like half a snakebite piercing. I might get a nipple ring. But only the left.
I don't know why I do this. I just really love it when my halves don't match.
I guess I'm just embracing a fact of imperfection. I am never going to match on both sides. I might as well really not match.
Monday, March 12, 2012
Star Stuff
Carl Sagan once said, "We're all made of star stuff." What sounds sweetly poetic is in fact literally true: every element, every scrap of everything that makes us us, was made first by the tremendous power of the stars. And a lot of it has been around for most of that time. Matter decomposes, it changes forms, it moves about, but it is always there. So in consequence, it means that no part of you is original. You are entirely recycled parts--every atom in your body has been a good many other things long before you were here, and all your parts will continue on as parts of many more things long after you are no longer you. You are simply borrowing them for your brief twinkling of life.
But this isn't a bad thing. It means that in you, right now, could be anyone or anything you might imagine. Within you is Jefferson, Newton, Mozart--you could be sabretooth cat, or lumbering mammoth, the first of our kind to climb down from the trees and stand up. Your time here on earth is extraordinarily brief, but the pieces of you are effectively immortal.
This doesn't apparently sit well with quite a lot of people of a religious bent. A natural explanation for life--how we and everything before us came to be without the hand of any great being needed to guide it--is deeply offensive sometimes. Regardless of my feelings on the matter, I don't know why people are so determined that science and faith must be so diametrically opposed. That if we happened without the hand of the gods, then we aren't special and our origins mean nothing.
A good many creation myths throughout the world echo the genesis of the Abrahamic religions. God made Adam out of clay and mud and made Eve from his rib. Many others follow a similar pattern, of gods building people up from clay like objects and bestowing life on them. I can see how that might be appealing but I don't see how it's the only 'acceptable' answer. In any case, I don't especially want to be made of mud. It sounds messy.
But apparently it's a better story than nature offers.
Believe whatever you like.
As for me--I would rather be flora and fauna, Cambrian and Triassic, Nefertiti, and Amelia Earhart, and Shakespeare, and the stars.
But this isn't a bad thing. It means that in you, right now, could be anyone or anything you might imagine. Within you is Jefferson, Newton, Mozart--you could be sabretooth cat, or lumbering mammoth, the first of our kind to climb down from the trees and stand up. Your time here on earth is extraordinarily brief, but the pieces of you are effectively immortal.
This doesn't apparently sit well with quite a lot of people of a religious bent. A natural explanation for life--how we and everything before us came to be without the hand of any great being needed to guide it--is deeply offensive sometimes. Regardless of my feelings on the matter, I don't know why people are so determined that science and faith must be so diametrically opposed. That if we happened without the hand of the gods, then we aren't special and our origins mean nothing.
A good many creation myths throughout the world echo the genesis of the Abrahamic religions. God made Adam out of clay and mud and made Eve from his rib. Many others follow a similar pattern, of gods building people up from clay like objects and bestowing life on them. I can see how that might be appealing but I don't see how it's the only 'acceptable' answer. In any case, I don't especially want to be made of mud. It sounds messy.
But apparently it's a better story than nature offers.
Believe whatever you like.
As for me--I would rather be flora and fauna, Cambrian and Triassic, Nefertiti, and Amelia Earhart, and Shakespeare, and the stars.
At a Glance
One thing I've noticed in being attracted to gender-bending and androgyny is a near-ubiquitous comment that always seems to accompany people who blur the gender lines. That comment is, 'This makes me question my sexuality.'
Almost always it's a comment made by a man who identifies as heterosexual in reference to an incredibly feminine male. (Like my boyfriend Andrej. He is my boyfriend. And we are going to get married. He just doesn't know it yet. That's not creepy or anything, right?) Because people tend to have a really surprised and reflexively defensive adverse reaction to discovering that something they like is in fact something they never thought they would like.
I never really thought about it until recently, but as soon as I did start thinking about it I realized it didn't make any fucking sense.
Maybe this is extremely difficult for me to grasp just because my sexuality is so indiscriminate. The reason extreme androgyny and gender-bending like Andrej Pejic don't make me question my sexuality is because I don't really actually have any easily-defined sexuality. As far as I'm concerned my sexual preference is more or less summed up as, 'Hey, you're cute. Get naked.' I wasn't always like this and it did take me some time to come to terms with the fact that I was attracted to a lot more than I was raised to believe was 'okay', but I don't ever remember being seriously disturbed or upset at discovering the non-vanilla things that attracted me.
I get that being a Straight Guy (TM) is completely incompatible with finding other men attractive. Unfortunately we still live in a world where men (and it's really only men--women aren't bound by this arbitrary, outdated social-sexual restriction, at least not in the western world) have to continually 'prove' their sexuality by shunning all things 'feminine' in favour of what is generally considered appropriately manly. I still remember a few years ago (actually it was probably more like a dozen or more years ago now I think of it...) when the colour pink became in vogue for men and this was actually a big fucking deal. Like, people were seriously concerned about men wearing pink. Men with long hair is still taboo. Skinny jeans on men (which I admit look kind of ridiculous on some guys just because they're not dressing for their body types) are mockingly referred to as 'girl jeans' and sneered at as being 'gay'. So it is completely impermissible for heterosexual men to see other men as being attractive because, in a world where pink shirts and aesthetic care are unacceptably unmanly, acknowledging the attractiveness of someone you aren't even yourself attracted to is a big fucking no-no.
Except here's the thing.
I do not fucking understand it.
My dad is pretty much on the right-wing. Anti-environmental, anti-choice, religious. (He does wholeheartedly support evolution, though, but has a hard time squaring science with faith. Hello cognitive dissonance!) He certainly has no tolerance for homosexuality.
But even my dad is perfectly comfortable admitting when other men are attractive.
I don't think my dad has any latent homosexual feelings. I can smell a closeted homosexual for miles and my dad isn't one of them. He's just a straight guy who can understand and appreciate what makes other guys attractive. And I seem to have inherited (or at least learned) this way of thinking from him. Because there are a lot of ostensibly 'attractive' people to whom I am not myself attracted but that I completely understand why other people like them. I don't fancy Cameron Diaz, Jennifer Lopez, Megan Fox, or Christina Hendricks but I completely get why people find them attractive. I'm just not into them myself. It is not that fucking hard to think this. It's just a case of, 'Yeah, I can see why you like it but it's not really my thing.'
Okay?
So I really do not fucking understand why people look at pictures of girly male models--the kind you can't tell at a glance might be men or women--and have to question their sexuality.
Why does this make you have to question it?
At a glance, you really legitimately cannot tell Andrej Pejic is a man unless he is wearing men's clothing. (Which he often isn't.) The aesthetic he puts forth is one of femininity. He isn't trying to be a girl, but he looks like one. And he looks like a prettier girl than most girls. The fact that he has a penis doesn't change the fact that he looks like a woman. Finding him attractive when you are not typically attracted to men doesn't make you gay. It doesn't draw your sexuality into question. You are not finding yourself attracted to something you are not normally attracted to--you are attracted to something you are attracted to. The fact that it's an illusion is neither here nor there.
Let's put it another way.
Imagine you like redheads. You fucking love redheads. You adore redheads. You think they are fucking sexy. You prefer redheads over any other hair colour. You see a picture of a really cute redhead, a good-looking girl. Or guy, if you swing that way, the sex isn't important here. You just fancy them like mad because, hey, redhead! And then you later find out that the model isn't a redhead at all and dyes their brown hair red. What you saw was an illusion, a trick of the eye, an aesthetic the model puts forward that doesn't accurately display their true physical attributes.
Does that mean you don't actually legitimately like redheads and are instead attracted to brunettes, the model's natural hair colour?
Let's say you're attracted to large breasts. (On women. Well, I mean, you could be attracted to large breasts on men but for simplicity's sake let's just assume you are attracted to large-breasted women.) You see a good-looking woman walk by. She's fucking stacked. You chat her up. Maybe you go out a few times. Maybe you just jump right into bed. (Whatever makes you happy!) In the course of events, you discover that she has had breast augmentation and her natural breast size was a very demure A-cup. You were attracted, again, to something that does not offer an accurate representation of their natural physical reality.
So does this mean you're naturally attracted to small breasts since that's what she had naturally?
No.
Simply being attracted, on sight, to something you find attractive only to find out that it isn't accurate or is an illusion doesn't change what you are attracted to. Particularly in a situation where the deception is deliberate. In the case of Andrej Pejic, with makeup and long blonde hair, he is almost always in women's clothing, often dresses and lingerie and other articles of clothing we typically think of as being unmistakeably and unquestionably female. The illusion is deliberate. He looks like a woman. Therefore, he will stir attraction in people who are attracted to those feminine traits.
We are human. We are attracted to what we perceive with our senses. It just so happens that our senses can easily be tricked and are not 100% reliable 100% of the time. But this doesn't, and never will, change what makes you tick. If you like women, being attracted to a gender-bending effeminate male model doesn't make you gay. If you are attracted to men, being attracted to Buck Angel doesn't change that.
But honestly? Confining yourself to a rigid definition of anything--gender, sexuality, or anything else--does you no favours. We thrive on flexibility, and if evolution has taught us nothing else it's that immutability ends pretty badly for everybody involved.
Almost always it's a comment made by a man who identifies as heterosexual in reference to an incredibly feminine male. (Like my boyfriend Andrej. He is my boyfriend. And we are going to get married. He just doesn't know it yet. That's not creepy or anything, right?) Because people tend to have a really surprised and reflexively defensive adverse reaction to discovering that something they like is in fact something they never thought they would like.
I never really thought about it until recently, but as soon as I did start thinking about it I realized it didn't make any fucking sense.
Maybe this is extremely difficult for me to grasp just because my sexuality is so indiscriminate. The reason extreme androgyny and gender-bending like Andrej Pejic don't make me question my sexuality is because I don't really actually have any easily-defined sexuality. As far as I'm concerned my sexual preference is more or less summed up as, 'Hey, you're cute. Get naked.' I wasn't always like this and it did take me some time to come to terms with the fact that I was attracted to a lot more than I was raised to believe was 'okay', but I don't ever remember being seriously disturbed or upset at discovering the non-vanilla things that attracted me.
I get that being a Straight Guy (TM) is completely incompatible with finding other men attractive. Unfortunately we still live in a world where men (and it's really only men--women aren't bound by this arbitrary, outdated social-sexual restriction, at least not in the western world) have to continually 'prove' their sexuality by shunning all things 'feminine' in favour of what is generally considered appropriately manly. I still remember a few years ago (actually it was probably more like a dozen or more years ago now I think of it...) when the colour pink became in vogue for men and this was actually a big fucking deal. Like, people were seriously concerned about men wearing pink. Men with long hair is still taboo. Skinny jeans on men (which I admit look kind of ridiculous on some guys just because they're not dressing for their body types) are mockingly referred to as 'girl jeans' and sneered at as being 'gay'. So it is completely impermissible for heterosexual men to see other men as being attractive because, in a world where pink shirts and aesthetic care are unacceptably unmanly, acknowledging the attractiveness of someone you aren't even yourself attracted to is a big fucking no-no.
Except here's the thing.
I do not fucking understand it.
My dad is pretty much on the right-wing. Anti-environmental, anti-choice, religious. (He does wholeheartedly support evolution, though, but has a hard time squaring science with faith. Hello cognitive dissonance!) He certainly has no tolerance for homosexuality.
But even my dad is perfectly comfortable admitting when other men are attractive.
I don't think my dad has any latent homosexual feelings. I can smell a closeted homosexual for miles and my dad isn't one of them. He's just a straight guy who can understand and appreciate what makes other guys attractive. And I seem to have inherited (or at least learned) this way of thinking from him. Because there are a lot of ostensibly 'attractive' people to whom I am not myself attracted but that I completely understand why other people like them. I don't fancy Cameron Diaz, Jennifer Lopez, Megan Fox, or Christina Hendricks but I completely get why people find them attractive. I'm just not into them myself. It is not that fucking hard to think this. It's just a case of, 'Yeah, I can see why you like it but it's not really my thing.'
Okay?
So I really do not fucking understand why people look at pictures of girly male models--the kind you can't tell at a glance might be men or women--and have to question their sexuality.
Why does this make you have to question it?
At a glance, you really legitimately cannot tell Andrej Pejic is a man unless he is wearing men's clothing. (Which he often isn't.) The aesthetic he puts forth is one of femininity. He isn't trying to be a girl, but he looks like one. And he looks like a prettier girl than most girls. The fact that he has a penis doesn't change the fact that he looks like a woman. Finding him attractive when you are not typically attracted to men doesn't make you gay. It doesn't draw your sexuality into question. You are not finding yourself attracted to something you are not normally attracted to--you are attracted to something you are attracted to. The fact that it's an illusion is neither here nor there.
Let's put it another way.
Imagine you like redheads. You fucking love redheads. You adore redheads. You think they are fucking sexy. You prefer redheads over any other hair colour. You see a picture of a really cute redhead, a good-looking girl. Or guy, if you swing that way, the sex isn't important here. You just fancy them like mad because, hey, redhead! And then you later find out that the model isn't a redhead at all and dyes their brown hair red. What you saw was an illusion, a trick of the eye, an aesthetic the model puts forward that doesn't accurately display their true physical attributes.
Does that mean you don't actually legitimately like redheads and are instead attracted to brunettes, the model's natural hair colour?
Let's say you're attracted to large breasts. (On women. Well, I mean, you could be attracted to large breasts on men but for simplicity's sake let's just assume you are attracted to large-breasted women.) You see a good-looking woman walk by. She's fucking stacked. You chat her up. Maybe you go out a few times. Maybe you just jump right into bed. (Whatever makes you happy!) In the course of events, you discover that she has had breast augmentation and her natural breast size was a very demure A-cup. You were attracted, again, to something that does not offer an accurate representation of their natural physical reality.
So does this mean you're naturally attracted to small breasts since that's what she had naturally?
No.
Simply being attracted, on sight, to something you find attractive only to find out that it isn't accurate or is an illusion doesn't change what you are attracted to. Particularly in a situation where the deception is deliberate. In the case of Andrej Pejic, with makeup and long blonde hair, he is almost always in women's clothing, often dresses and lingerie and other articles of clothing we typically think of as being unmistakeably and unquestionably female. The illusion is deliberate. He looks like a woman. Therefore, he will stir attraction in people who are attracted to those feminine traits.
We are human. We are attracted to what we perceive with our senses. It just so happens that our senses can easily be tricked and are not 100% reliable 100% of the time. But this doesn't, and never will, change what makes you tick. If you like women, being attracted to a gender-bending effeminate male model doesn't make you gay. If you are attracted to men, being attracted to Buck Angel doesn't change that.
But honestly? Confining yourself to a rigid definition of anything--gender, sexuality, or anything else--does you no favours. We thrive on flexibility, and if evolution has taught us nothing else it's that immutability ends pretty badly for everybody involved.
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Bringin' Sexy Back
I'm sorry, why does anybody need to 'bring sexy back'? I wasn't aware it had ever left.
My gender identity is pretty straightforward and uncomplicated. For a while it didn't look like that was going to be the case because I spent most of my teenage years railing against anything I thought of as feminine or girly. I didn't wear girl's clothes until I was sixteen or seventeen, or makeup until I was in my 20s. On the outside it looked like I might be on my way to some gender identity issues, but I didn't have the depression or hatred of my body that typically comes with GIDs. In the end I think it was mostly just me rebelling in an adolescent fashion and indulging my reflexively insubordinate nature--my mother is pretty girly-girl and I used to do a lot of things just because they were opposite of what she wanted or preferred.
Eventually I did indeed just outgrow it. I'm a girl now. I wear girl's clothes and shop for shoes and wear makeup and jewellery. Some of my traits are unmistakably feminine, others extremely masculine (I'm unusually aggressive in ways not normally associated with women). Pronoun use doesn't bother me. I am what I am and I'm cool with that.
But it seems like what I lack in any gender identity issues myself, I more than make up for in the fact that I am insatiably attracted to people who completely thrash every accepted gender-divide stereotype. Gender-bending and androgyny are unbelievably attractive to me. Everybody has that one trait that they see in someone else that just renders them completely stupid from the sudden surge of raw unadulterated lust. For me that trait is a person so successfully androgynous that I cannot on sight determine what kind of plumbing they might have.
I'm serious.
I don't even know why I have this preference at all. Possibly because it took me a very long time to accept that I was not heterosexual and an unconscious compromise I made with myself was to develop a fondness for gender-blurring. Since it's not gay if they're just incredible effeminate men, right? I'm comfortable with my pansexuality now but I still have a weakness for androgyny.
My old androgynous crush was Elly Jackson from 'La Roux'. Bonus points for being a redhead.
Then I discovered Andrej Pejic.
I think I am in love.
Andrej Pejic is a high fashion model from Bosnia who grew up in Australia. He models men's and women's fashion. He also looks like this:
That is one pretty fucking princess.
The thing with me is, I can accept someone is a pretty face and even fancy them without actually really developing a crush on them. I don't develop a crush on someone once I get a feel for what they were like and while I was just devouring pictures of Andrej, I just thought, "Well he's got a pretty face but I imagine he's a bit high-maintenance and something of a drama queen." And also I admit to prejudice. You look at him and you think, well, he's blonde--dumb blonde.
And then I started reading about him and watching interviews with him. The more I learned, the more I was impressed. I have now developed a tremendous crush on this man because he's smart enough to have applied to Harvard University and clever enough to make a comment like, "In a world suffering the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression, me in a bra is big news!" And talk in interviews about 'tucking'.
He is just really fucking pretty and really fucking cool.
I am in love.
My gender identity is pretty straightforward and uncomplicated. For a while it didn't look like that was going to be the case because I spent most of my teenage years railing against anything I thought of as feminine or girly. I didn't wear girl's clothes until I was sixteen or seventeen, or makeup until I was in my 20s. On the outside it looked like I might be on my way to some gender identity issues, but I didn't have the depression or hatred of my body that typically comes with GIDs. In the end I think it was mostly just me rebelling in an adolescent fashion and indulging my reflexively insubordinate nature--my mother is pretty girly-girl and I used to do a lot of things just because they were opposite of what she wanted or preferred.
Eventually I did indeed just outgrow it. I'm a girl now. I wear girl's clothes and shop for shoes and wear makeup and jewellery. Some of my traits are unmistakably feminine, others extremely masculine (I'm unusually aggressive in ways not normally associated with women). Pronoun use doesn't bother me. I am what I am and I'm cool with that.
But it seems like what I lack in any gender identity issues myself, I more than make up for in the fact that I am insatiably attracted to people who completely thrash every accepted gender-divide stereotype. Gender-bending and androgyny are unbelievably attractive to me. Everybody has that one trait that they see in someone else that just renders them completely stupid from the sudden surge of raw unadulterated lust. For me that trait is a person so successfully androgynous that I cannot on sight determine what kind of plumbing they might have.
I'm serious.
I don't even know why I have this preference at all. Possibly because it took me a very long time to accept that I was not heterosexual and an unconscious compromise I made with myself was to develop a fondness for gender-blurring. Since it's not gay if they're just incredible effeminate men, right? I'm comfortable with my pansexuality now but I still have a weakness for androgyny.
My old androgynous crush was Elly Jackson from 'La Roux'. Bonus points for being a redhead.
Then I discovered Andrej Pejic.
I think I am in love.
Andrej Pejic is a high fashion model from Bosnia who grew up in Australia. He models men's and women's fashion. He also looks like this:
That is one pretty fucking princess.
The thing with me is, I can accept someone is a pretty face and even fancy them without actually really developing a crush on them. I don't develop a crush on someone once I get a feel for what they were like and while I was just devouring pictures of Andrej, I just thought, "Well he's got a pretty face but I imagine he's a bit high-maintenance and something of a drama queen." And also I admit to prejudice. You look at him and you think, well, he's blonde--dumb blonde.
And then I started reading about him and watching interviews with him. The more I learned, the more I was impressed. I have now developed a tremendous crush on this man because he's smart enough to have applied to Harvard University and clever enough to make a comment like, "In a world suffering the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression, me in a bra is big news!" And talk in interviews about 'tucking'.
He is just really fucking pretty and really fucking cool.
I am in love.
Thursday, March 8, 2012
VIOLENT HOMICIDAL RAGE TRIGGERED
I had a shitty day. The kind of day that makes you seriously consider that life without parole might not be such a bad thing in the long run if it means you can take out all of this murderous rage on the next person who looks at you the wrong way.
The problem is, my venomous bad mood is triggered by a derpjillion little occurrences that alone are not enough to justify wanting to turn people into medical cadavers. If any one of these things had happened to me--and I experience one or sometimes two of them just about every other day without wanting to start stabbing people with my nail file--I would not have managed to get myself into such an extraordinarily violent bad mood. But because all of them happened, happened in a relatively short period of time, and none of them are my fault and I can't really justify getting this angry about any one of them, I have managed to find myself seriously contemplating that whole life-without-parole thing.
I mean, I used to live in a death penalty state and that was pretty much what kept me from committing all the murders I wanted to commit. (I might or might not be telling the truth here.) Now I live in a non-death-penalty state. So I have to think about this.
But in the meantime, here is what happened today. It all happened at work. The first couple of hours of my shift wasn't so bad because one of the few people who doesn't actively despise me was there and I hardly ever get to see her. Then she left and for the last three hours I was just thrown one shitty thing after another and it only ended when I crawled into bed with my laptop just now. I suspect shit would still be happening if I dared venture outside.
1. Just about every customer left a couple of items at the till or had returns. This is not by itself an annoyance but I had no time between customers to clear stuff away so it ended up being one of those days where I have a two-foot-high mountain of discarded stuff and hangers next to me that not only made me look like a careless slob to my managers, who get on my case all the time about not being able to magically make my counter clean at all times by waving a magic wand or whatever the fuck it is they expect me to do, but kept falling down and I kept having to ignore my mess to deal with the nonstop throng.
2. A woman came in with three different bags of returns from three separate transactions. She didn't have a receipt for any of them. It took ages to look up the stuff, and it was all tended to different accounts and payments. She was really nice about it, even though it took forever, so I couldn't even hate her because she wasn't being a bitch to me.
3. During this endless return transaction, I had to fill out a store credit certificate which requires a manager's signature. I had to call four times--four times--for a manager, any manager, and I tried on my walkie-talkie and with the phone. Nobody came up. I was embarrassed at seeming so incompetent and there was a growing queue who saw me standing there doing nothing and waiting and they probably all wanted me dead. I finally got one manager, who demanded in a very impatient tone if she could do it over the phone. No, I needed her signature. She took another five minutes to wander up to my till. I hate waiting to ring people up almost as much as people hate waiting to be seen to.
4. At some point I was told by my favourite underage lad (he's sweet and he's cute, but he's seventeen and creepily too young for me) that I could go on my break once we got the queue down. But the queue wouldn't go down. The rule is that if there are more than three people in line, you can't leave the register. So I just rang up customer after customer after customer. Adding to my gigantic pile of crap the whole time that I had absolutely no opportunity to clean up. Add to this that one of the new girls was at the till next to me and kept needing help. I have nothing against her at all, because I was new once too and needed help all the time, but when there is a big line of people gnashing at the bit and I keep having to go over and walk her through stuff it doesn't help my already steadily declining mood.
5. Eventually one of the managers yelled at me because I hadn't gone on break because our queue was still many people long. They're really picky about making sure people go on breaks within acceptable time periods, not because they give a fuck about the plebeian register grunts but because they don't want to look bad by breaking regulations. So I basically had no choice but to leave my register while there was a line.
6. An old woman in the line yelled at me for bad customer service as I went back for my break when I knew I should stay and try and thin the line.
7. I got yelled at by the same manager for ignoring the customers and 'not providing a positive shopping experience'.
8. I also got yelled at later for being extremely rude on the phone to the manager of another store over keeping them on hold for twenty minutes. Since I'd been the only one at the till for the last few hours it was my job to answer all the phone calls (which I have to do regardless of whether or not I'm already dealing with an actual real-live customer at the time, which just seems incredibly rude and I apologize for profusely every time I do it). The manager scolding me said it was another store's manager about a specific style of jean with a distinctive name. I would have remembered this. I swore I had no idea what she was talking about. I'd already been lectured shortly after being hired about keeping people on hold for more than sixty seconds (no lie) so I'm careful about that. I'm also as syrupy sweet on the phone as I possibly can be. I have no idea what this phone call was about but it definitely wasn't one I took. The manager admitted that it might not have been me, but considering the only other candidate is one of the store 'cool kids', it was going to be on my head whether I'd done anything wrong or not.
9. Some woman came in with three boys who were throwing metal water bottles around and yelling. It made a lot of fucking noise.
10. I had to beg the new girl to mind the tills so I could spend my last ten minutes clearing up the now tremendous pile of stuff at my register. I told her I'd still be right there so if she had questions she'd have help. There was no line (thank ungod) and I was at my register where I was supposed to be, so technically I wasn't breaking any rules and therefore couldn't actually be yelled at. But I still got one hell of a stinkeye from the manager.
11. Who then got mad at me for having hangers on the floor. I sometimes just throw hangers on the floor and stand on them instead of wasting valuable seconds hanging them under the till (I've been yelled at for stalling when I take the time to do that, but also for standing on my hangers). I was picking them up though. As she yelled at me.
12. Checks weren't in yet.
13. Horrible traffic the entire way home.
14. One of my favourite radio stations was randomly not coming in for 4/5 of my drive home. When it finally came back on, it was playing that stupid fucking 'Moves Like Jagger' song. I hate that song more than I hate Adele's songs. There was also pretty much nothing else on the radio the whole way home.
And finally, by the time this one happened I was already in such a sufficiently black, angry mood that it annoyed me enough to seriously consider committing vehicular homicide.
15. A standard-issue Suburban Mommie SUV was in front of me going ten miles under the limit. It had those stick-people stickers in the back window that people use as a way to tell the entire highway what their family is like because fuck if I know why. It was as standard-issue as humanly possible: literally a mommy, a daddy, two boys, a girl, and a dog. There's nothing wrong with a family like that if that's what you want and it makes you happy, but I resent the fact that it's so expected of everyone and anyone who doesn't conform to this is labelled defective. But that isn't what made me angry though.
What made me angry was the customized license plate.
It read 'UNPRDCTBLE'. Clearly meant to mean 'unpredictable'.
I have no idea who owns that car but I have a message for them:
Fuck you.
No, I am fucking serious. Fuck you. Fuck you hard with a hammer. Go to hell. I hope you die a horrific, painful death. You might be a great parent and a wonderful friend. You might be talented. You might be an all-around great person.
But one thing you aren't and will never be is unpredictable. You are married with a nuclear family and a dog. You are as predictable as humanly possible. You have followed the life script to the motherfucking letter. There is nothing about your life that is unpredictable in any way whatso ever.
I hate you. I hope you die.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my abysmally bad mood. Thank you for sharing it with me. I am now going to crawl under the blankets and sleep until Friday.
The problem is, my venomous bad mood is triggered by a derpjillion little occurrences that alone are not enough to justify wanting to turn people into medical cadavers. If any one of these things had happened to me--and I experience one or sometimes two of them just about every other day without wanting to start stabbing people with my nail file--I would not have managed to get myself into such an extraordinarily violent bad mood. But because all of them happened, happened in a relatively short period of time, and none of them are my fault and I can't really justify getting this angry about any one of them, I have managed to find myself seriously contemplating that whole life-without-parole thing.
I mean, I used to live in a death penalty state and that was pretty much what kept me from committing all the murders I wanted to commit. (I might or might not be telling the truth here.) Now I live in a non-death-penalty state. So I have to think about this.
But in the meantime, here is what happened today. It all happened at work. The first couple of hours of my shift wasn't so bad because one of the few people who doesn't actively despise me was there and I hardly ever get to see her. Then she left and for the last three hours I was just thrown one shitty thing after another and it only ended when I crawled into bed with my laptop just now. I suspect shit would still be happening if I dared venture outside.
1. Just about every customer left a couple of items at the till or had returns. This is not by itself an annoyance but I had no time between customers to clear stuff away so it ended up being one of those days where I have a two-foot-high mountain of discarded stuff and hangers next to me that not only made me look like a careless slob to my managers, who get on my case all the time about not being able to magically make my counter clean at all times by waving a magic wand or whatever the fuck it is they expect me to do, but kept falling down and I kept having to ignore my mess to deal with the nonstop throng.
2. A woman came in with three different bags of returns from three separate transactions. She didn't have a receipt for any of them. It took ages to look up the stuff, and it was all tended to different accounts and payments. She was really nice about it, even though it took forever, so I couldn't even hate her because she wasn't being a bitch to me.
3. During this endless return transaction, I had to fill out a store credit certificate which requires a manager's signature. I had to call four times--four times--for a manager, any manager, and I tried on my walkie-talkie and with the phone. Nobody came up. I was embarrassed at seeming so incompetent and there was a growing queue who saw me standing there doing nothing and waiting and they probably all wanted me dead. I finally got one manager, who demanded in a very impatient tone if she could do it over the phone. No, I needed her signature. She took another five minutes to wander up to my till. I hate waiting to ring people up almost as much as people hate waiting to be seen to.
4. At some point I was told by my favourite underage lad (he's sweet and he's cute, but he's seventeen and creepily too young for me) that I could go on my break once we got the queue down. But the queue wouldn't go down. The rule is that if there are more than three people in line, you can't leave the register. So I just rang up customer after customer after customer. Adding to my gigantic pile of crap the whole time that I had absolutely no opportunity to clean up. Add to this that one of the new girls was at the till next to me and kept needing help. I have nothing against her at all, because I was new once too and needed help all the time, but when there is a big line of people gnashing at the bit and I keep having to go over and walk her through stuff it doesn't help my already steadily declining mood.
5. Eventually one of the managers yelled at me because I hadn't gone on break because our queue was still many people long. They're really picky about making sure people go on breaks within acceptable time periods, not because they give a fuck about the plebeian register grunts but because they don't want to look bad by breaking regulations. So I basically had no choice but to leave my register while there was a line.
6. An old woman in the line yelled at me for bad customer service as I went back for my break when I knew I should stay and try and thin the line.
7. I got yelled at by the same manager for ignoring the customers and 'not providing a positive shopping experience'.
8. I also got yelled at later for being extremely rude on the phone to the manager of another store over keeping them on hold for twenty minutes. Since I'd been the only one at the till for the last few hours it was my job to answer all the phone calls (which I have to do regardless of whether or not I'm already dealing with an actual real-live customer at the time, which just seems incredibly rude and I apologize for profusely every time I do it). The manager scolding me said it was another store's manager about a specific style of jean with a distinctive name. I would have remembered this. I swore I had no idea what she was talking about. I'd already been lectured shortly after being hired about keeping people on hold for more than sixty seconds (no lie) so I'm careful about that. I'm also as syrupy sweet on the phone as I possibly can be. I have no idea what this phone call was about but it definitely wasn't one I took. The manager admitted that it might not have been me, but considering the only other candidate is one of the store 'cool kids', it was going to be on my head whether I'd done anything wrong or not.
9. Some woman came in with three boys who were throwing metal water bottles around and yelling. It made a lot of fucking noise.
10. I had to beg the new girl to mind the tills so I could spend my last ten minutes clearing up the now tremendous pile of stuff at my register. I told her I'd still be right there so if she had questions she'd have help. There was no line (thank ungod) and I was at my register where I was supposed to be, so technically I wasn't breaking any rules and therefore couldn't actually be yelled at. But I still got one hell of a stinkeye from the manager.
11. Who then got mad at me for having hangers on the floor. I sometimes just throw hangers on the floor and stand on them instead of wasting valuable seconds hanging them under the till (I've been yelled at for stalling when I take the time to do that, but also for standing on my hangers). I was picking them up though. As she yelled at me.
12. Checks weren't in yet.
13. Horrible traffic the entire way home.
14. One of my favourite radio stations was randomly not coming in for 4/5 of my drive home. When it finally came back on, it was playing that stupid fucking 'Moves Like Jagger' song. I hate that song more than I hate Adele's songs. There was also pretty much nothing else on the radio the whole way home.
And finally, by the time this one happened I was already in such a sufficiently black, angry mood that it annoyed me enough to seriously consider committing vehicular homicide.
15. A standard-issue Suburban Mommie SUV was in front of me going ten miles under the limit. It had those stick-people stickers in the back window that people use as a way to tell the entire highway what their family is like because fuck if I know why. It was as standard-issue as humanly possible: literally a mommy, a daddy, two boys, a girl, and a dog. There's nothing wrong with a family like that if that's what you want and it makes you happy, but I resent the fact that it's so expected of everyone and anyone who doesn't conform to this is labelled defective. But that isn't what made me angry though.
What made me angry was the customized license plate.
It read 'UNPRDCTBLE'. Clearly meant to mean 'unpredictable'.
I have no idea who owns that car but I have a message for them:
Fuck you.
No, I am fucking serious. Fuck you. Fuck you hard with a hammer. Go to hell. I hope you die a horrific, painful death. You might be a great parent and a wonderful friend. You might be talented. You might be an all-around great person.
But one thing you aren't and will never be is unpredictable. You are married with a nuclear family and a dog. You are as predictable as humanly possible. You have followed the life script to the motherfucking letter. There is nothing about your life that is unpredictable in any way whatso ever.
I hate you. I hope you die.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my abysmally bad mood. Thank you for sharing it with me. I am now going to crawl under the blankets and sleep until Friday.
Saturday, March 3, 2012
Fly on the Wall
I'm really lucky. For most of my life I've been wonderfully privileged to have inhabited a bizarrely fortunate social caste. I was nowhere near the popular peers whose social standing accounted for the first rungs of the latter, but neither was I all the way at the bottom. It's a curious misconception among most people that the biggest losers and weirdest nutbags in school are ignored--in reality, when you've managed to find yourself at that level of off-putting eccentricity, you're almost as well-known as the varsity athletes and the cheerleaders. Just, not in a good way. Everybody knows who those kids are because they're so fascinatingly fucked up. They're not popular--they're just notorious.
Lucky for me, I was a few steps above that. So I wasn't smart or talented or outgoing or funny and I didn't have any real mind-boggling weirdness, which meant there was nothing about me anybody saw as worth attention. Essentially, being a dork but not that much of a dork allowed me to pass my entire school career more or less completely under the radar. I know it sounds like I'm exaggerating, but believe me, I am not. I went to school with people for ten years who have no idea who I am. People just elected not to notice me.
So how is any of this 'fortunate'?
Being invisible comes with the fabulous advantage of being able to take up a position near people's conversations and eavesdrop in a startlingly obvious manner without rousing suspicion. As socially retarded as I am, human psychology and sociology and in general just human nature have always fascinated me--and my ability to be conspicuously inconspicuous because I wasn't interesting enough to notice meant I had fairly easy access to pretty much any personal information I cared to listen to.
There's just something about knowing things I was never intended to hear that appeals to my general love of being sneaky. And no one knew that I knew these things. There are people out there today going about their lives who are completely unaware that a girl they never even noticed has all their dirty secrets--and no real motivation to be quiet.
Vaguely related to that is this tangent--I don't let people know that I have a grasp of any language that isn't English. Most people wouldn't pick me out of a crowd as looking like someone who might speak more than one language--middle-class white chicks rarely give off that impression--so people who do speak something else have absolutely no qualms speaking it in front of me, thinking their conversation is private. Sometimes they even talk about me. I'm good at pretending not to notice things so when their conversations fail to startle a reaction out of me, they usually conclude I don't understand it and feel free to say anything they want.
Well, guess what?
I know what you're saying.
And you are all assholes for calling me and my co-workers horrible names.
Lucky for me, I was a few steps above that. So I wasn't smart or talented or outgoing or funny and I didn't have any real mind-boggling weirdness, which meant there was nothing about me anybody saw as worth attention. Essentially, being a dork but not that much of a dork allowed me to pass my entire school career more or less completely under the radar. I know it sounds like I'm exaggerating, but believe me, I am not. I went to school with people for ten years who have no idea who I am. People just elected not to notice me.
So how is any of this 'fortunate'?
Being invisible comes with the fabulous advantage of being able to take up a position near people's conversations and eavesdrop in a startlingly obvious manner without rousing suspicion. As socially retarded as I am, human psychology and sociology and in general just human nature have always fascinated me--and my ability to be conspicuously inconspicuous because I wasn't interesting enough to notice meant I had fairly easy access to pretty much any personal information I cared to listen to.
There's just something about knowing things I was never intended to hear that appeals to my general love of being sneaky. And no one knew that I knew these things. There are people out there today going about their lives who are completely unaware that a girl they never even noticed has all their dirty secrets--and no real motivation to be quiet.
Vaguely related to that is this tangent--I don't let people know that I have a grasp of any language that isn't English. Most people wouldn't pick me out of a crowd as looking like someone who might speak more than one language--middle-class white chicks rarely give off that impression--so people who do speak something else have absolutely no qualms speaking it in front of me, thinking their conversation is private. Sometimes they even talk about me. I'm good at pretending not to notice things so when their conversations fail to startle a reaction out of me, they usually conclude I don't understand it and feel free to say anything they want.
Well, guess what?
I know what you're saying.
And you are all assholes for calling me and my co-workers horrible names.
Friday, March 2, 2012
Alike
Both of my parents were born and raised on Long Island, where I currently live, to parents who themselves never left New York. (My grandparents are all first-generation Americans, the children of immigrants.) My mom's side of the family is as much of a New York Italian stereotype as you can be--big, loud, close-knit, everyone still lives close by and is in each other's business all the fucking time. Every member of that family, save my mother and one of her cousins, stayed in New York. They didn't even leave the state for college. Most of them don't even leave the island except to go into the City.
In contrast, my dad's family fractured almost as soon as they possibly could. My grandmother on that side was an only child and my grandfather had only one brother, whose two daughters never had children. So, despite being so Italian they all bleed marinara, it's actually a very small family. My dad's parents divorced years ago and never had anything to do with one another again; my dad and his two brothers moved to other states and scarcely looked back. My great-uncle lives upstate, but his daughters settled elsewhere. Only my grandpa remained on the Island, which is where he is currently spending eternity after losing a short battle with pancreatic cancer in 2004. He never lived to see a grandchild graduate high school.
It's a very different dynamic in the two branches of my immediate family, obviously. My mom's side tries to be affectionate--the degree to which they succeed in this endeavor naturally depends on who they're trying to be nice to and exactly how obnoxious they are also being at the same time. Since I didn't grow up around them like all the other cousins did, I'm kind of like the odd man out. They're nice enough, and they do try, but in the end I don't really want too terribly much to do with them. But those are the closest extended familial relationships I have. My relationship with my dad's brothers and their families is basically non-existent.
My dad's mother lived near her middle son for about ten years and then moved to live near the youngest; my mom, with whom she does not get along, fears she might move again sometime soon to be near my dad. I expect she probably will. My dad makes many trips to Georgia a year to check up on her and manages her finances and bills and stuff because she's getting to a point where she almost can't manage them herself anymore. They haven't yet managed to get her to stop driving her own car, but this will probably happen soon enough--you can only drive the wrong way on the road so many times before they take your license away, after all. For this reason, we think she's starting to get a little demented or senile.
This grandmother is probably one of the only people in my family who genuinely likes me. Which is a shame because I don't really like her very much. She's a decent enough person, I just don't enjoy her company. Even so, she wanted to be a part of my life a great deal when I was a child, primarily because I was the first grandchild and I was a girl--Oma always wanted a daughter and was presumably a bit perturbed when all three of her children were born with penises.
I have the standard-issue number of traits in common with my various family members--my hair colour and eyes come from my dad's side, my stature and facial features from my mom's. I don't really have very many personality traits in common, except that I swear a lot and argue like I'm getting paid for it. But I did inherit a very specific, somewhat unusual feature from my paternal grandmother--I of course have no proof that it is a heritable trait, but it does rather seem that way.
Oma and I are both crazy about miniatures.
I have always loved really good quality miniatures. Have you ever seen--in a museum or stately home or something--one of those really big, elaborate Victorian dollhouses? The kind with tiny fixtures and wood floors and window shutters and full of beautiful furniture, all of it meticulously detailed and looking just like a perfect itty-bitty version of stuff you see full-sized every day.
Those miniatures. I love them. I don't know why I do, I just do. I'm not taken in by everything and anything in miniature just because it's small--I was never terribly fond of Barbie furniture or Polly Pockets, though I did have quite an extensive collection of 'Littlest Pet Shop' toys in the 90s when the toys were actually really tiny. I like them when they're small and detailed. I guess I appreciate the art and effort that go into making them.
Or else I just think they're really, really fucking cute like kittens and puppies.
It's really a very bizarrely specific trait to have in common with someone. Growing up in England I didn't have very much time to spend with any of my relatives so I tended to see Oma at most once a year. Sometimes we didn't make it to her house when we were making our yearly trips to New York to visit family, and after she moved to Minnesota visits were pretty much out of the question. So I'm pretty confident that I wasn't just 'taught' to love them because I saw the adults in my life loving miniatures. My mom isn't really into them, though she does appreciate the really good ones. I just like miniatures because... I do.
Maybe it's something I got from my grandmother.
Who knows.
Oma doesn't call much anymore. I haven't spoken to her in ages and the last time I saw her was about five years ago. Again, she might be going a bit senile, because she almost never remembers Giftmas presents for anyone and certainly doesn't remember birthdays or anything. She doesn't give anything to anyone, not really--not because she's mean, just because she doesn't really know how to go about doing it. The world has changed and it left her behind, seemingly stuck forever in the 60s.
But, every now and then I will randomly find a package from her. They come at odd times without any real reason, but they're usually the result of some rare moment of steady memories and clarity. She's given me a few rings of her own before, but mostly what she sends me are... miniatures. I didn;t bring them with me when I moved (I had to downsize), but over the years she's given me a rather sizable collection of tiny furniture and little animal figures.
Yesterday a small packing envelope came to my apartment. I hadn't ordered anything lately and wasn't expecting anything (the boything and I don't do Valentine's Day and my birthday is in August), so I was a bit surprised.
It was from Oma.
The envelope contained two tiny, tiny little red-bound books. Each is no bigger than one of those square plastic containers of dental floss. But they're fully functional--one is a Spanis-English dictionary, the other an English-Spanish dictionary. An eensy version of an item I see every day.
I actually like these sporadic, largely pointless, completely random gifts from her a lot more than I like it when my other relatives finally decide to acknowledge me on gift-giving occasions. Other relatives, all of whom are healthy, financially stable, mentally sound people, give me half-assed gifts that obviously require no real thought or indicate any level of affection. Gift cards are a staple. I'm not ungrateful, but it's disheartening that people who are supposed to be 'there for' me care so little.
I much prefer the occasional tiny gifts from a woman I haven't seen in years who probably doesn't even remember what I look like.
In contrast, my dad's family fractured almost as soon as they possibly could. My grandmother on that side was an only child and my grandfather had only one brother, whose two daughters never had children. So, despite being so Italian they all bleed marinara, it's actually a very small family. My dad's parents divorced years ago and never had anything to do with one another again; my dad and his two brothers moved to other states and scarcely looked back. My great-uncle lives upstate, but his daughters settled elsewhere. Only my grandpa remained on the Island, which is where he is currently spending eternity after losing a short battle with pancreatic cancer in 2004. He never lived to see a grandchild graduate high school.
It's a very different dynamic in the two branches of my immediate family, obviously. My mom's side tries to be affectionate--the degree to which they succeed in this endeavor naturally depends on who they're trying to be nice to and exactly how obnoxious they are also being at the same time. Since I didn't grow up around them like all the other cousins did, I'm kind of like the odd man out. They're nice enough, and they do try, but in the end I don't really want too terribly much to do with them. But those are the closest extended familial relationships I have. My relationship with my dad's brothers and their families is basically non-existent.
My dad's mother lived near her middle son for about ten years and then moved to live near the youngest; my mom, with whom she does not get along, fears she might move again sometime soon to be near my dad. I expect she probably will. My dad makes many trips to Georgia a year to check up on her and manages her finances and bills and stuff because she's getting to a point where she almost can't manage them herself anymore. They haven't yet managed to get her to stop driving her own car, but this will probably happen soon enough--you can only drive the wrong way on the road so many times before they take your license away, after all. For this reason, we think she's starting to get a little demented or senile.
This grandmother is probably one of the only people in my family who genuinely likes me. Which is a shame because I don't really like her very much. She's a decent enough person, I just don't enjoy her company. Even so, she wanted to be a part of my life a great deal when I was a child, primarily because I was the first grandchild and I was a girl--Oma always wanted a daughter and was presumably a bit perturbed when all three of her children were born with penises.
I have the standard-issue number of traits in common with my various family members--my hair colour and eyes come from my dad's side, my stature and facial features from my mom's. I don't really have very many personality traits in common, except that I swear a lot and argue like I'm getting paid for it. But I did inherit a very specific, somewhat unusual feature from my paternal grandmother--I of course have no proof that it is a heritable trait, but it does rather seem that way.
Oma and I are both crazy about miniatures.
I have always loved really good quality miniatures. Have you ever seen--in a museum or stately home or something--one of those really big, elaborate Victorian dollhouses? The kind with tiny fixtures and wood floors and window shutters and full of beautiful furniture, all of it meticulously detailed and looking just like a perfect itty-bitty version of stuff you see full-sized every day.
Those miniatures. I love them. I don't know why I do, I just do. I'm not taken in by everything and anything in miniature just because it's small--I was never terribly fond of Barbie furniture or Polly Pockets, though I did have quite an extensive collection of 'Littlest Pet Shop' toys in the 90s when the toys were actually really tiny. I like them when they're small and detailed. I guess I appreciate the art and effort that go into making them.
Or else I just think they're really, really fucking cute like kittens and puppies.
It's really a very bizarrely specific trait to have in common with someone. Growing up in England I didn't have very much time to spend with any of my relatives so I tended to see Oma at most once a year. Sometimes we didn't make it to her house when we were making our yearly trips to New York to visit family, and after she moved to Minnesota visits were pretty much out of the question. So I'm pretty confident that I wasn't just 'taught' to love them because I saw the adults in my life loving miniatures. My mom isn't really into them, though she does appreciate the really good ones. I just like miniatures because... I do.
Maybe it's something I got from my grandmother.
Who knows.
Oma doesn't call much anymore. I haven't spoken to her in ages and the last time I saw her was about five years ago. Again, she might be going a bit senile, because she almost never remembers Giftmas presents for anyone and certainly doesn't remember birthdays or anything. She doesn't give anything to anyone, not really--not because she's mean, just because she doesn't really know how to go about doing it. The world has changed and it left her behind, seemingly stuck forever in the 60s.
But, every now and then I will randomly find a package from her. They come at odd times without any real reason, but they're usually the result of some rare moment of steady memories and clarity. She's given me a few rings of her own before, but mostly what she sends me are... miniatures. I didn;t bring them with me when I moved (I had to downsize), but over the years she's given me a rather sizable collection of tiny furniture and little animal figures.
Yesterday a small packing envelope came to my apartment. I hadn't ordered anything lately and wasn't expecting anything (the boything and I don't do Valentine's Day and my birthday is in August), so I was a bit surprised.
It was from Oma.
The envelope contained two tiny, tiny little red-bound books. Each is no bigger than one of those square plastic containers of dental floss. But they're fully functional--one is a Spanis-English dictionary, the other an English-Spanish dictionary. An eensy version of an item I see every day.
I actually like these sporadic, largely pointless, completely random gifts from her a lot more than I like it when my other relatives finally decide to acknowledge me on gift-giving occasions. Other relatives, all of whom are healthy, financially stable, mentally sound people, give me half-assed gifts that obviously require no real thought or indicate any level of affection. Gift cards are a staple. I'm not ungrateful, but it's disheartening that people who are supposed to be 'there for' me care so little.
I much prefer the occasional tiny gifts from a woman I haven't seen in years who probably doesn't even remember what I look like.
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Point of View
It's no big secret facet of human nature that your expectations and perspectives and reactions and pretty much every other way you view the world and your experiences will differ within your lifetime--often it differs from one setting to another all at once. It all depends on a number of different variables: age, mental health, physical health, culture, location, religious beliefs, education... I could go on but I won't. The point is, you see things differently depending on where you're standing, metaphorically speaking. Sometimes it's wildly variant. Things that shouldn't be well-received or supported can become acceptable, and otherwise harmless behaviours can be taboo or inappropriate.
Even when you know something shouldn't be okay, you can still see it in a different light owing to all those variables as well as your own personal beliefs and personality.
I have an Australian friend who has mental illnesses and substance abuse problems similar to my own--similar, but significantly more intense. He stopped pill-popping for the most part but does other drugs occasionally. He's also a great deal more emotionally volatile than I am and his mood swings make mine look comparatively mild. This is a guy who has problems.
He has a crush on another friend of ours but, because the friend isn't gay and is attracted to women, the feelings are obviously not reciprocated and rejection like that hit Aussie really hard. He made a suicide attempt not too long ago over it. He was institutionalized for a few weeks and is currently getting help.
Because he knows I don't judge, at least not as far as mental health goes, he shared with me a recent development that literally in any other person on the face of the planet would make me kick into High Panic Mode and do anything in my power to get them medication and therapy. Because not only is this a not normal thing, it's a downright dangerous thing. When shit like this happens, something somewhere has gone extraordinarily wrong. It's one of the single most alarming developments possible in psychiatric health. It is really fucking bad.
He's started hallucinating.
He's got a full-blown visual and auditory hallucination of our mutual friend that he fancies.
Aussie doesn't want the hallucination to go away.
And I'm not worried.
My perception of this event is so completely askew it goes 180-degrees.
I'm really not very worried. Obviously seeing and hearing things is incredibly bad, but Aussie likes the company. He has trouble relating to other people like normal people do and so hasn't got very many friends, even though he desperately wants to be sociable. The hallucination is friendly and nice, completely benign, and nice to look at. It's someone to talk to and hang out with and because of this he isn't feeling the immense crushing loneliness he normally does--a feeling that can occasionally trigger a complete psychological breakdown and a relapse.
I understand why Aussie wants to keep him. And as far as I'm concerned, as long as the hallucination remains friendly, it certainly won't do a great deal more harm to just let it stay there. He knows it isn't real, so it's not like he's hallucinating and delusional. Granted it's still really fucking bad that it's happening at all, but for him it really is a legitimate case of being the lesser of two evils. If a hallucination keeps his depression from defeating him and helps him cope, then maybe it isn't such a bad thing. Drugs are a horrible thing, too, but I use them because they keep my problems from defeating me and make coping easier.
I did make him promise me that if the hallucination stopped being friendly and started being belligerent or mean or abusive in some way or ordering him to do shit, that he'd report it to his doctor and work to get rid of it. Because at that point it would no longer be an asset and will just aggravate the problems considerably more. He was reluctant and hasn't technically promised me anything, since he's stated he really really doesn't want it to go away. But at least he agreed that a mean hallucination would definitely be a huge leap backward.
All I can do is be there and try to help. He isn't a person with a lot of really effective coping mechanisms, so it doesn't seem quite right to deny him something he finds comforting. Something that makes life a little more bearable.
Even if it means letting him see and hear things that aren't actually there.
Even when you know something shouldn't be okay, you can still see it in a different light owing to all those variables as well as your own personal beliefs and personality.
I have an Australian friend who has mental illnesses and substance abuse problems similar to my own--similar, but significantly more intense. He stopped pill-popping for the most part but does other drugs occasionally. He's also a great deal more emotionally volatile than I am and his mood swings make mine look comparatively mild. This is a guy who has problems.
He has a crush on another friend of ours but, because the friend isn't gay and is attracted to women, the feelings are obviously not reciprocated and rejection like that hit Aussie really hard. He made a suicide attempt not too long ago over it. He was institutionalized for a few weeks and is currently getting help.
Because he knows I don't judge, at least not as far as mental health goes, he shared with me a recent development that literally in any other person on the face of the planet would make me kick into High Panic Mode and do anything in my power to get them medication and therapy. Because not only is this a not normal thing, it's a downright dangerous thing. When shit like this happens, something somewhere has gone extraordinarily wrong. It's one of the single most alarming developments possible in psychiatric health. It is really fucking bad.
He's started hallucinating.
He's got a full-blown visual and auditory hallucination of our mutual friend that he fancies.
Aussie doesn't want the hallucination to go away.
And I'm not worried.
My perception of this event is so completely askew it goes 180-degrees.
I'm really not very worried. Obviously seeing and hearing things is incredibly bad, but Aussie likes the company. He has trouble relating to other people like normal people do and so hasn't got very many friends, even though he desperately wants to be sociable. The hallucination is friendly and nice, completely benign, and nice to look at. It's someone to talk to and hang out with and because of this he isn't feeling the immense crushing loneliness he normally does--a feeling that can occasionally trigger a complete psychological breakdown and a relapse.
I understand why Aussie wants to keep him. And as far as I'm concerned, as long as the hallucination remains friendly, it certainly won't do a great deal more harm to just let it stay there. He knows it isn't real, so it's not like he's hallucinating and delusional. Granted it's still really fucking bad that it's happening at all, but for him it really is a legitimate case of being the lesser of two evils. If a hallucination keeps his depression from defeating him and helps him cope, then maybe it isn't such a bad thing. Drugs are a horrible thing, too, but I use them because they keep my problems from defeating me and make coping easier.
I did make him promise me that if the hallucination stopped being friendly and started being belligerent or mean or abusive in some way or ordering him to do shit, that he'd report it to his doctor and work to get rid of it. Because at that point it would no longer be an asset and will just aggravate the problems considerably more. He was reluctant and hasn't technically promised me anything, since he's stated he really really doesn't want it to go away. But at least he agreed that a mean hallucination would definitely be a huge leap backward.
All I can do is be there and try to help. He isn't a person with a lot of really effective coping mechanisms, so it doesn't seem quite right to deny him something he finds comforting. Something that makes life a little more bearable.
Even if it means letting him see and hear things that aren't actually there.
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