Kitty Litter
Monday, January 17, 2005
What Is Strong?
“It’s not good to be weak. But maybe, it’s not good to be strong either. The strong feel that they are compelled to pick on the weak to prove they are strong. But are they, really?” Yuki (rough translation), from Fruits Basket.
It bugs me how many Fruits Basket episodes can make me cry. I mean, here I am, a thirtysomething woman, and I get reduced to a sniveling ball of weepiness when I hear a character say something I resonate to.
Yet I can’t help but wonder: don’t the weak who want to be seen as strong turn on others whom they see as being weaker than themselves?
During the Faculty Follies in December last year (and yes, it took me this long to write about it), a famous person from another department walked up to me during the dress rehearsal and in a bombastic, loud voice calculated to carry across the theater, declared, “Darling, I love your poker face. You should be in comedy!”
And I could’ve scooped up the insincerity with a tractor. I was a miserable performer, and I knew it. I was going through the motions, and I put no energy into my lines—mainly because the psychic vampires in his department spent their time sucking all the energy out of the theater into themselves. Remind me never to require their plays of my students ever again. It’s not like THEY require their students to buy our books.
What the short little bastard didn’t understand is that I didn’t want to be there in the first place—so why put any effort into it at all? I was humiliated by what he’d done, and when I mentioned it to my colleagues, one of them told me that he’d told her not to appear in the show because people might go home.
A professor from another department overheard this, and piped up, “Hey, at least you don’t have to pay to get laid.” Ooh.
But this cattiness was small consolation; the damage had been done. I’d been yelled at for being late, I was being treated like some stupid kid by a bunch of theater majors a decade younger than me who needed six tries to pass Math 1, I was sick, I didn’t like what I was doing, I’d been missing my classes for what most of my students thought was a flimsy excuse…and then the short fat bastard just had to get his knife in too. He claims it’s just part of his “strong personality.”
Since when has insecurity been defined as strong?
People with these personalities tend to pick on me, as I have a mild demeanor, look like I’m easy to fool (and if you aren’t a student, then perhaps you have a bridge to sell me?) and I get flustered easily, despite all my bark. I think of retorts hours, days, even years after the original insult. I also have a long history of picking the wrong kind of friends (“bloodsucking user” is a charitable term best applied to the last woman—Material Spice—whom I thought could be my best friend in addition to Goldie Golds—and Material Spice is another story unto herself) or men to date (i.e. a model who chose me because I had a car and he didn’t). It’s like these people are human sharks; they smell blood, and move in for the kill. Too bad I seem to trail blood much of the time without knowing it. My fondest wish is to look like a bitch; you could call it protective camouflage.
I also think of something else. You see a tiny kitten on the road, and some of us will want to take it home and take care of it. There are people—mostly female, in touch with their feminine side, or gay (and if that sounds like gender bias, well, tough titties to you)—who feel the need to take care of people they see as being weak or broken. Sure, it can be seen as an ego boost, but who are we to say that’s not what compelled the people we revere as saints? I know some of these people; one of them is my best friend Goldie Golds.
Others will turn their noses up at the kitten’s commonness and sneer at anyone who thinks it is worth saving. Or they will say, “Eee, kadiri,” because the kitten is likely to be scrawny and dirty. Who, after all, wants to care for something someone else threw away? Still others will want to kill it, and kill it slowly and painfully.
Not because they hate cats. Not because the cat has done anything to them. Not because they want to put it out of its suffering and misery.
Because they can—and because they want to—add to its suffering and misery…because doing so takes their minds off their own.
But I don’t want to understand these people. Fuck them, and with a ten-foot pole up their asses sideways; god knows they deserve it.
I am more worried about the kitten—because sometimes I wonder just how much we have in common. But the kitten is lucky. It doesn’t have days in which it wonders what it is worth to others.
posted by Kitty Litter at 1:29 AM
5 Comments:
You cry at FruBa?
Kidding. Don't let them get to you, Charlie.
hey there alchemical! i can't access your profile so I'm not sure who you are, but since you call me "charlie," I think you may be cliff or someone else who knows me well :) anyway yeah, several episodes *do* get to me, bigtime. i am such a wuss! ^_^
Yup, it's me, your stalkee friend. :D
hey there! we miss your dry wit. we may hold vtes games at white plains soon, so look forward to us bugging you :D say hello to the beautiful one for me. and now, i dub thee...erm...how about shigure, since akito turned out to be a woman? or you can be yuki! hehe. how's law school? hope they're not using the racks and vises yet.
Yeah, shame about Akito's womanhood. I guess I need to settle for Yuki although he's not evil enough. :D
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