I’ve been watching Shonda Rhimes recently. I don’t mean I’ve been watching her through binoculars while she bathes or anything. I’ve merely been watching Shonda Rhimes’ show Scandal. I have no idea if it is critically or publicly acclaimed. I like it enough – it’s fun and makes you question things and something about Kerry Washington’s lips makes me want to have sex with her, or possibly watch her have sex with someone. Thankfully the internet supplies me with the uncensored version of the show which does have an adequate amount of sexing Kerry Washington. My god, I’m a freak.
Be that as it may, one of the weirdest things about Shonda Rhimes’ shows is the people in them who are in love. They’re all scared and stupid and full of beautiful crap, as is the case with most people, but somehow they all get to a point fairly early where they tell the person they’re in love with. I don’t understand either of these things – the being in love or the telling. But we’ll leave the former as being symptomatic of any number of amateur psychology reasons that you fuckers will be glad to come up with. What’s interesting to me is the telling/ confessing of love. That is a very curious thing to me.
See contrary to popular opinion, I do have feelings. They’re perhaps not as strong as what is considered normal and I have been known to not pay attention to them, but they do exist. I have never been in the business of telling them to people at a moment’s notice. I’m don’t just go about willy nilly revealing my love for being the little spoon while being the big spoon for a pillow to people I sleep with, or my need to have my friends think of me as smart if not competent. No, I like any other normal person keeps these horrifying hoomun (that’s how you spell the slang for homo sapien, right hoomun scum?) tendencies to myself till I inevitably tell people via the internet.
But then there are Shonda Rhimes characters who have their own insecurities and what not for a good while, but inevitably, about three episodes into first realizing it, they end up shouting or whispering or blurting or in some cases eye fucking out the truth to the concerned person. And they all seem so fucking happy about it. As if being in love is the most wonderful thing they ever felt.
Unless being in love is something like having your first major crush at age 12, with the whole heart pounding, stomach butterflies, constant smiling situation (Oh person from adolescence whose name is Adi, having a crush on you as freakishly as I did may have ruined me for other men), I don’t see how that’s possible. Whenever I’ve come close to having feelings since crossing the age of 13, I usually felt disgusted with myself. On rare occasions I’d feel neither good nor bad about it.
The point being, I don’t go any of the above routes in expressing my loving hoomun feelings. Perhaps there is a name for people like me, and as much as I would like it to be high functioning sociopaths or mad (wo)man in a box or selfish bastard [perhaps I should pay respects thusly to Sherlock or Doctor Who or Community every week till they come back into my life?] I can’t take credit for those terms, and I really like taking credit. So how about, let’s see… socially functional sociopath? Get it? Cause I’m sort of emotionless but appear and am nice, friendly and marginally competent at parties and other hoomun gatherings? Competent enough to land a place in college based on an interview/ viva thing recently.
So here, after a suitably word consuming and meandering introduction (It’s what people expect. I’m a panderer. It’s my nature.) I’m going to list without numbering, the number of ways in which people like me show affection. I’m not alluding to sexual affection exclusively, especially because that is usually expressed by having sex or by some seriously disturbing sexual fantasies. Apart from hopefully tickling the funny bone you have near your elbow, this will allow me to waste a bit of time looking for/ stealing appropriate gifs from tumblr. This is one of my sexless porn equivalents. Others include those pictures of vast libraries you find on the internet, some TV shows and those pictures of the interiors of wood cabins and other cozy woody places. Not a euphemism.
If I like you when I first meet you, I will very likely talk to you for a while and just past the stage where we’re all,” we should find out each other’s names and digits and facebook hashtag or something”, I will leave because I don’t want to ruin it. If we meet again, we may exchange above given details. Then if you start messaging me too much, or poking me or inviting me to Farmville or whatever it is you people keep asking me to do just because my name starts with an ‘A’, I will hate you in heart in heart (dil hi dil mein for those who don’t know NALSAR inside jokes) but not enough to spit on your dead skull. Just enough so I keep pretending I have to go give my dog a bath every time you try to chat.
Sometimes, people like me tell people that we love them just to appease them when they seem to be distant or needy. This does not mean that I don’t love them. In fact, it means that I do love them, but not at that very moment when I’m telling them about it. At that moment, I’m exasperated and I want to assure this person that they matter, even though as previously mentioned, they matter in that moment as a person who is not letting me be awesome. And I hate it when even if I DFTBA, someone cockblocks my A (Google it assholes). So technically, I guess in that moment when us Socially Functional Sociopaths (or SFS’ if you’re cool) tell you after you doubt us that we love you, we don’t even like you. We’ll love you later, when you’re not being a little bitch, bitch.
As soon as I have a little alcohol inside me and its hit me in the slightest, if you’re a friend I compliment you about anything in a voice that does not sound strained, it means I have a great deal of affection for you. Now be careful, I don’t mean regular compliments like “your dress is pretty” or “when I look into your eyes, I see the universe and all of time” or “you’re grammar is fantastic”. I mean compliments that seem all life-empowering and shit. Here’s a recent one I pulled out for my friend Voldemort (it’s a code name for a woman) – “I can’t ever imagine you taking shit from anyone, like, ever. You’ve always seemed too smart and strong and powerful to me to ever take anyone’s shit. Ever.” Yeah. So people who are not friends with me because you’re dicks without taste, that is the kind of life affirming crap you’re missing out on. I’m sure Voldemort wouldn’t mind that I’m using me heartfelt compliment as an advertising tool to acquire other friend investors. Also, if us SFS’ are drunk and we tell you we love you and then list off a set of your failings, it means we love you, but we’re being honest and telling you that sometimes you suck. You may return the back handed compliment any time and we’ll be happy to receive it, so suck it up.
When we yearn for you in a romantic fashion, we have a myriad of ways to deal with it. My personal method is to go to my room after a bad day of being angry with myself, then I will literally bang my forehead against a wall muttering, “Stop it. Stop it. Stop it.” That doesn’t work in a practical sense, but I do end up thinking its silly which leads to me not paying enough attention to it. In my experience, unless its some kind of life changing romantic feelings, most of said feelings will go away if you don’t devote enough time to them. I know a fellow SFS who becomes mean to her crush by nitpicking on every tiny flaw they can find in the person. Another SFS buddy does the fuck-every-other-available-person thing. These are not the only ways one goes about shows/ deals with romantic feelings as an SFS, but it’s something. And most importantly, we don’t fail eventually and then go about telling said person in a supremely heartfelt and articulate manner about our endless love for them, like these fuckers from Ms. Rhimes’ playbook.
No. These characters clearly exist to make people like me believe that nothing in real life will ever compare to the feelings we can have in our imaginations. The only time two actual people have looked at each other like this are Marina Abramovic and Ulay.
Skip to 1:10 if you’re impatient. Read up on them if you’re not. Basically they used to be partners and lovers. They hadn’t seen each other in ages.
And they weren’t even together at the time. They were reminiscing. Without words. Just…. I have to go cry.
Alright, another manner in which us SFS friends tell each other about feelings is by saying “you know you’re special” very angrily. Because we both know we shouldn’t be special. Special people should exist for other people. People who regularly tell each other things like “you’re my person” and “you’re my best friend” and “I’ll do anything for you”. The closest I ever came to express how much I care was when I got shitfaced drunk on my last night in college and I shamefacedly whispered to a friend with whom I was just making up to “please don’t take _____ away from me”, ______ being the friend whom I was deathly afraid would one day have to pick between me and my feuding friend. I know it’s complicated without names, but just … think about it for half a second and you’ll figure it out. If you could figure out Bilbo’s speech, you can do this much. Anyway, I’ve never been more embarrassed in my life.
If you’re my parents, I personally show affection by being my worst self around you. Nobody else gets to see that whiny, snot-nosed, crying, under-confident, angry, door-slamming, passive aggressive, weak nightmare. I show all of these tendencies to my friends, but never all together. By extension, my sister and my dog get to see this as well.
Now its important to remember that no matter how similar our symptoms, much like AIDS, SFS is acquired in a myriad of different ways. Some are psychologically and/or physically scarring, others are merely regular sad experiences that an already fragile mind chooses to filter by becoming an automaton as far as possible (this last one is me if yall idiots didn’t already guess). This means that the manner in which we interact with our very first social group – our family – is going to be vastly different from the manner in which we interact with friends, and never in the same way. Some SFS’ are extremely friendly with their parents. Some have a love-hate relationship. Some have an angry or even non-existent relationship. Shit’s complicated.
So next time you encounter someone who seems to grow aloof as you get closer, do not despair, they may be suffering from SFS, which as I have clearly demonstrated is not a made up disease that tries to excuse first world fear or insecurities about people liking us. Nope. What you want to do with victims of SFS is grow really close to them and never mention said closeness till you’re both hammered. And try not to have casual sex with them. They will be very suspicious of you afterwards.
That’s all, folks.
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I am very happy this week. The in-between-ness is over! I have some basic stuff figured out. I know where I’ll be for the next two years, and in the meantime I know who I should be talking to and what I should be doing in those two years that will help me with doing more things I want to do. Let’s not bore you with these details, mah frands. I will tell you I’m going to be studying Film Studies with a heavy emphasis on creative writing of all types. At Ambedkar University. Ha! I will be seeing Shivaji Panekar on a regular basis. And though I only recently found out about him, I was excited enough at the prospect that I had to calm myself down in case I started gushing incoherently during the interview. I’m excited and apprehensive and nothing in my life is as blah blah, you don’t need to know about the ecstasy of my inner soul right now. You don’t care. You don’t know me. You don’t know my life. Okay?
Okay.
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Also these are books I got from Daryaganj. I shall read them. You read them and weep. Or see them and weep, I guess. Whatever.
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Ok. Ta.
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Billy
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