n e u f n e u f: my affinity with cantankerous old men

16 July 2009

my affinity with cantankerous old men

You might not know that about me, but I get along with really overbearing men very well. They can't be just overbearing. They have to have IQs, but I end up thwarting their raving senses of self-importance to the point where they stop being jerks to me... until, that is, they want to stoop to some level they know I won't let them pretty up with excuses or bullying. Two of the foremost of these types have died in recent years.

One, Norman, was an unbelievably accomplished polymath who used immediate and startling outrageousness with everyone he met to separate the wheat from the chaff. Few felt this fast-track method was endearing, but I know the agony of wasted life to this kind of person, and I could see how much actual love was behind his impatience. It was well the chaff was forced off right away. The other, Don, was just a man whose avidity for engagement with everything wasn't watered down by his privileged birth, and his outrageousness was always about establishing himself as alpha... a bad weakness... and his generosity was just never about anything but the air of domination.

And I don't know if the others are dead yet, because they have dropped off my radar. Most of them have that essential weakness of never being able to best their egos when it comes right down to the vital interactions between them and others. It always causes harm to come of even the most positive things.

Last night I was dreaming of them all molded into one blustering autocrat.

He had a bunch of us picking up garbage, plastic bags and paper bags, and he wanted us to pack them up in this really preposterous, make-work, useless, fanciful, power-tripping wastage sort of way. I merely rolled my eyes and picked them up and packed them into a container without observing his ridiculous conditions for this action, which had him plenty steamed, but everyone saw me doing it and began to just pack the garbage up my way, which had him so steamed he popped.

I guess the salient bit was he could not bring himself to upbraid me for it, that true performance just evaporates power trips....

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