In the book I’m reading, “Memoirs of a Geisha,” the narrator consistently uses the euphemism “eel” to describe men’s penises. I pointed this out to my mother on the Metro this morning, and she thought it was funny. About thirty seconds later, she pops up with, “Eels taste good, you know.” She was genuinely puzzled by my laughter – I had to explain just how inappropriate her comment had seemed in relation to the previous topic.
Yesterday was a beaut. Dirk was supposed to go car shopping with Jason in the afternoon. I get home from work, and what do I find? A message from Dirk asking me to come over as soon as possible. I called, and found out that Jason had basically ditched him. Dirk was in a bad mood, and wanted me to take him to the dealership. I was fine with that, even though it meant that all I got to eat for dinner was Ramen.
However, I got there, and it didn’t take more than two minutes for me to set Dirk off. All I remember saying is, “So, are we going now?” He was lying on a bed with no shoes on, strumming his guitar when I asked him this, so I’m sure you can understand my curiousity.
He didn’t speak to me for a good hour. Just played his guitar and ignored all questions. Just as I was getting up to leave, he said, “So, we’ll go up to [the college], so I can look at online car ads?” I was hesitant, but I’d already calculated that he was going to start being nicer for the rest of the evening, so we went (with many sidelong glances at him since he hadn’t completely broken out of his “mood”).
The perfect time for object lessons is when the person who hurt you/treated you badly is feeling bad about it. That’s when you give them the verbal swift kick to the nuts.
Dirk still hadn’t really come to the realization that he’d fucked up, so there was a big scene in the parking lot where he ended up gently tugging me towards [the college]. He also, despite originally saying that he couldn’t wait for me, ended up sitting outside with me while I smoked a cigarette.
I looked at celebrity death photos at rotten.com while he searched for car ads. I started out showing him pictures and stuff (Marilyn Monroe looked just awful after she died. Candle in the wind, indeed....it looked as though several candles had been put out/melted onto her face). Halfway through, I said, “Oh, I forgot: I’m not speaking to you.” I spent the next fifteen minutes or so staring at him meaningfully. It was funny, really, but Dirk was just about in the correct mood for my object lesson, so he was feeling bad and hurt and he wasn’t really in the right state of mind to notice the humor.
We pulled into the restaurant parking lot ([the college] library hours are early in the summer), and it was time for the object lesson. Dirk had been trying to excuse himself all night by talking about how miserable he is, and how he couldn’t help himself from being a dick to me.
Now, I’m sure you realize just how touched I was by all this. Don’t get me wrong, I’m generally not unkind to other people. But my bullshit detector was wailing.
So, I started off slowly, telling him that yes, I understood that he was under a lot of stress. Then I pointed out that he isn’t the only one, and I pointed out the fact that, unlike him, most people don’t have another person to treat like shit when their life is going badly. Then I pointed out that while he’d been taking out his frustrations on me, he’d been perfectly civil to Jason when he called, even though Jason was the reason he was in such a bad mood in the first place. I mean, is that fair?
Of course not, and several verbal kicks to the nuts later, he understood why I was upset, why I was going to be impossible to live with if he didn’t tell Jason off, and why he wasn’t ever going to act that way again, if he valued his sanity.
I mean, my feelings were really hurt. He made me cry.
Then we went in and had biscuits, so I felt better.
Letisha isn’t here again today, and I am frantically making files for the training forms. I’ll be so glad to get away from this office. They’re having a party for me on Friday, since it’s my last day. I’d hoped to get away with little to no fanfare, but it isn’t to be, I suppose.