On Pleasing Those Who Don’t Get You By Making Yourself Scarce
September 18, 2006 by discocisco
I was walking on the subway platform the other day, weary from earnestly peddling lotion, when I came upon a fighting couple – a teenaged couple. You know, the kind that can’t help but, um, fight in public. I was intrigued, and maybe even remembering a time when I could’ve been either one of them.
“Uh-uh. oh no. I’m going axe you one more time…” and then she asked him again why he had done or said whatever it is he he had done or said. He just stared at her.
I didn’t have to listen any more to know that this was not the first time they had been through this, nor would it be the last. As I passed them by, I considered taking her arm – the one akimbo – into the crook of my own and pulling her onto the train headed in the opposite direction from him.
When I got home, I thought about them and about their struggle to understand one another. I imagined that I knew exactly what she would say when she walked away. And this is what I came up with…
Here’s to avoiding the wall, once and for all, that we’re used to banging our heads on.
Listen to illustrated_by_my_absence.mp3
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5 Responses to “On Pleasing Those Who Don’t Get You By Making Yourself Scarce”
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But here’s the real question - how many children did these children have? Were they walking yet, or still in a stroller? You better have another baby soon, Cisco. That way, you can stay on welfare.
The children had made themselves useful by soliciting commuters and contributing to the delicate family economy using the only currency they had control over: their bodies. And yes, I make my welfare babies do the same.
Also, someone has pointed out that the man in the chicken suit seems to belong to a closed system of meaning, or at least to an inside joke. It really isn’t intended to be. It’s just another instance of poor communication on my part. You’ve felt this before.
I think what I was thinking is that I’ve decided to not fight with anyone for the rest of my life if I can avoid it. If someone pushes my buttons, I’m just going to pretend like I’m watching them on TV, acting in a weird docudrama about men who dress up in chicken suits. Whatever it takes, right?
On the other hand, if you don’t keep banging your head against that wall, how are you ever going to know whether continuing to bang your head against it was a good idea or not? Isn’t there some parable about two mice who fall into a vat of cream? One drowns, and the other keeps kicking until the cream rescues him with floating islands of butter. There’s something to be said for dogged persistence in the face of apparent futility.
True. And I love that parable, but I feel like I’ve lived it every day of my life and am only now beginning to understand the severe self-imposed burden of that philosophy — at least as far as relationships are concerned (versus solitary ventures). Most people who know me well talk about my dogged persistence. For me, I think the revolutionary act is hopping out of a creamy relationship and leaving that other mouse to figure out what it wants to do. Sink or swim, I won’t be around to watch it choose and it’s not my job to take care of it. Believe me, I’m torn, but unwilling to wait while assholes grow manners.
I actually read that first comment as “mushing my buttons”
And I thought, when you’re a chick you really want someone mushing those buttons.
Seriously, the wall is there to make the sex you get afterwards that much more enjoyable..
What if there’s a third mouse in the cream wearing a pair of waterwings called “adultery”?