Friday, January 31, 1997
BEHAVIOR:
Looking out for oneself has its benefits but can be destructive
for everyone involved
As you may or may not know, the Daily Bruin recently saw fit to
pull my last column with no warning whatsoever. It felt the need to
protect you  the reader  from my observations on the
sensitive and controversial subject of sex toys.
Believe it or not, I’m not actually trying to offend anyone when
I write. I can’t help it that my personality is so naturally
offensive. Therefore, I have elected to write this week’s column on
how much of an asshole I am, which hopefully should offend only
myself. (Even as I write this, I’m incredibly offended.)
In many ways, I am an asshole. I’m not going to go into
specifics; just take my word for it. (Don’t believe a word I say;
this column is seething with mendacity. I am a perpetrator of lies
and deceit.) Suffice it to say that a majority of my friends have
collectively chosen to describe me as "impenetrable." I assume they
mean this in the emotional sense, and not the physical one. Don’t
make me connect the dots.
OK, never mind, I’m not really an asshole.
Wow, that threw you for a loop, didn’t it? I mean, here I start
a whole article about what an asshole I am and now, all of a
sudden, I’m not.
Man, you’ll believe anything. I can control your thoughts!
Ha ha ha! (I’m an asshole.) No, I’m not. (No really, I’m a
jerk.) No, no, don’t listen to me; I’m really a nice person.
If I had to trace my personality flaws to a source, I would have
to choose my parents. My dad is a lawyer and my mom is an artist;
whenever they get into an argument, it’s like watching the right
brain pick a fight with the left brain. It’s all the powers of
reason and logic against the forces of emotion. It’s sense and
sensibility. Trust me, it’s not pretty. The subject of my parents
fighting brings to mind the interesting question: If Superman and
Wonder Woman were to engage in an all-out battle, who would win?
Neither one  it was a trick question. Because everybody loses
when we resort to fighting, so can’t we all just get along? OK,
here’s another one: If you buy me a drink at Maloney’s, will I
invite you back to my love den for a night of passionate
lovemaking, the likes of which you have never before experienced?
There’s only one way to find out.
If my parents ever try to give you advice on your love life
(although I can’t imagine why they would), not only should you not
follow it, you should do everything in your power to avoid hearing
any part of it. Science has not yet devised a method for measuring
the negative effects of their phenomenally bad advice but if my
relationship skills can be taken as any indication, theirs may be
the only advice on the planet bad enough to constitute a felony
offense.
When I was in first grade, I remember playing a game of truth or
dare during recess. One of the little girls dared me to kiss my
boyfriend on the cheek. I was a sassy little 5-year-old, so I
accepted the dare. But when this brazen act was greeted with
high-pitched squeals of disgust (from the other girls, not from my
boyfriend), I immediately pushed him away and said, "I hate you."
With some minor modifications, this has pretty much been my
standard m.o. (modus operandi) for the last 17 years.
When I was in fourth grade, I liked another boy. I made my
affections known by letting all of the air out of his bike tires.
Similarly, last week I saw a cute boy at the grocery store, so I
slashed his car tires when he wasn’t looking. The halcyon days of
note-passing have been replaced by the maddening era of phone tag,
but the common thread of my ever-present psychosis remains a
constant.
I operate by my own patented "Katherine-asshole" rules, because
I don’t know any other way. They just come naturally to me. As far
as I’m concerned, relationships are not a game. They are full-blown
wars, and if everybody listens to me, then no one gets hurt. Well,
OK, that’s a lie. But I don’t get hurt and in the end, isn’t that
all that really matters?
My friend Sarah recently offered to lend me her copy of the
popular book, "The Rules." I think books like this are the root of
all evil. First of all, I’m not going to bend over backwards for
any man. Well OK, maybe for David Duchovny. And even if I decided
it would be a good idea to abandon any trace of my feistiness or
personality in favor of docility and passivity, I wouldn’t need a
dumb book to tell me how to do this. It would just be "Yes David,"
"I agree, David."
I haven’t actually read the book, but I understand it’s one of
those "Don’t call him, wait for him to call you" deals. That’s
preposterous. If you like a boy, call him. Call him a lot. Call him
constantly, at all hours. Make him regret the day he gave you his
home number. If you suspect that he might be dating other girls,
leave extremely provocative messages on his answering machine, even
after you’ve broken up. This is not guaranteed to win him back, but
it is extremely therapeutic.
Helen Gurley Brown once wrote a book, not unlike "The Rules,"
called "Sex and the Single Girl." In it, she revealed her secrets
to seduction, like "sitting very very still is sexy," and "maintain
a mysterious silence; this is sexy." In other words, don’t appear
to be too bright and the men will line up to take advantage of you.
Look, you don’t really want to be that person. It’s not worth it.
Those tactics only work with boorish Neanderthal men. You don’t
want to date a Cro-Magnon … too much body hair for starters.
So, do what you like, say what’s on your mind and stalk your
victims if you have to. Somewhere out there, the editors of "The
Rules" are having a heart attack over the way I deal with boys, but
I don’t care what they think. In fact, if you will recall, I am an
asshole  I don’t care what anyone thinks but me. I’m sorry if
I happen to hurt people’s feelings, but that’s just the way I am
and hey, I love me, don’t you? Actually, I’m not even really all
that sorry; I was just saying that to be nice.
I would like to take this moment to point out that I do not, in
any way, advocate acting in this manner. (Actually I do. I’m
offensive. I’m evil and manipulative.)
There are, however, obvious benefits to behaving like an
asshole. Your Your friends (on second thought, maybe these are just
my friends) give you kudos for being a stud and making men suffer.
You never get hurt, because you never let yourself get hurt. You
put your own feelings before everyone else’s. Most importantly, men
seem to love bitchy women. So maybe men have a few psychological
issues of their own to work through. It can’t be all my fault.
(It’s all my fault. I am evil incarnate. I am the devil; hear me,
worship me. Obey my fiendish whims and diabolical designs.)
But, in the end, being an asshole is not rewarding. In fact,
being an asshole is its own form of punishment. So for all you nice
people who have dated a total jerk, it’s your turn to feel smug.
Because that person is going to wake up one morning and realize how
pointless and dissatisfying their life of meanness and selfishness
is. And their whole day will be ruined. And the next day, and quite
possibly the next, and so on until one day when they discover the
magical healing properties of alcohol and drink themselves into a
liquor-soaked stupor every night thereafter. Not that I know this
from first-hand experience. (Beelzebub Mephistopheles! 666!)
I think we deserve a support group; call it Assholes Anonymous.
We can meet at the bars and learn to conduct meaningful and
sensitive dialogue with one another. I, for one, am there.
My name is Katherine Tom, and I am an asshole. (Hey, you read it
in The Bruin; it’s gotta be true.)