Bad Faith

When Staff Piss on Toilet Seats at Work

2009-05-01T13:38:00.003-04:00

At the school where I teach, I occasionally see that someone has pissed all over the toilet seat in the staff bathroom. In response, I posted the following:

A Modest Proposal

As a man, and blessed with the ability to urinate in a standing position, I was taught to place the toilet seat down when I finish. After all, since I’m not the one who has to dirty his thighs, the chivalrous thing to do is lift the seat, put it back down and wash my hands afterwards. This always seemed fair enough to me. In the current circumstances, however, I’ve come to see my logic as specious. In the third floor bathroom, I’ve often noticed a generous splattering on the toilet seat, a glowing archipelago studding the entire rim, as though the streamer’s effort at direction had been little more than a casual nod northwards, an eyes-closed guestimate. Because it seems futile to hope that the culpable adult will suddenly learn to lift the seat himself (or wipe his lazy mess), I’m proposing that the politest thing for everyone would be for the women to lift the seat when they’re finished. And, when necessary, the men should too.

What must come attached: A Defense of Most Men

2009-03-17T13:19:00.005-04:00

In The Book of Dahlia, Elisa Albert writes that men just want to put their dick in something "warm and alive." As often as I've heard something similar and as amusing as I find this idea in theory, when I consider the truth of it, I know very few people who are actually like that. Maybe because there are those handful of guys who will (5%? 10% maybe), our amazement is so overwhelming that it bleeds into our perception of men in general. Most of the guys I know, when not in a state of frantic lonely desperation, actually maintain unrealistic expectations of what must come attached to the vagina.

Culture of Exposure

2009-03-10T09:19:00.010-04:00

Recently, I've been trying to understand why people on social networking sites post private messages in public spaces. What is the motivation? Exaggerated self-importance? A naive belief that everyone is interested in interpersonal mundanites? Pure obliviousness maybe? For those of you who are unfamiliar with this particular format of self-exposure, it usually reads something like this: Hey, George! Just wanted to say hello because, you know, like we never talk on the phone or meet in person because apparently we're both too lazy to keep up and both seem to assume that it doesn't matter because, you know, when we eventually get around to seeing each other again at a birthday party or whatever, we can talk shit like we only neglected each other for, you know, like a week or something. LOL

Sometimes it reads like this: OMG! Can't believe how trashed we got last night! =)

Compliments are also popular: You looked great last night! ;)

Or: So sexy! [referring to a photo someone posted of him/herself glaring lasciviously at a camera]

As silly as these parodies are—and, actually, they're almost verbatim quotes—the point here is not to advocate for privacy in expression; I'm all for gossip. Most anyone who writes fiction or blogs believes that exposing other people's business is a worthwhile (or at least entertaining) endeavor. But I'm requesting that what is posted be interesting. Please, keep the quotidian concealed behind the electronic curtain of email, so I don't have to feel any guilt for laughing at you while I laugh at what you write.

Something Else I Don't Understand

2009-02-21T21:24:00.012-05:00

She said she didn’t understand why I don’t write poetry anymore. As if she were the cause. She didn’t believe that I couldn’t reduce what we’d put each other through to a few pretty sentences. And she didn’t seem to get that the poetry I wrote to my girlfriend at fourteen and fifteen and seventeen was the outpouring of myopic infatuation. Over the years, I explained, I’d grown weary of its melodrama. Instead I was seeking farsighted companionship.

She didn’t understand why I didn’t write her letters anymore. Like I did in those first weeks. She said it was because I stopped feeling passionate about her. But, really, how I felt didn’t fit on a page, and every time I tried the directness of a letter the result was fragmentary, like a jigsaw puzzle missing the center pieces.

That’s why I wrote stories and not poems or letters. It was all too complicated to explain. That’s what literature is for, I told her, for when you can’t explain it. But, for her, stories took too long. They lacked the immediacy of a sententious declaration. Once at a restaurant, to appease her, I wrote on a napkin: The car we built jerks forward because the clutch was installed wrong.

Another time I said, Do you understand who I am? Have you stopped loving me because you know? Or have you stopped because you don’t? We can’t change the text of our relationship. If I could rewrite it, baby, I would have. Anyway, why can't I just say I love you?
She shrugged and said, What does I love you even mean?
I understood. Those were words she’d use without a thought, getting off the phone or walking out the door.

You want a fairy tale, I told her. But fairy tales begin unreal, end unreal and have some great problem in between.

Is it possible to be honest?

2009-02-19T16:11:00.013-05:00

Since I've entitled this blog Bad Faith, which, for those of you not up on your Sartre, is basically about lying to yourself, I've decided to begin my blog on topic.
More than half a year after separating myself by 3000 miles from a disastrous legal coupling, I’ve waded again into dating. Though before I got into any new entanglements, I laid out some rules for myself—or rather a single overriding mandate: Don’t front. Accordingly, I’ve tried to make honest, aware decisions: I am transparent in my motives, do not give now any more than I’m willing to give later, do not conceal any information that might lead to accusations of false advertising, and show no greater consideration than I would eight months down the line.
I've been on several dates, but for this post I'm going to address a particular date from two nights ago. Actually, it would be more accurate to say she wasn't a date but a woman with whom I’ve been out and am not dating however much I would like to—a younger woman, born not quite a month before my mother walked me to my first day of kindergarten. Visually she’s stunning, and unfortunately I’m a sucker for that, though she also happens (like me) to be educated and interested in literature, travel and herself. Two nights ago I took her to some live music. For an hour before the show, we talked. Actually, she did most of the talking; I mostly prompted—a better strategy, I thought, than broadcasting my own tenuous virtues. As I suspected, she’s in a complicated situation and not emotionally available. Now. That's what I heard—she's not emotionally available now. Later at a bar, so as not to possibly be accused in the future of misrepresentation, I mentioned my past—though, to be frank, I was also implying a decision she should make about her current situation. To imply myself in it.
Then I said: It’s important to me to be ruthlessly honest.
Elbows propped on the table, dim bar light shadow on the smooth brown cheeks cupped bored in her palms, she raised an eyebrow and said, So, what are you going to confess?
I raised an eyebrow, too, but tried to look puzzled, as though I had no idea what she might be referring to. That was my confession, I said. My past.
I was reminded of a quote from Wittgenstein: Someone who knows too much finds it hard not to lie.
Which, despite my fierce resolutions, is my excuse for not saying, Because, like every other man you meet, I’m not blind to your face and body, no matter how I pretend to be. Because I know you’re helplessly glutted by premature declarations and probably bored by what you effortlessly inspire.
Anyone can see you are used to inspiring and you need something else.