The Bitch Comes Out of the Closet

I’m sitting in a café talking with an old professor and friend. We are talking about my experiences at school here in Paris and formerly in Minneapolis.

“You hated what I taught you but you didn’t have the balls to tell me then.”

I like people who talk to me this way. People who surprise me. It is always a pleasure to talk to them, especially when it is not a pleasure.

I think back to my life in Minnesota. I have a lot of time to think about things now. I think when I was in Minnesota I was unhappy to the degree that I invented 2000 different ways to occupy myself. And as a consequence, I really wasn’t able to think about how unhappy I was. This is a very effective tactic, as the last two generations of my family could tell you.

But that isn’t the point. The point is that I didn’t have the balls to come right out and say most of the things that I felt when I lived in Minnesota. This had less to do with dishonesty than with my incapacity to feel what I was feeling- uhm, to allow myself to feel what I was feeling.

So now I am here. Thinking and feeling a bit more. And you know what I am learning?

I am a really bitchy person! It’s quite funny actually. I am a naughty naughty bitch. And I spent many many years developing a sunny and positive personality in order to deflect the severely bitchy thoughts that enter my mind every 15 seconds or so.

One could accuse me, of course, of adapting to this school and this teacher by claiming/adapting a nasty attitude. As nastiness is the lifeblood of this school (the charming and revealing kind of nastiness, not the boring kind. The nastiness of the court jester or the wacked-out ascetic monk). Hm. No, that is not completely true. No, I’m just hearing every day the person in authority saying really naughty things.

And I find them quite funny. So when my mind whispers a very naughty thought in my ear, I no longer smooth it over or pretend not to hear it. When I see someone on the street and think they look like a complete idiot, I do not scold myself. I have a laugh. And of course my bitchiness is not a superior sort of bitchiness. Not the bratty girl bitchiness. No no no. I’m the kind of bitch who laughs at how silly someone is and then proceeds to make a total ass out of myself and laugh about that too.

Sometimes I am a complete idiot. And it is very funny. It keeps things interesting. You know, I used to be so virtuous. How horrible! I don’t want to be virtuous anymore. I want to be a sweet idiot, or maybe a bitchy moron, or maybe a beautiful generous person. I want to feel alive damnit. I have had it with mind-numbing morals and coma-inducing slogans about how everyone should be this or that.