Never take me to a party. I’m serious. Don’t do it. You’ll regret it more than that time you took a bag of Dick’s Deluxe burgers to bed with you.
In 2002, my buddy Josh and I were knocking back pounders in a little dive called the Sandbar in Moses Lake, Washington. It was the kind of place where you knew everybody even if you’d never met anyone. Bar stools were occupied by stereotypes, not by names. Pull-tabs were as popular a pastime as pool. Miller High Life and a jukebox full of John Cougar Mellencamp and AC/DC fueled social interaction, and if you sufficiently lowered your standards, drunk women could practically fall off of their bar stools into your bed. It was that kind of place.
I never stopped to consider which stereotype I was filling in that bar. All I knew was that I was wasting away living in that town (I wanted desperately to get back to Seattle, my “real” home), and so I filled my off-hours with booze, while with few exceptions, keeping myself uninvested in the people around me.
At closing time, we were invited to an after-hours house party by a gang of roughnecks with whom we’d been doing shots of Turantula, so at ten minutes to two, Josh and I ran over to the gas station to load up on cases of Keystone Light.
Beer in hand, we found the dilapidated house, and made our way inside. It was the quintessential bachelor pad. With the exception of a well-worn leather couch and a big-screen TV, the place was hardly furnished. Empty bottles and full ashtrays littered every surface, the fridge, freezer and cupboards were stocked with booze according to serving temperature, and the walls were bare except for some taped-up posters of scantily clad women and a Sports Illustrated swimsuit calendar on the refrigerator. The calendar would be the beginning of my undoing.
At the time, I was lousy at small talk in social situations (I’m only marginally better at it now). I just couldn’t summon words about the weather, local events, or a feigned interest in people’s jobs or hobbies. I was the wallflower, keeping out of the way while simultaneously judging the people around me and wishing I knew how to talk to them. Josh was good with people, and because of him, I was regularly injected into crowds; and people gave me the benefit of the doubt by association, even when I couldn’t hold up my end of the conversation. Some saw me as shy, and some saw me as stuck up—in all actuality, I was both.
There was one particularly mouthy girl in the group. She had a voice like a cheese grater and a personality to match. She had that permanent look of contempt as if the universe was birthed for the sole purpose of shitting on her. Even when no one was talking, she could be seen shaking her head as if everyone in the room was offending her for occupying space that could otherwise go unoccupied. Or, she had early onset Parkinson’s. I’ll never know. I hated her right away.
A half-dozen people were gathered in the kitchen, shotgunning beers and doing shots around the island counter. I was standing at the periphery, halfway into the hall as if I could make a run for it if necessary. I was also right next to the refrigerator with the swimsuit calendar on it—the calendar that the bitter girl decided was offensive on the scale of world hunger or an academy award for Titanic.
“This is totally offensive,” she started in, pointing at the calendar, “It’s demeaning to women.”
The guy whose house we were in tried to play it down with a laugh, “They’re sexy. What’s demeaning about that?”
“It’s complete objectification of women!” she shouted.
“Hey, I’m not a jerk to women. What’s wrong with me, as a guy, looking at sexy women? They posed for the photos, after all,” he added, “They want me to look at them.”
The girl went into a frenzy, and she covered all the bases. All men are pigs. Objectification of women reduces them to sub-human levels. It oppresses women by establishing their worth as nothing more than playthings and baby-makers, and contributes to a zeitgeist that undervalues the diverse ability and contribution of women to society.
Now I get the argument about how the media holds up unrealistic standards of beauty, I really do. And, nothing she said was particularly wrong, but her tirade was irritating the shit out of me. I’m terrible at making small-talk, but I love a good debate. I love conversations about big ideas. I love to dive right into all the topics that you’re told never to speak of in polite company—politics, religion and the rest. But at this moment, I knew that everyone there was just trying to have a good time, get their drunk on and keep things light and casual. This girl was ruining the vibe. And while many of the things she said might have been at least partially correct, she was no less stupid for saying them.
I’d been practically silent since we’d arrived, but I began to feel aggression boil up inside of me. It was almost inexplicable, like when Masseur Mersault shot a guy in Albert Camus’ The Stranger
She continued: “Pictures like these create an unrealistic standard of beauty and it unfairly makes women feel inferior to be compared with women like that.”
“Oh yeah?” I blurted out, “Well then how do you feel when you stand next to someone really intelligent?”
She gasped, “What?!”
“It must make you feel fucking awful.”
“What are you trying to say, that I’m dumb?!”
“Yeah, exactly.”
I could see her start to get really worked up while other people just stared incredulously, so I continued before she could get going.
“First of all, I think you meant ‘contrasted with women like that,’ not compared. I doubt you’ll ever be compared with one of those models for any reason. Secondly, we have all kinds of standards of perfection, not just physical attractiveness. There’s humor, compassion, thoughtfulness, athleticism, talent, skill and intelligence, for example. A person’s physical sexiness isn’t their only important attribute, sure, but it is important. This is what keeps humans having sex and propagating the species. It’s evolution, not just the media. Intelligence keeps us alive, personality brings us love and physical attraction brings us sex. Yet, you only feel this one standard of perfection is unfair, which means that you consider it the most important attribute, because that’s the only one you focus on. It means that you feel inferior in your physical appearance. Well, I’m here to tell you that not only are you not pretty, but you’re seriously lacking in both personality and intelligence.”
She got red in the face, and then white, but she didn’t speak. No one else did either. It felt pretty good to dump my little monologue on her, but I felt really guilty to bring everyone down. I escaped to the back yard.
Outside, a few other people were gathered around a shabby picnic table and more beer. I stood on the sidelines, smoking cigarettes, knowing that I should just be quiet and wait for the party to be over. I’d probably ruined it. What was wrong with me? I would have left if I hadn’t have left my car at the bar and ridden with Josh. I stood there puffing smokes, sipping beer and sulking.
“What do you think?” some girl asked me, inviting me into a conversation between her and her friend. I had no idea what these two girls were talking about, since I was too absorbed in my own thoughts to pay attention.
“Do you believe in God?” she asked. Ah, they were talking about religion, and I hadn’t started it! And they wanted my opinion! I could do this. I could do this without being a jerk. Just keep it interesting and light, Douglas. You’ve got this.
“No,” I said.
“Well, what do you think happens after you die?” she asked.
“Well, nothing. I mean, your body decomposes and your atoms are redistributed throughout the universe, but as far as the dead person is concerned, absolutely nothing.”
I should have noticed the other girl begin to squirm, but I didn’t until she asked me, “Well, how can morality exist if there’s no God? I mean, what keeps you from being a rapist or a murderer?”
“You don’t need a God to have morality,” I told them. “You don’t need the promise of Heaven or the threat of Hell. Morality comes from a variety of sources like evolution and social mores. We all agree to live by certain rules that are good for the greatest number of us.”
“But aren’t some things immoral outside of society?” the first girl asked.
“Look, I’m an Existentialist in the vein of Jean-Paul Sartre,” I explained. “I think that I am solely responsible for everything in my life and everyone in my sphere. If great things happen, I take the credit, and if bad things happen, I take the blame. This applies to every aspect of life, not just things related to society. If I trip and fall, it’s my fault for walking on that sidewalk at that time, for not seeing the crack in the sidewalk, and for catching my foot on it. It’s not the fault of the crack or the City for not having repaired it. If someone else trips on that crack, that’s also my fault for not preventing it.”
“Wouldn’t each person be responsible for themselves?” the first girl asked, “I mean, if it’s your fault for tripping on the crack yourself, wouldn’t it be the other person’s fault when they tripped?”
“Depends on whose perspective you’re looking at it from. From that person’s perspective, yes,” I told them. “From my perspective, no. I am responsible for my universe, and that includes them. I can’t deny my responsibility. I can’t say that that person isn’t in my universe. From their perspective, they are responsible for themselves and for everyone in their universe, but I can’t say that because they should be responsible for themselves, I am not responsible for them. Ultimately, though, there are no victims.”
“What do you mean there are no victims?!” the second girl said with sudden animation, “Sometimes things are other people’s fault, not yours.”
“Nope.”
“What if, say, a child was kidnapped, raped and killed? You’d say it was the child’s fault, not the kidnapper’s?!”
“Well, again, it would depend on from which perspective you were looking at it from,” I explained. “From the kidnapper’s perspective, he is responsible for what he did. From the child’s perspective, though, the child is responsible.”
“How could the child be responsible?!” The second girl was really getting worked up.
“Well, let’s follow the cliché story and say the child was lured into a van with candy. The child made choices to walk up that sidewalk at that time. The child chose to get into the van when offered candy. You can trace the child’s decisions back to any number of places where a different decision would have prevented getting kidnapped.”
“But the child doesn’t know!”
“Sure, the child makes choices with limited knowledge and limited experience with which to make judgment calls. We all do that every day. We can research our decisions a lot or a little. We develop judgment over time to figure out which choices warrant a lot of research and consideration or a little. We’d be paralyzed if we didn’t. But, just because we make choices based on little knowledge doesn’t let us off the hook for the results of those choices.”
The second girl started to sob. And by “sob” I mean she was having a good ugly-cry. I really hate to hurt people’s feelings, but it happens more than I’d care to admit. I couldn’t understand what I’d said that would cause this kind of reaction, so I felt really bad without knowing why. In retrospect, there were signs. I’d chosen to open my yap with limited knowledge and limited awareness of the effect my words were having on this girl, but I was responsible for her complete breakdown. Proof positive.
“What’s wrong? What did I say?” I asked.
“My niece was lured into a van with candy and then raped and murdered,” she said curtly.
“Whaaaa…?”
“And you’re telling me that it’s all her fault for getting kidnapped, raped and murdered. I can’t accept that! It wasn’t her fault! It was that bastard’s fault who did that to her!” she shouted with anger in her eyes, “You can’t tell me that an innocent child is responsible for getting raped and murdered! She was just a kid!”
I felt terrible. I felt dumb. I felt apologetic.
“And I need to believe that there is a God, and that God took her to Heaven. I need to believe that that guy got justice and that he’ll burn in fucking hell for all eternity!”
Apparently, feeling shitty about what I’d said wasn’t quite enough to learn my lesson.
“So, you believe in a God that would let that happen to her?”
“Fuck you!” she screamed.
Josh came out of the house into the back yard, having no idea what was going on.
“Hey, guys, how’s it going out here?” he said jovially, reaching for a fresh beer from the picnic table.
“You’re friend’s a fucking asshole,” the crying girl told him.
“What did you do?” Josh said to me accusingly.
“We need to go,” I told him. He didn’t ask any more questions. He could see the writing on the wall. I walked through the house and straight out the front door to his car while Josh said some half-hearted apologies and goodbyes.
As we drove away, he asked me what had happened, and I gave him the run-down as he kept shaking his head in disbelief.
“What are the odds” he speculated, “that you’d have that conversation with someone who’d actually been affected that way.
“I feel really bad about that conversation and for that kid,” I mused. After a pause, I added “But that doesn’t mean my point wasn’t true.”
“You’re still worried about who was right?!” Josh asked with disbelief, “You really are an asshole.”
