PARTY HARDY

I AM TOXIC AND DERANGED

Every post is me not getting it. Every post is me tapping on a glass jar. (The previous sentence is purposefully ambiguous.) What would it even mean to be successful online. Would I have to write comments. Would people write comments and I would feel compelled to respond to them. I don’t think so, chump. Not so fast. (Unless I like you. Don’t worry, I’m having fun :)) What would success mean before the internet, if it were just on television. A TV show where you never watch television. A successful internet post written offline. Truth is, I don’t think success has really changed much. A man with some space, maybe a woman. You can always become a pirate, most don’t have the stones. Success really hasn’t changed. Circumcision was a symbolic castration and clear demarcation of slaves, you could write a Substack article about its ubiquity in the United States and what that says about contemporary slavery, you’re welcome, fellow Stacker. (My work is free because it’s good.) I was never invited to the party. I was never invited to any party. I showed up because the music is loud and I can’t sleep. True story: I made a playlist on my iPod called “party hardy” and in college I walked into a house party and took the aux cord and played music and people came up to me all night asking what was playing because they had never heard it and it was good. For my university entrance essay, I wrote about “ointment” being my favorite word, true story. I went to a very good school. I studied physics. In physics classes, I asked my peers about movies. They thought I was weird, they didn’t watch good movies. In art classes, I asked my peers about space. They thought I was weird, they weren't interested in theoretical cosmology. I missed the memo. I forgot to update my address on the insurance form. The real Trial was in Kafka’s head. Some of us never got the invitation.

Recently, one person called me toxic and another called me deranged in response to something I wrote which was more personal than anything else I have published so far. Reading their comments, my heartbeat elevated, I could feel my face redden, and that was about it. After a few minutes, I was back to baseline. That’s it? That’s the extent of some bullshit nightmare that you’re been totally imagining? A few minutes of minor discomfort? Nothing is as bad as you imagine it will be, and if it is that bad, you probably won’t have much time to spend imagining.

I fantasized that my former best friend read my article and called me and we talked like we never stopped. She didn’t need to read the article, I fantasize about it anyway, I love her. I don’t really understand writing a negative comment anywhere, being a little shit. I have been lurking 4chan since I was 13 in 2007 and I still don’t get it. Keep scrolling, why stop and stew? I get it if you’re a child, it makes sense then. Lots of grown up children these days, adults are a rare breed. (Insert link to Schopenhauer’s essay about women.) I actually wanted to engage with the woman who called me toxic, but she blocked me, very gay. I’m not anti-block, go for it, it’s easy as pie. But I was curious if her diagnosis of my toxicity extended beyond my use of naughty words, if her reaction wasn’t the standard case of someone failing the Inverse Turning Test. Please prove me wrong. I dare you to prove me wrong. I’m begging you.

A few years ago I dated a woman who declared herself non-binary. She was beautiful, intelligent, had a good sense of humor, we had a shared interest in entomology. I didn’t care about the non-binary stuff, I told her to her face that I didn’t care at all, I challenged her to prove me wrong, please, I begged her. My position is quite simple, nature is real, what new discovery have you made? I am begging you. I am toxic. I am deranged. You should easily be able to dismantle the deranged, toxic things I am saying. Please, I am begging you, because if you—someone very smart, whom I respect and enjoy spending time with—cannot do it, if you cannot do it at all, then I am really and truly fucked. Part of my thinking was, well, if this is something very important to you, if this whole non-binary thing is something real you have thought much about and around which you will alter your language and behavior, then maybe I’ve overlooked something and you can tell me about it. Maybe I’ve got a blind spot. I think this is a positive spin you could put on, what someone else might call, pathological disagreeableness—it’s a way to strengthen an argument by finding the flaws in reason and logic then providing fortification or abandoning ship if all hope is lost. I will disagree with someone just for the joy of the conversation; nodding in agreement has its place but it bores me pretty quick. (Most of the time, I don’t say anything at all. I am a ridiculous contrarian but I won’t jump into someone else’s conversation and I’m such an asshole that I usually deem most people to be unworthy of engaging with. Leaving a comment on an article I disagree with? Not my style, they don’t deserve my attention and I’m not interested in arguing online.) So I tried to talk about the non-binary thing with this beautiful woman. (I had never been more excited about dating a woman. We had similar gender-bent costumes for Halloween, she was a weird artist like me.) I asked if her vagina was non-binary. I asked if she was just playing a word game that everyone else had to play unless they were Mean or Toxic or Deranged or, God forbid, uncool. I asked her about gender roles, gamete size, statistical outlier intersex diagnoses, I pulled out all the stops because I am an autistic lover of truth (and I am handsome so I know I can get away with saying wild (wild means true) shit to women. What’s the difference between an eccentric and a creep? A positive canthal tilt. One time I was on a date with a different woman and she called me an incel and two hours later we were having sex. Most of the things women say do not matter, at all. Remember, I am toxic :)) I was begging her: prove me wrong, prove to me that you aren’t playing a little word game. If you can’t do it, smart, beautiful woman who I want to spend time with, if you can’t do it at all, then I know for sure I will never be invited to the party. She was just a beautiful tomboy, the sex binary is a fact of nature, a woman can act masculine, who cares, doesn’t matter if that upsets you, doesn’t matter if being a woman is uncool these days. (See how I spun her perspective into an anti-woman ideology? (It is, by the way.) Hell, it even erases women. Imagine if you were a word game player and you declared words are violence. Wow, this cute enby just killed all women. Word games are retarded.) Did she discover something new about nature or was she under the spell of local social consensus, which, funnily enough, also provides a convenient label for better targeted advertising?

After twelve days of dating, she called me on the phone to tell me that she was breaking up with me because I didn’t respect her pronouns. I said ok. Another invitation lost in the mail (ok, maybe I burned this one).

For someone who considers me deranged, toxic, etc., I was actually being totally disrespectful to this person. By not “respecting her pronouns” I was in fact being disrespectful, end of story, there’s no way that I could have respected this person (I am writing “person” to be respectful now. “Woman” fortifies the sex binary, it is more respectful to melt down a woman into a mere person. (A consumer is even more respectful.) Non-binaries, sorry, enbies, love to buy this brand of eye shadow, they love this brand of pills and you will too!) One time I was at a nice restaurant and got a $60 steak. It was overcooked. I had tickets to a show after after dinner so I couldn’t wait around for a new steak. I told the manager to give me the steak for free. My girlfriend told me that I was rude. I told her that it’s rude to charge $60 for a steak and overcook it. Being “non-binary” isn’t a thing; it’s disrespectful to ask me to be a reality-denying retard. I was actually the most respectful peer this woman ever had. You stupid faggot. I respected her so much that I refused to lie to her. I was desperate for her to tell me something new and I thought she would be able to because she was smart and funny. I liked her a lot. My desperation to hear her perspective was a sign of how much I respected her. Playing along with a little fantasy word game to spare someone’s short-term feelings is what a child does, and I am a man, which is what women (even non-binary, smart retards) actually want. She tried talking with me months after she dumped me, by the way; this isn’t some flex, it’s just reality.

Here’s a picture of the woman who called me toxic responding to my last article about losing a friend I love:

Reality with a hard R