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3:46 pm | 17 January 2003 | my back is broad/my feet are hurting

Margaret Cho's I'm the One That I Want was in part inspired by a warning she received from her former boyfriend, director Quentin Tarantino, while working on her short-lived television series. In one episode, her character performed stand-up comedy and, like Cho, used her family as material for her act. Her family became upset and in the episode's lamentably typical conclusion, she vowed never to do it again. Cho recalls that Tarantino couldn't believe how far removed her character was from the Margaret he knew, and he pleaded with her: "Don't let them take away your voice!"

I kind of feel like that right now--not nice, but afraid that that is just my personality--un-nice. Cruel, even. No, not cruel. Just crappy.

I fucked something up, but the reasons I think I fucked up are not the same as those in the opinion held by the wounded party, and so that party demands reparations, which I can make but only on a limited basis due to the constraint of time, and a total apology, which I can only partially offer, because my error (in the party's eyes) was one of having no tact or self-control, and though I am not happy about being tactless, I exercised as much control as I could, and I still fucked up, because I am not Gandhi.

Hey, look: I am a bitch. I am not a nice person. I have serious issues with both pride and self-loathing, and I hurt people, sometimes, by not thinking all the way through what I do. And "at the moment, I am paving the road to hell with energy." (It's from Jane Eyre.)

But I do not believe in absolutism; nor do I believe in totalitarianism. I am not wholly bad, or wholly selfish, and like all humans, I am highly imperfect, which means that I cannot be totally trusted 100% of the time (to clarify, the 'bad thing I did' wasn't, you know, smothering my sleeping lover with a pillow soaked in ether and then removing his liver and kidneys to sell them on the black market, or anything like that, although my rapidly deteriorating financial state and alcoholism might necessitate such an action in the near future).

Saying "You can depend on me" to another person is a promise, a solemn word, and I let that person down after taking on too heavy a load to bear. In effect, I said, "Yes, I can carry your things, all your things, give them to me," and then the person handed me 347 pounds of assorted stuff, and when some of it fell, the person was hurt. And for that, I am sorry. I will try. I will work out, and do calisthenics and yoga. But I will never be able to bench-press 347 pounds without the aid of drugs, and so the most anyone can hope for is that I can follow behind them while they carry their own stuff, and maybe with my newly-earned incredible flexibility and catlike reflexes, I can catch the things they can't carry anymore. I just can't bear the whole load. clm.


ps. I finished my motherfucking paper. anti-climactic, isn't it?

pps. I found out last week that an old friend, H., killed himself around Christmas. Here's where all that "praying for an afterlife" stuff comes in handy. I never thought I'd be the one saying it, but please, respect your lives. I love you.


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