The Delights of Anger

"Something happens to people in the sunbelt. I believe the constant overdose of vitamin D has softened my skull and turned me nice, so that I've started to act like a nice person--though maybe with a little more of it I will overdose and just come into my own nastiness. For it is innate, at my core. The true flowering of my being is bored and acidic and annoyed with the incredible idiots who surround me." --Stacey Richter, "Christ Their Lord." Tin House, v21


The AC in my car is dead. My car is sitting, unrepairable, in the parking lot of the shop, to which I have no ride. I have 20 people coming to my house for a barbecue in, oh, a half hour, and my GRILL is in my TRUNK. Of said car. In said parking lot. On the other side of the TCs. [Update: I left a half-dozen friends at my house to go pick up the car, which had my grill in the trunk, but it was locked in the mechanic's lot. Ever heard of a Wok-a-que? Me neither.]

CAAAARAAAAAP.

My parents were here last weekend. When they arrived, my mother sent my father back out to the car to get the flower they’d picked for me from our back yard and hauled all the way up here in a wet paper towel from Indiana. When Dad was out the door and out of earshot—and you have to understand that my father is the calmest, sweetest, mellowest, most serene fellow alive—my mom leans over to me and says, “Honey, your father had road rage on the way here.” Road rage? I picture someone screaming explicatives while pointing a shotgun out a pick-up window at an old granny going too slowly in her Oldsmobile. “Dad?” I said.

“We were somewhere outside Madison,” so they’d been in the car for, oh, 6 out of 12 hours, “And someone merged and cut your dad off, and he said Fuck You, Goddamnfrickinffrackingblahbluhdeblah.”

That’s the thing about being pissed: he’d been on the road for hours, there was no end in sight. He’d been stuck with my mother, which can be enough to set off a string of F-bombs in itself, and was tired, hungry and had just braved the Dan Ryan on a holiday weekend during construction. We all have the capacity for so much annoying shit before one small, last thing will set it off. When the cup-o-anger is full, the smallest thing can cause it to runneth over.

That is me. Right now. My boss touching my computer screen with her grimy Cheetoes fingers one more GD time would send me through the roof. Furthermore, the fellow I’ve got a giant crush on just asked my friend out, and she told me aaaalllll about it. I feel like I’m in the sixth grade again, when My True Love, Shane, asked me to ask my friend Toni if he would dance with her, and I misunderstood him and thought he asked ME to dance, so I said yes, I’ll dance with you, and he said, No, I said Do you think TONI would dance with me. Not you. That’s how good I feel about today’s episode. However, unlike the sixth grade, I am now old enough to know he is not the love of my life, or even close to it, and I am old enough to come home and drink the white wine that is cooling in my refrigerator, instead of walking the three blocks home in tears. I mean really.

It isn't just those little things, y'all. I've had a winter that, let me tell you (without the details), has filled my cup-'o-tolorance to the brim. Anger. Growl. I find myself wrapping myself on the knuckles for the venomous, bitter dialogue of nastiness running through my mind on days like today. A chipper suburban moron in khaki pants gives me a Minnesota-fake “Howdy!” in the hall at work when I’m on my way out the door to Chili’s (I loathe Chili’s) for a business lunch, and I want to tell her (but don’t tell her) to get a GD personality and a decent pair of pants. It’s not pretty, and it is all quite illogical. However, it feels good sometimes, and frankly, nastiness holds significant value. First of all, because nastiness, on occasion, just feels damn good, especially when one does not apologize for it. There is far too little irreverence in life, and faaaarr to little in Minnesota. Once, I went to the CC Club hoping for an infusion of irreverence, but the almost-intimidating, overly-pierced greaseball who carded me gave me advice on how to keep my engine block from freezing. Minnesota. Jeesh. Portland—now there’s a town for a good whopping dose of satisfying irreverence. I love both cities for very different reasons, but I digress.

Forcing oneself to see the bright side, to make lemonade, to appreciate every single thing one has every frickin’ minute of the day, that’s crap, my friends. Reigning in the ‘tude may be good for general day-to-day attitude maintenance, but sometimes, it is best to freak the hell out for a while. Break a few plates, perhaps, or scream FuckYouYouFuckinFuck to the guy who merges wrong in Madison. For the love of God, don’t smear fake Cheeto goop all over my cubicle, and If you’d rather date a woman whose favorite song is ‘My Humps,’ then bloody well go for it. When the glittering fabric of life shines about as much as the roller towel in a Tijuana men’s bathroom, then, hey, tell off your mechanic or smash something expensive or bitch out the wench that stole your cab at 5 a.m. when you’re late for the airport (Hi, Relish!). Freaking out dusts life off, and before you know it, it’ll start to shine a little bit, and you’ll be better equipped to deal with the dirt.

So, back to my dad: He came back inside with a most gorgeous iris for me, his middle daughter, and he hugged me, and smiled really big, and he rested. I made him some tea, and we talked. Minutes after I went to bed, my dad came into my room and was scuffling around near the open door to my balcony. “What are you doing?” I said.

“I found a little lady bug,” he said, “so I’m trying to shoo her out the door.” He gently picked her up and placed her on the leaf of my petunia on the balcony, and went to bed, and slept very, very well.