In which I am an ass, often

It was in the middle of feeling self-righteously angry with Zach that I realized that actually, no, I was the one in the wrong. But I had already committed to the moment -- committed to the moment for the last half hour or so, from the moment I got home from a zoo lecture to when Zach came home from dinner -- and feelings were already hurt and pretty awful things had already been said ("Go ahead and say what you have to say; I'm as angry with you as I can be." -- M. Bevel) and I didn't know what to do.

"I don't get why you're so upset that I didn't stay for the rest of something I wasn't enjoying in the first place."

Yesterday, Clyde Roper, who is Dead to Me, spoke to the invertebrate volunteers at the National Zoo about cephalopods -- octopuses, squids, cuttles. And before we even get to that, I should probably share the quick story about how I had ugly thoughts about a blind woman for Christ's sake. I'm standing on the up-escalator at the Cleveland Park metro, reading Shirley and totally You-Go-Girl!-ing Caroline in my head, when this blind woman comes marching up the escalator with her seeing eye dog in tow. The rules of any and all escalator are (a) Stand to the right; and (b) Walk to the Left. However, because Helen Keller has her pet with her, she's taking up the whole escalator on her quest to reach the top. Which means that now I, too, have to start walking up the escalator. And I now can't read, and I'm at a good part in my book, and I have to climb the escalator which okay, yeah, that's probably good for me but I don't want to be coerced into fitness by the disabled. So I'm clomping up the escalator, muttering things like, "Where the hell does a blind woman have to get in such a hurry?" and "Can't she see I'm reading here?"

Now, Clyde Roper is Dead to Me because maybe three years ago I sent him a fan email. In '99, I think, the Discovery Channel had a program on called "Search for the Giant Squid" that featured Clyde and I made everyone in my house wear a squid hat I made out of brown paper and we ate calamari and watched as the Giant Squid pulled an Al Capone's Vault on us and didn't show. So, the email I sent was sort of a, "Sorry that didn't pan out, but hey, it's 2002 and I think you're fantastic." Also, at the time, there was this cocky young upstart on the Giant Squid scene named Steve O'Shea who was trying to push Clyde out of the way with his fancy new science and his New Zealand accent and I wanted to show Clyde that when the revolution came, I had his back.
Anyway.

I send this email and I don't hear from him and I think, "Well, he was looking pretty old; maybe he died." Only, 'course, he hadn't because there he was, last night, speaking to us. During dinner, before the meeting, I told a fellow volunteer, Sharon, that Roper was Dead to Me and she laughed that sort of protective I'll-pretend-that's-funny-because-it's-actually-weird laugh. Later, though, after the discussion when I was saying goodbye to my friends Suzanne and Scott, Sharon comes up and says, "Mike, you'd better get down there. He's giving out his email address." And I am incensed. "So he can what," I asked her, "not answer them?" She laughed that protective laugh again. I marched down to Clyde.

As I approach, I overhear him say that he's been in correspondence with a "young man from Ohio." "Oh, so now he's everybody's pen pal," I thought. This other, painfully geeky teenaged girl is monopolizing Clyde, telling him that if he gets an email from "starkitty2000@[redacted].com" he'll know it's from her. I toy with the idea of submitting her email to porn websites and sites for Russian Brides because I'm In a Mood, but think better of it. At the first sign of a break in the conversation (Geeky Girl stopped to fish something out of her braces), I stepped up and said, "Clyde Roper? I sent you an email 3 years ago and you never wrote me back." He hemmed and hawed about how he was sorry and he had probably been out of the country and it's tough to keep up with and I stand there, like I'm somehow owed an answer. "Clyde Roper," I said, as I made my departure: "You're Dead to Me." He promised he would respond to the next email I sent.

I had invited Zach to come to the lecture because it was open to the general public because apparently to stay an emeritus at the Smithsonian you have to have so many "I gave a boring talk here" hours under your belt. Zach agreed, which is rare for Zach, and he stayed for an hour, which is par for Zach, and then he left because honestly: the talk was not so much. It's not like I'm some sort of Jacques Cousteau figure in a knitted cap with mournful flute music in the background while I talk about the "bosom of the ocean" and "the sea, in all her majesty." Truth is, I'm a little terrified of the ocean and whales in particular and yeah, go ahead, yuck it up because what could be funnier than someone's legitimate phobia, asshole? Anyway, I'm no marine biologist, but I know a bit from octopuses and I didn't learn anything last night that I didn't already know. And Clyde Roper's supposed to be some sort of Cephalopod Super Genius. So Zach leaves, says he's going to grab a bite to eat, and I'm left alone at this lecture that's not all that great listening to the two teenaged boys behind me make fun of Clyde Roper's New England accent which: hee. But also: knock it off because it stopped being funny 20 minutes into the lecture.

I choose not to meet Zach at the restaurant after the meeting because I'm In a Mood. I make passive-aggressive "I wish you'd stay, but go if you have to, you will anyway" noises when he left; I called him at the restaurant and asked if I should just wait for him at the subway station. I fumed on the way home and worked myself into a Towering Inferno of (Misplaced) Anger and Rage. By the time Zach came home, I had made the entire evening his fault, from the blind woman to the Geeky Girl to Clyde Roper Who is Dead to Me. When Zach started a load of laundry, I pounced.

It was one of those stupid arguments that wasn't at all about what I was riled up about (his leaving the lecture) and was instead about things I had let bottle up inside me (royally fucked up childhood with reprecussions that just don't seem to stop). And when I realized that -- in the middle of being self-righteously pissed like I mentioned up top -- I felt even worse. Here I was, saying awful things to and about the man that I am most certainly madly in love with.

And then I started crying.

And then I cried some more.

And then I got snotty -- not like sassy snotty but gross snotty, the kind that when you were a kid you'd never really wipe so there'd be this clear veneer of snot-crust on your upper lip.

I wasn't entirely mad at Zach. I was mildly irritated. Who I was really hurt by was me -- my own mind ganging up and kicking my own ass. I have this thing where I feel like I'm required to stay in uncomfortable situations because it's polite. Zach, who is healthier in this regard, figures that you give it a college try and then you count your losses on the way out. "I don't think it's healthy that you'd want to stay at a lecture or an event that you hated." And he's right. But rather than dealing with it as a Mike-quirk, I turned it into a Zach-shortcoming. Because I'm Just and Fair. I always feel that my own needs and wants have to come secondary to whoever else might be in the room. It's this really gross way I have of "caring" for other people that's completely toxic and not helpful.

This was a whole lot of personal to lob onto an unsuspecting public (all 12 of you). I think my hope is that by writing it down I'll better recognize it in the future and nip it in the bud before I'm sitting all Glenn Close-like from that one scene in Fatal Attraction where she's vacant and numb on the floor of her kick-ass loft while flicking the lamp next to her on and off as she goes over all the recipes for rabbit stew she has in her repertoire.
Clyde Roper, though, is still Dead to Me.