Heroes and Monsters

I've been feeling horribly alone lately. Normally when this happens, I just cut ties and move on, because, hey, what ties? Now, however, I am married, even if my husband is going through a nihilist phase and therefore may or may not believe there is any purpose behind the whole thing. So, instead, I have to fantasize about becoming Oliver Reed and dying in a bar in Malta, in the arms of my wife, after downing three bottles of rum and arm-wrestling five sailors.

This is a peculiarly upper-class fantasy, I realize. I know a fair number of rich people and find all of them horribly boring, so instead I romanticize blue-collar life. (Although you may note that Oliver Reed was in a lot of cool movies, which is a lot more interesting than working on an assembly line.) This fetishization of poverty is horrible and exploitative and represents everything that's wrong with most of the last century's social movements, but there it is. I desperately want to take up smoking, drinking, and brawling on the street . . . but I know I would just be a poseur. I can't even open a jam jar without hurting my hand.

This does not stop me from being angry at my friends for not being sufficiently "hard" and seedy.