Mr. Popularity

"Heaven forbid, Clark, that anyone should dislike you -- isn't that it? And the more admirers the better"
--N, New Haven, 1987

I found that in an old box of letters when I was cleaning out the attic at my mom's house. It was written by a young woman, who shall remain nameless, who had recently been drenched, along with me, back in 1987, with beer flung from a plastic cup at the Rockingham Club on Howe Street in New Haven, a pseudo-aristocratic shithole which surely long since vanished from the face of the earth. The beer had been flung by another jeune femme, also remaining nameless, who was underjoyed to see me with the co-drenchee, and with whom I ran off that night, in an act of utter cluelessness, as N so kindly pointed out. Needless to say, my actual girlfriend wasn't in town that night.

The comment struck me as so perceptive when I read it 8 months ago, so indicative of the psychological acuity that would later make her an award-winning writer. And very polite, when she had every reason to want me dead at the time (including reasons not disclosed here). When I dug the letter out a few weeks ago looking for blog fodder, the insight seemed less riveting, what's more striking is how strongly I took it, and how symptomatic that is of my own insecurity.

Like you give a fuck about that. You just want more stories about women throwing beer at me.

But it's still true, how rejection averse I am. I've been known to curry favor with assholes half for the sport of it, half because I scarcely know how not to. That's OK, right?