Common courtesy
Many of you may recall last week’s column in which I pontificated on the meaning of MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter—and you probably laughed so hard you shot Boones out of your nose. If you don’t remember, just check out your keyboard. See how the keys are sticky and peach-scented? That’s all me.
But in case you missed it, here’s what happened: I offered the jaw-dropping insight that the Internet has turned people into solipsistic assholes who broadcast the minutiae of their banal existence every second. But we make that bed. We have ultimate control over the cyber-drivel and, should insipid musings offend us, we have the power to friend or un-friend, to follow or un-follow.
Unfortunately, the real world offers no such assurances.
Now, here’s the part where you can call me Velazquez, and I straight paint a picture: Steam room at the gym. I’m post-work out in a towel. I am alone. Great abs. Enter two prototypical Chads, big-spender types, the ones with gel in their hair, popped collars, and Affliction T-shirts, and a good inch of space between their upper lip and teeth so that their faces are frozen in a permanent, uncomprehending Jay Cutler-like stare.
CHAD 1: How did your night end up?
CHAD 2: I couldn’t trick that girl into fucking me so I got a blowjob and passed the fuck out.
[Both high-five.]
CHAD 1: You going to opening day tomorrow?
CHAD 2: Fuck yes!
CHAD 1: God, last year I was blacked out before the game even started. Me and Dane took Jäger shots all day, and both of us got caught cheating on our girlfriends. Ridiculous.
CHAD 2: Is that the day Dane broke his ankle falling down the back staircase of Spill?
CHAD 1: That’s right. After he got a B.J. in the bathroom stall!
[Both high-five.]
And here I became torn. On the one hand, I wanted to leave the company of these vapid douchebags immediately. But on the other, they were nailing every frat asshole cliché with such speed and aplomb that I wanted to see how far they would go, figuring there had to be some point where they broke character. We’re just fucking with you, man. But those are pretty good impressions, right? But they never did. When they rounded the corner and began recounting a tale that was essentially date rape, I swallowed the puke in my mouth and headed for the showers.
"What flaming assholes," I thought as the cold water rained down on my head. I understand we’re all protagonists in our autobiographies, but have some awareness of your surroundings. Not everyone wants to hear your pot-bellied tales of prick conquest. As I dressed, Chad 1 and 2 re-emerged. The flat-screen on the wall was showing a promo for some 90210 re-make and Chad 2 shared with Chad 1 the only episode from the original he could recall: It was the one where an older man with a fancy car pursues Brenda, and Brenda’s family warns her he is only after her for sex. “And all I can remember thinking,” he ejaculated incredulously, “is that this guy is supposed to be some big stud and he can’t even close the deal with an 18-year-old? Fucking pathetic.”
I left the gym before my head exploded and tried to put it behind me. Then lo, that same night at a bar with What’s So Funny roommate and occasional correspondent Monty, we witnessed the brackish female counterpart to the Chads—a brunette loudmouth who cackled and cawed similar whorish platitudes, a cavalcade of, “Oh my Gods,” “Get outs,” and my personal favorite, the white-girl “mmkay.” Christ, I’m not asking for the moon here, I just simply don’t want to be ear-raped every time I go out.
Monty and I retreated to another bar, one full of career alcoholics, where the only sounds outside of your own conversation are a beat-up jukebox, ferocious coughing, or deep, regretful sobbing. We discussed how unfortunate it is that we cannot unsubscribe to morons who drift into our periphery like we can on the Internet. Then we got drunker and wondered if we were assholes for thinking such things. I got to wondering if maybe I was as annoying to others as the Chads and the she-bitch were to me, my reflections as grating and threadbare. And then I realized that of course that wasn’t the case.
I mean, it’s not like anyone ever gave those assholes a column.
