Vape

You cannot control what people think of you. There is no way to be totally without fault in the eyes of the public. Even distant friends of your mother will begin to think about your shortcomings. When they do, they will want a reason why you aren’t nearly as amazing as they imagined you’d be.

You must be prepared to supply a reason in any situation. This is a means of controlling the public’s compulsion toward hateful assumptions about you. A beloved writing professor of mine once called The Beatles the “greatest band that ever lived”. Shortly after, I saw an interview with Paul McCartney. The reporter brought up McCartney’s supposed substance use. He responded by saying that he and his bandmates had chosen substance use as the means of giving the public something to hate them for.

The other day, I visited my mother. She was not expecting me, and when I arrived, she was on the phone with my former, now elderly baby-sitter. I stood patiently by the door waiting for her to end the call. Somehow, I was wrangled into the conversation and this old woman who used to baby-sit me when I was a very small child began to shout through the line: “Why aren’t you married yet?!”

It was all I could think about for days. All the implications washed over me, particularly, pedophilia. How could he be unmarried for so long? Perhaps, he isn’t interested in eligible adult women. Clearly, I had…