This past Sunday, I was standing at the service bar at the restaurant I work at, pouring what was probably someones umpteenth diet coke refill staring out into what I define as my soul sucking abyss when this shrill, two Pinot Grigio deep voice slurred it's way into my ear canal,
"There's no such thing as nice guys"
I immediately snapped out of whatever twilight zone I had drifted off to and without thinking replied, as if it were any of my business,
"That's not true."
My bartender laughed. She looked like I had just slapped her in the face.
But someone was in need of their not-so-diet coke and I ran off.
The statement, however, stuck with me as I continued to take another table's order and I found myself formulating a argument against her rude, blanket generalization about half of the world's inhabitants and on the defense for men. A gender that has been a former source of a lot of personal pain and which I have developed an arsenal of arguments against for.... let's see.....the entirety of my life.
Back at the service bar I approached the friend who was being given this small minded excuse for whatever was wrong with men in her life and asked what the deal was. She explained the 'meanie' in this scenario (a coworker) and her had recently started hooking up outside of their place of business, but refused to take things to the bedroom.
"Maybe he's just trying to be a nice guy," she said.
"He won't sleep with you? That doesn't sound very nice to me."
I continued to explain to her, and her friend who was returning from her visit to the bathroom, that a statement like "there's no such thing as nice guys" is as silly and untrue as saying "there's no such thing as mean girls" which we all know is super untrue because there is an entire movie dedicated to that topic alone thanks to the birth of Tina Fey's comedic genius baby.
Blanket generalizations like this are so small minded it makes me want to punch girls like our shrill voiced, platinum blonde, bitch in the ovaries because she gives woman a bad name. If the timbre of her voice spitting terrible wisdom unto this planet wasn't enough to give me a distaste for this individual I found out from a friend that when I walked away 'dis bitch had rolled her eyes at me saying that I was obviously just too young to know any better.
Now, what McCunterson didn't know, is while I may be just a baby fetus of the adult population, I have had more 'bad' guys in my life than I wish on even her and it was swiftly accumulated by the ripe, young age of 24. I have certainly excused and accused the male population for a number of my problems including but not limited to my low self-esteem, the 20 pounds I gained sophomore year of college, my almost 2 year celibacy stint, the 15 pounds I lost a year out of college, and my mind numbing depression the winter of 2012.
A fucking douche-cake-with-a-dick named Matt Forney wrote an entire "Case Against Female Self-Esteem" and at another time I will not so kindly rip his pea sized brain to shreds with my classy wordage at some point in the near future. (And then I'm coming for your balls Matt. You can start trembling now.)
But somehow even though I have a million examples of just how mean the male population can be, personal and ...oh, I don't know, just by pulling thousands of examples of female abuse throughout the entire history of the world as we know it.... there is something called hope inside me for all humanity as I refuse to believe all men are bad.
People are people. There are "good" people and "bad" people but mostly people are just humans trying to make it through this world alive for as long as possible, with as much happiness as they can. We all bear the same potential inside to be "good" and "bad" depending on the day or whether or not mercury is in retrograde.
I consider myself to be a GOOD person, but I have definitely done some things that were not very nice. I have put my foot in my mouth and offended those I love. I've gossiped. I've been hypocritical and judgmental and I'm only halfway through this post. I have lied (not very well) cheated (how do you think I passed honors physics?) and even stolen (red bra, high school, bad ass).
I'm not proud, but I'd like whichever one of my readers has not at some point done one of those bad things in some way to shout me out on the book of face and say "ME! I AM THE PERFECT HUMAN SPECIMEN!" I'll buy you a nice, big cookie.
Guy's have the POTENTIAL within them to be very mean, yes. But so do woman and men, I'm sorry, but whatever mean tricks you think you have up your sleeve fall very short to the well-trained mind manipulation gifted to your female counterpart.
Men are mean, woman are mean, I used to have a pretty mean cat, didn't really like her that much. If you are complaining about this big ol' meanie in your life than get him the fuck out of there ASAP. But who am I to tell anyone who or what to waste their time with? I have certainly wasted my fair share of minutes to undeserving folks. At the end of the day though, the faster they're out and I mean OUT OUT OUT LIKE NO TEXTS CALLS DON'T SEE THEM IN PERSON OR STALK THEIR FACEBOOK GOOD GOD STOP IT NOW the better.
We are all, every one of us deserving of having our lives filled to the brim with the best of everyone, but there's a second part here that this ice queen wasn't acknowledging that is worth bringing up. Maybe the reason this woman had stumbled upon so much meanness, brining her to the conclusion "mean are big ol' mean daddy's" was that she in fact wasn't being very nice.
A lot about relationships these days is "what is this person giving me?" but what can you give them? Love is the only thing that brings love. Love for yourself. Love for your life. A love and and openness to others. And yes, it is this sort of vulnerability that gets people hurt in the first place but there's no way around it. To get love you must give love.
Look, I have given my blood, sweat, and tears to men who have trampled over me like unnoticed toilet paper stuck to their hush puppies. It wasn't love. It was desperation. It was insecurity. It was a need for validation. It wasn't me being too 'nice' it was me being mean. Mean to myself.
I've been the first person in the room to smoke on my cigarette of cynicism and blow toxic smoke into your lungs about how men are terrible humans who are only out to get their dick wet.
While I have held this opinion, making me no better than the cunt queen I am now arguing against, it is a recognizably small, narrow minded, callous opinion that is just not true. Men are not mean. They have the ability to be the knights in shinning armor. There are woman out there who have stories of good men. My Grandmother is one of them. She continually sits me down and tells me how my Grandfather was the BEST man. They were married for 60 years. They had problems I'm sure but he was a good man. My father is a good man. I have watched him and my mother butt heads countless times. I have yelled at my father and said things no daughter should ever under any circumstances say to her father's face but I've done it. Despite the fact I am a self-proclaimed "daddy's girl" and always have been.
My point here is NO ONE is ONE THING. We are all the make-up of our past, present, and wants for the future. We are all layered. Like Ogres. And I really hate these articles clouding the inter web with their misguided conclusions and closed mindedness. Men are not mean. Men are not "nice". Girls are NOT UNICORNS. Although sometimes I definitely feel magical so okay, maybe we're unicorns but we're not always majestic. Sometimes we're smelly. Sometime's we're cranky. WE DEFINITELY POOP. (It's serious. Can we please stop pretending this doesn't happen because it's caused me bouts of serious and painful constipation my whole life).
Ladies; stop saying men are evil. Men; stop thinking you're all such "nice guys" and don't know why you can't find a great girl out there because the flip side to this argument is as nice as you may be, no one owes you their undying love and affection just because you've bought them a drink and have avoided staring at their tits, pretending to listen to what they have to say for over an hour with the secret hope of scoring at a decent BJ.
Relationships regardless of gender, regardless of sexuality, regardless of even whether or not the relationship is platonic happens when one human is enjoying the company of a second human. Or a third human. Silly Mormons ammiright?
And maybe the only reason I can sit here perched on my pedestal of hope and good will towards man is one of them made their way into my life recently and it's really all I can manage to have the feels about these days. Because after having what seems like a billion terrible experiences with the opposite sex, having one good makes me forget that it was ever really that bad.
Because men, woman really do love your stupid, charming, penis bearing selves. That's why they bitch about it so much. If we didn't give a shit it wouldn't even be a topic of conversation and it's seriously THE topic of conversation like maybe 90% of the time. But woman are beautiful, majestic beings too and y'all need to get it in your thick skulls that if you have a lady you like and she has graced you with permission into her world DO NOT TAKE FUCKING ADVANTAGE. Because she was living before you and she'll live after you and she's handed dick on the daily so she definitely doesn't need you for that.
The point is, in my humble, perhaps aggressive opinion, can we all stop pigeon holing everyone to one thing? Be open to meeting people and cast your initial protective judgments like "hey something about that dude seems creepy" but be open to those judgements falling away and revealing your next boyfriend, or girlfriend, or best friend, or fuck buddy. Whatever you want.
Let's just drop our expectations that everyone is supposed to love us and instead refocus our energies to loving ourselves. And maybe, just maybe, if everyone works on being a better fucking human, the planet will slowly rid itself of what seems like a race full of ass wipes and cunt faces.
I'm getting off my soap box now.....
Broken Record OUT
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