Dexy stood up, curled her lip, and swiveled her hips. “Well, you gotta be sincere,” she sang in a horrid rockabilly twang that cut through all conversation. “Oh my baby, oh yeah!”
“Save it for the stage,” I said, yanking her down into her seat.
“Bye Bye Birdie!” Dexy explained.
“Go on,” I insisted. I was genuinely, daresay, sincerely interested in hearing what Cinthia had to say.
“Er, right,” Cinthia said, unfailingly polite. “Irony has become the language of our generation. And the problem with irony, and sarcasm, and its evil twin, snark, for that matter, is that nothing is too sacred for a funny punch line. If people spent one tenth the amount of time thinking about, oh, I don’t know, the midterm elections as they did trying to find pictures of Firecrotch’s umpteenth upskirt, maybe our country wouldn’t be so completely fucked up.”
Right at that moment, a bubbly blond Nickelodeon starlet who last year, at the age of sixteen, legally emancipated herself from her parents, took the stage wearing a fedora, a flannel shirt, and fishnets. If this young lass had begun her evening with pants, or shoes for that matter, she was without them now. The crowd thundered their approval as she giggled and hiccupped through “I Touch Myself.”
“Okay,” Cinthia said with a knowing raise of her eyebrow, “what are you thinking? I know you’re thinking something. Say it.”
I contemplated her question.
You have urged me to practice “the art of compassion.” Whenever I come across an annoying target for snark, I’m supposed to take a moment to consider the confluence of biological, psychological, sociological, and anthropological forces that have made this person who he/she is today. Being mindful of my fellow man’s struggles is supposed to make me less likely to take him out with my sniper tongue. What could be the downside to practicing the art of compassion? Shouldn’t we all try to be more mindful of others’ struggles? Especially in New York City, in which mythic comedies and epic tragedies can be witnessed on a single street corner while impatiently waiting for the right moment to jump the go signal and jaywalk to the other side?
You have been warning me about my callousness for years, though you’ve graciously blamed the city’s cruel influence, and not what I suspect is an inborn character defect. You see, it’s not that I don’t want to be a more compassionate person; I do. But that requires a certain sensitivity that doesn’t come naturally to me. And so what usually happens is that I overcompensate by being super-duper empathetic, often with ridiculous results. Like this:
Cinthia: My foot hurts.
Me: What happened?
Cinthia: I got caught in a bear trap and now it’s just a bloody stump.
Me: That sucks! I totally know what you’re going through!
Cinthia: You do?
Me: Oh, yeah! Totally!
Cinthia: Your foot got caught in a bear trap? And it turned gangrenous?
Me: No!
Cinthia: No?
Me: No! But one time I got a pedicure and the bitch clipped my pinky toenail way too low.
Cinthia: Gee whiz, I’m so lucky to have such an empathetic friend like you.
Okay, this conversation never happened, but honestly, I wouldn’t put it past me. As this fictional yet totally possible example illustrates, all my “empathy” accomplishes is taking the conversation away from the aggrieved party and back to me, me, me. Surely this has always been a deficit in my personality, and it’s why I’ll never further my studies in psychology to become a professional counselor/therapist/psychoanalyst. So I was speaking from experience when I told Cinthia that she was talking out both sides of her mouth.
“You can’t throw parties like this, with tabloid favorites like her,” I said, pointing to the stage, “and then lament about the death of serious discourse. You can’t have it both ways. Your intentions are good, but your execution could be better. And I should know, because I feel like my entire life is comprised of good intentions with suck-ass execution….”
“What did you just say?” Cinthia asked, eyes afire. She didn’t sound angry, but I was afraid I’d offended her. I suddenly got all flustered.
“Uh…Suck-ass execution?”
“No, before that. You said my intentions were good but that I could do better! That’s amazing! Amazing!”
“Uh…”
“Because that’s what I want to name my new association.”
“Amazing?” I asked.
“No!” Cinthia was shaking her head so wildly, her chandelier earrings slapped against her cheeks. “Do-Better.”
“Do-Better?”
“As in better than do-gooder. As in make the world a better place.” She slapped her hands on the table. “I knew it!” She beamed at me with her Baccarat teeth. “I knew I could count on you to tell me the truth. I have always admired your candor, Jessica. I wanted you to come here tonight and tell me what no one else had the balls to say. I’m looking for people like you to help me get Do-Better off the ground.”
“Uh, what exactly is Do-Better?” I asked.
“As you probably know, I inherited an obscene amount of money from my capitalist pig of an absentee father.”
Dexy broke in, unable to stop herself. “How much? I heard it was fifty million.”
Cinthia didn’t bat an eyelash. “More.”
“More, more, more!” Dexy squawked. “How do you like it? How do you like it?”
“Way more,” Cinthia said, already learning how to ignore Dexy. “The media analysis was all about, you know, the wayward paterfamilias trying to overcompensate for leaving me and my mother when I was still in preschool, but they were wrong. He knew the money would make me uncomfortable, and he just wanted to make me squirm, even after they sealed his tomb.”
Yes, Cinthia’s family is so dysfunctional that even a multimillion-dollar inheritance could be interpreted as a wicked “Fuck you!”
“Anyway, I wanted nothing to do with it. Don’t get me wrong, I know that even without his blood money I’m still grossly wealthy. But how much money does a person need? Seriously. I knew right away that I was going to give it all away.”
“All of it?” I asked.
“Every penny,” Cinthia said.
“Can I have some?” This from Dexy, of course.
“The people with power are the people with money….”
“I WANT THE POWER!”
“There aren’t enough of us trying to improve life, not just for the select few but for everyone. We live in the richest country in the world and we are only serving the top one percent of our own citizens. The majority of people in this county can’t afford health insurance. Or quality child care. They can’t pay for college without going into catastrophic debt. And I can’t even get into our appalling attitudes about poverty abroad.” She sipped her club soda.
“It’s easy to get overwhelmed by all the things going wrong in the world.” This from me.
“I know. So many fucked-up things, and even with my inheritance, not enough money to fix them all. So I had to choose. First I thought I would donate it all in one big lump sum in my father’s name to an organization he abhorred when he was alive, like the National Endowment for the Arts. Hey, Daddy, you funded that sculpture made from Hustler magazines and semen! Then I thought I could go global by using it to fund AIDS research. Or for micro-financing small businesses in undeveloped countries. Then I reconsidered and thought I should go local and donate it to a bunch of underfunded New York City public schools, or set up a series of scholarships for minorities at all the private schools that had the good sense to kick me out.” She laughed here, and I did, too. “The point is, there are so many causes out there, and I felt helpless because I couldn’t help everyone, as helpless and powerless as many of us feel when we see our government making decisions that we find morally repugnant, whether it’s waging an amoral war or giving tax cuts to the megarich—like me!—who need it the least.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“Som
ething more personal, yet more ambitious, and more likely to fail.”
I was listening carefully, waiting for her big plan.
“I am committed to funding a cross-cultural coalition of dedicated high school and college students, a philanthropic collective through which tomorrow’s change-makers can work together to have a positive impact on real people’s lives today.”
She paused here, obviously waiting for some sign of approval.
“So you decided to go with a scholarship program?” I asked, not really following her.
“More than that. A movement.” Cinthia slapped the table again for emphasis. “Do-Better scholarship recipients will promote a system of positive change, not only through their charity work, but by having a hand in selecting the next wave of Do-Better scholarship winners, who will one day do the same. In that way, Do-Better is self-sustaining. Our philosophy, our philanthropy, will grow and grow and grow….”
I must admit, I envied the young idealists who would get a chance to be part of Cinthia’s altruistic gamble.
“I would Do-Better if I were still in college,” I said.
“I know you would,” Cinthia said. “Because you get it. You totally get it….”
“So what exactly will you—”
“We!” she said, gripping my wrist.
“We?”
“Yes!”
Cinthia’s enthusiastic approval made me blush. “Okay,” I agreed. “What will we do?”
“Again, this is why I like you. You don’t just drink the Kool-Aid, swallow the rhetoric. You want real answers. And the real answer is: I don’t know.” She thumped the table once more with her palm as she laughed. “I have no fucking clue what we’ll do exactly. I can only tell you what I want to do….”
THE DO-BETTER MISSION STATEMENT
• INVEST funds in the next generation of philanthropists in the form of scholarships and employment oportunities
• INITITATE a system of economic sustainability through ongoing education and infrastructural rebuilding
• INAUGURATE a new guard of change-makers who support the collectivist ethos and sublate individualism
• INCLUDE other conscientious charitable institutions and nonprofit organizations in an open exchange of resources and ideas
• INCREASE awareness of socioeconomic crises here and abroad, and provide specific methods for effecting positive change
• INSPIRE tomorrow’s leaders to volunteer their assets—be it money, time, talents, or wisdom—today
Okay, I didn’t actually remember all this. I was, after all, a few drinks in at this point. And all the poorly sung pop-rock noise pollution was starting to addle my brain. I got this information directly from the Do-Better website, which hasn’t officially launched but is already tricked out with some pretty impressive interactive flash technology. I’m pretty sure that in the effort to distance herself from the superficial high-twattage of the Social Activists, Cinthia had erred on the side of pretension and lifted some of the more academic dialect of this mission statement directly from her Harvard senior thesis. (I had to look up the definition of sublate, which has the opposite meanings “to take away” and “preserve and assimilate.” It is the translation of a term favored by Hegel, the unreadable German philosopher I’ve forgotten about from my Contemporary Civilizations class at Columbia. I need to tell Cinthia that this is no way to get the masses on her side.)
If there was one thing I took away from Cinthia’s spiel, it was this: She is as rootless, as restless as I am right now. The obvious difference is that she’s got the resources at her disposal to put even her vaguest whims into action. Despite the pompous jargon, her mission strikes me as so wide-eyed optimistic. Sincere. And therefore subject to ridicule. Fortunately, Cinthia knows it.
“I’m a prime target for mockery,” she said, nodding toward Dexy. “‘Bad Girl Wants to Do Better.’ But I don’t care. I’d rather be ridiculed for that than for a grainy camera-phone video of me chowing down on Eurocock….”
Fuck.
I have to stop.
I can’t write anymore. Seriously, my hand is cramping into a deformed Thalidomide flipper.
I have to pick up Marin from St. A’s, anyway.
And really, what better way to end than on Eurocock?
sixty-eight
Another Brief and Meaningful Conversation with Marin
“Did Marcus ask you to marry him?”
“Uh…”
“Mommy said that Grandma said that Marcus asked you to marry him.”
“He did. But I’m not getting married, Marin.”
“Not ever?”
“Well, not…soon.”
“Mom says you’ll end up a spinster.”
“A what?”
“A SPINSTER.”
“I heard you. I didn’t know that anyone actually used that word anymore.”
“Mom does. But being a spinster is okay, right?”
“Being unmarried at twenty-two does not make me a spinster. Being unmarried at twenty-two or even forty-two doesn’t make me a spinster. Gloria Steinem wasn’t a spinster, and she didn’t get married until she was sixty-five! Christ. What is wrong with people?”
“Is Gloria Steinem related to Rebecca Steinem in my class?”
“I don’t think so. I’m sorry, Marin; I’m a little nutty today.”
“Because you’re a spinster.”
“Well, no…”
“But being a spinster is okay, right? Because Marcus is a spinster, too.”
“Uh, no. Marcus isn’t a spinster.”
“No? Are you sure? He reminds me of Driver, who is a spinster.”
“Driver? Liesl’s kid?”
“Yeah! That’s the one!”
“Driver can’t be a spinster because he’s a boy. And he’s only four years old.”
“Yes he can, too! He’s definitely a spinster. He spins around in circles all the time and never gets dizzy!”
“Oh. He spins. That makes him a spinster.”
“Yeah. He’s got modulation issues.”
“What?”
“It’s a form of sensory-processing disorder.”
“Okay, now you’re really losing me.”
“Driver gets all jumpy and funny like Marcus. And he spins in circles to help himself feel better. It makes his brain feel better.”
“Does it work?”
“Nope. He’s a wild thing.”
“Really.”
“But you should still marry Marcus. You know why?”
“Why?”
“Because then I could be the flower girl in your wedding! Shelby Guglemann got to be a flower girl in her aunt’s wedding and she got to wear the awesomest dress….”
“What if we don’t have a wedding? What if I don’t get married to him or anyone?”
“No wedding? Well, I guess you could come live with me when I’m all grown up.”
“Thank you, Marin. That would be perfect.”
“But only if my husband says it’s okay.”
sixty-nine
A Not-So-Brief But Still Meaningful Conversation
with Marin’s Mommy
“So this has been a busy week for you….”
“Marin already told me that you told her that Mom told you that Marcus proposed last week.”
“I didn’t tell her. She overheard me. And I also told her not tell you.”
“She did.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? I’m your sister.”
“I was going to last week. But then you sprung the whole legal guardian thing on me and…”
“And?”
“It didn’t seem like the right time.”
“Is now the right time?”
“For what?”
“To talk about it.”
“There isn’t much to say.”
“Jessie! Your boyfriend has asked you to marry him! How can you say that there isn’t much to say?”
“You’re right. There’s a lot to say. There’s
too much to say….”
“Mom said you said no.”
“Mom hears what she wants to hear.”
“So you didn’t say no?”
“I didn’t say no. But I didn’t say yes, either.”
“You said maybe?”
“I said I needed to think.”
“That’s what you told me, too. About the guardianship.”
“Right. I know.”
“You think too much.”
“Really? No one has ever told me that before.”
“So…what do you think about it?”
“About which part?”
“Both.”
“…”
“…”
“Why did you marry Grant?”
“What?”
“Why did you marry Grant?”
“Because we were—we are—in love with each other.”
“But you loved other guys before Grant. Like Jerry. Remember Jerry? From high school? You were mad about Jerry.”
“Oh my. Jerry…Def Leppard Jerry…He was the best kisser…. Mmmm…”
“Bethany?”
“Huh?”
“…”
“Jerry was my first love. My first everything. We were in high school and had no idea what we were doing. Jerry is best left behind as a bittersweet memory.”
“What if Marcus should have been best left behind as a bittersweet memory?”
“What about working together to build a mature relationship? A partnership based on mutual respect? What about making a life together? What about growing up?”
“Well, that’s just it. How can I even think about getting married when I’m still getting an allowance from my big sister? Part of growing up is getting a real job that pays me enough money so I can stop bumming off you….”