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Tonight - well tonight I did a few things, but I only just want to now think about a conversation I was having.  I listened about heartbreak and loss and the attendant feelings that make a good fellow turn into a bad fellow, this from my friend, a kind-of-bad-fellow.  It's not something you begin as, right?  You get heartbroken and then you're turned bad, and that's what I was thinking about.  The seasons and types of heartbreaks and the gooey center of everyone's saddest states.

I think, a few people I've known, they've fallen in love once or twice, just quickly and early and it's paid off for them in the longer term.  Others, most of the others I've known, they've experienced betrayal, early and often.  Betrayal is one of those really interesting things - because it's not something that just casually can happen to you - you aren't betrayed by the clerk at the supermarket, you aren't betrayed by acquaintances - you're only betrayed by the people you trust in the first place.  People can dick you over all day long and it's somehow tolerable, de-rigueur even.  But somewhere among the sea of unknowable hearts and preposterous hopes there's that person who speaks to you in a language that only you two can share - a magical unity results that drives you together, in a surreal correspondence of fact and fiction and unutterable hope.  And then one day she tells you she's got a date with someone else, or she goes and sleeps with someone else or you find out that she's got this going on with all the guys, and so on.  I mean,  use girls as an example drawn from my own experiences - I'm sure it goes down similarly for people who fall in love with men, but so far I haven't.  Now - I think that there's an experience - for me there's been this experience where these betrayals start to seem themselves somewhat inevitable, commonplace in themselves, and as they occur they stop being surprising novelties, or fearful suppositions - but rather, de-riguer, the anticipated result of all casual interactions - "Obviously," you think to yourself, "the clerk at the grocery is going to give me the wrong change to try and make a little money on the side."  And you'll think nothing of it but be vigilant against it  and then you start to think, "Obviously, she will want to date other people on the side and not be true."  Because people are only just that and it's not a big deal, love, you realize it and know that it isn't important, only presented as such.

That kind of assymetry is weird - when it comes up.  So earlier in the week there was some trouble with my jaws.  I chewed through this stupid crown a bit ago and left it be - just a broken old tooth in the back of my head and finally it hurt enough that I figured I could spend some money to make it right.  I go to the dentist and the dentist was fumbling with words, scared and at pains - I thought at first he was just a weirdo - probably competent, but certainly a weird nerd who shoves his hands in peoples mouths all day for money  - a certain strangeness is to be expected.  But later I put it together that he was being purely and totally apologetic.  "Sir, what's happened is that the roots on that tooth have broken apart, the crown can't be replaced, I fear you've only one option..."  All hesitating and speaking in ellipses.  I'm of this thought:  "These fucking crowns cost a fortune and I have to replace it every three yeas?  What am I?  Made of money?  Take it out, I'll be fine, I'm fine, beautiful"  (anyhow if you're reading along at home and wondering - it's true, I'm still beautiful, it just happens that at the back of my head there's this one hole where once I had a tooth.  I ain't miss it.  You wouldn't even notice.  But the dentist is weird about it and I have a feeling now, planted by the surreptitious dentist, that Now, I'm facing an end, that I'm aboard the long journey through attrition into death. Okay - sure I am, I always have been, it's fine.  It's not important - except that now I worry that it is, being influenced by the dentist's cares.  But it's foolish too.  Because I came to the place thinking - "This hurts like crazy and I need it fixed."  and he came thinking:  "This man has exacting demands and a morbid fear of age."  Which is not true, so out of nerves and fears the dentist is apologetic, and out of pain and caring just about how much expensive things cost, I go in with completely asymmetric concerns.  

And this is the whole parable of all the things that happen between us, between you and me and me and everyone and you and everyone.  Some idea of what's expected and wanted that doesn't at all match.  I go to you thinking - we will have some conversation and then makeouts and then sex and then the proper oblivion of sleep because this is what people can have together.  And you think that our lives will be changed by proximity and that some unerring, absolute bond will form that will shake us to our fundaments.  I think about this:  "I once know how you feel."  And then I was betrayed - not by a person but really - by unreal expectations cultivated by a youthful mind, unaware that people might be other than themselves and made so by the proximity of love&trust.  Which things don't change people but rather just exist as appendages-  the hands by which illusions are torn away, the hidden limbs, secret wings that carry us out and out and away.  Because we are only just and Just isn't fair and it isn't ideal - it's merely just and so there are betrayals, and there always will be betrayals, because it's not that no one is true, that no one is good, that no one loves you - it's just that these things aren't as important as you maybe were led to believe. 

Date: 2013-09-23 04:46 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] symbioid.livejournal.com
So - I've basically got Mountain Dew Mouth...

It's kinda sucky. Your gums kinda go soft, you can have teethrot, I've had 2 teeth decay and collapse on me. I still have partial bits of teeth in them. They've never been pulled. I try to scrape tartar as much as I can. Eventually I want to go to the dentist. But then again - what a joke. Shit, my front cracked tooth was just a small plaster/porcelain whatever fill. It eventually chipped, and then got longer. I have no idea why the fucking bloody hell dental isn't covered by medical, same for optometry.

I dunno.

Teeth are status markers.

Dentistry is an early transuman/trans-ape technology designed to perpetuate a cultural status - have extra money? Fix your teeth, we have better tech now, so now we have all these veneers and crowns and bridges and shiny whites and straight fake teeth and grills...

Glaring angry apes. Territory and domain. Oooh Ooooh Oooh. Beating a chest, claiming turf, power, money.

Cosmopolitan White Trash, I am. Prole. Proletariat, that's really what we are, innit?

Date: 2013-09-23 12:52 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kingtycoon.livejournal.com
Dude, you can get your stuff fixed - the other apes don't need dentists cause they don't drink sodapop. You should go to the dentist, it's a good experience!

Date: 2013-09-23 03:12 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mordicai.livejournal.com
False. Chimps have teeth problems a lot; probably because of the fruit in their diet. Gorillas are usually decay free, though. But I mean, yeah, suds are a big problem for sapiens in the semi-developed world.

Date: 2013-09-23 04:06 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kingtycoon.livejournal.com
False. There are no other ape dentists.

Date: 2013-09-23 04:22 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mordicai.livejournal.com
You're silly to think so; of course there are ape dentists. Don't you go to the zoo?

Date: 2013-09-23 04:28 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kingtycoon.livejournal.com
Those dentists are human!

Date: 2013-09-23 06:01 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mordicai.livejournal.com
Well, yes. I'm confused; so what? There are plenty of humans who don't have dentists, too!

Date: 2013-09-23 06:17 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kingtycoon.livejournal.com
The Dentist is a human invention!

Date: 2013-09-23 06:19 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mordicai.livejournal.com
So is the Doctor but that doesn't mean other animals don't get sick or hurt!

Date: 2013-09-23 06:41 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kingtycoon.livejournal.com
False. The Doctor is a Toad invention.

Date: 2013-09-23 11:41 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mordicai.livejournal.com
See I fundamentally disagree with your thesis, plus I go to the dentist all the time to make sure I have extra teeth.

Date: 2013-09-23 12:51 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kingtycoon.livejournal.com
I got that robot tooth twice- it just was too expensive to keep getting.

So you think that you can go and betray people who don't care about you?

Date: 2013-09-23 01:30 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mordicai.livejournal.com
No, I mean, that people aren't born broken.

Date: 2013-09-23 01:37 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kingtycoon.livejournal.com
Ah, no - I'm not actually saying that. I'm saying that their raised broken. Not rolling songs of innocence and experience here - I'm saying that the youthful appetite is ripe for a common species of romance that realistically only comes around in fiction or in mutual delusional states and that it's scripted so often by so many authors that it's an anticipated norm.
Edited Date: 2013-09-23 01:39 pm (UTC)

Date: 2013-09-23 01:57 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mordicai.livejournal.com
Oh, the High Fidelity school of thought has merit, yeah! Have your read Nick Hornby? I wonder if you'd like him.

Date: 2013-09-23 04:06 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kingtycoon.livejournal.com
I liked that movie just fine, I didn't care about any of the others.

Date: 2013-09-23 01:19 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] forsakengirl.livejournal.com
Having unrealistic expectations is kinda my superpower.

I've never met a dentist that seems normal. I don't like how close they have to get to you. You know that scene in "Fire in the Sky"? Where he's remembering the aliens conducting tests on him? Well, that's all I can think of whenever I go to the dentist. Or the eye doctor.

I can't decide if my dentist is a closet masochist or if he has some sort of Jesus complex. Or maybe some combination of both.

Date: 2013-09-23 03:44 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kingtycoon.livejournal.com
My original dentist vanished - mysteriously - fleeing debtors maybe. He was good but nerdy and a little stuffy - I haven't had a regular dentist in a while, but I guess I'll just accept that they must all be weirdos.

Date: 2013-09-23 03:13 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] archivist405.livejournal.com
I like this and am glad to have read it today, although I should be keeping my mind on my work, it wandered here so much for the better.
I think what you're saying has truth to it, and the delusion of what love can be is the thing that drives one to madness in the face of betrayal. It isn't all that important, really, it's just a big wrestling match with one's ego. We all do "wrong" things, or things we know we shouldn't, so accepting a level of inherent selfishness is realistic. Betrayals can be small and accumulate over time, or they can be grandiose and cathartic. We all do this to each other, unknowingly at times or with full awareness. The dream of pairing off comfortably & peacefully is sewn into all of us, even when it feels like a cruel joke there is no escaping the trap.

Date: 2013-09-23 04:06 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kingtycoon.livejournal.com
The thing I think about is the person who chooses to shatter the romantic illusions - why do you do it? Why tip the ship, deny love and ruin someone's heart? It's such a strange endeavor. Nowadays- it's different, of course, adults, we date adults and we've got those expectations, but I was a boy and a girl broke my heart and I can't even understand why she did. "That one could start to play with the faith of fifty million people — with the single-mindedness of a burglar blowing a safe." What's the percentage in ruining people? That's what I want to ask.

Date: 2013-09-24 02:02 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] archivist405.livejournal.com
I've certainly been asking myself this question for a while now and it seems unanswerable. Is it intentional? I think it's just selfishness and the unknowning of how deeply or not deeply another person's feelings are connected to their heart.

Date: 2013-09-24 03:15 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kingtycoon.livejournal.com
Do you think there's that glance away, that glimpse of another future, someone can't see you in it, or doesn't care to - they have different hopes or another plan. They think - "This, now, but not forever." And then forever starts to creep up on them. They are monstrous by monstrousness.

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