Negative Things

So I got a new job! Yea! I would post more about it, but the number one rule of blogging is do not blog about work. (It's the second rule too.) But anyway I call my mom to tell her the news, and I receive a voicemail in return, which essentially says, "Congratulations! Oh and you sound constipated in your voicemail greeting." I know I sound like I'm eight years old; no need to bring the c-word into the equation.

Negative thing, the second: I've been noticing a disturbing trend among young New York men. This could be a national thing, but my anthropological studies only take me to northern Brooklyn and lower Manhattan. In talking to random guys at bars, parties, and the check out line at the supermarket, I've gotten an increasingly large number of backhand compliments. One insulted my job, another my taste in movies. I wrote it off as poor social skills; that these people were raised by wolves. But after a weekend of purusing mens' magazines, I've discovered that this is a pick-up tactic advocated by said magazines and various late night infomercials. They call it a neg. Apparently the thinking behind this strategy is that women have such low self-esteem that any negative comment will just eat away at them until they have won the approval of the commenter by giving him a blow job. My problem with this is not that it's exploitative, which it is, or that it works on women who would probably give anyone with a five dollar bill a blow job in the parking lot anyway. What bothers me is that these people are not interested in meeting someone, they're not even interested in the sex; they are just interested in subjugating someone else to make themselves feel better. We all do it to a certain extent, but when you work so hard at it, it's just sad.

Lastly, something positive. It's welcome week at NYU, and all the frosh have moved into their dorms. The frosh look so delicate and virginal. The seem as if they are hothouse plants just exposed to the sun. I remember that feeling so well. My welcome week was three years ago. For the first time I had had the freedom I craved, and I was finally able to test my limits. My freshman year was a mess. My sophmore year was only slightly better. I had wanted to become on the outside the way I felt on the inside for so long, but I'd felt too constrained by everyone else's expectations to do that. I don't know if I ever did reach that goal. I can't tell; I don't feel the same on the inside as I did then.