Thou Shalt Not Be Irritable

"Sex appeal is fifty per cent what you’ve got and fifty per cent what people think you’ve got."

I told my friend Mary via text that I felt irritable this afternoon.

I'm tired of Blank Blank and Blank.

Actually I told her that I was tired of it all.

When Oliver was little, he used to say, I hate everything and everybody. He said that despite looking like this:

A face like an angel and a tongue like a scythe.

I wonder where he got that tongue?

IHEAE

A boy I loved a long time ago told me that his old grandmother, a southern lady said, You mustn't hate anyone but the Devil.

Thou shalt not hate.

I read an article this afternoon about a study showing that children brought up in non-religious homes were more giving and altruistic than those brought up in Christian and Muslim homes. This difference held true in adulthood as well.

Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha

A friend from whom I'm estranged told me, just before he disappeared from my life, that he needed a break from me. That was two years ago. It took me by surprise, and it hurt. We'd been friends since we worked as waiters at a fancy restaurant in Chapel Hill. I read Eudora Welty's Why I Live at the P.O.* aloud to him one night while we hung out in "the back," waiting for the host to seat customers in our sections. I really loved this friend and think about him periodically, especially these days. We would have had so much fun talking about the clusterfuck that is Amerikkka right now. Or maybe not. He might be all filled with gratitude that my complaining ass isn't around to bring him down.  The reason why I'm telling you this is because sometimes I feel a twinge of admiration that he basically does what he wants, even if that means cutting people out of his life if they get on his nerves.

There's freedom in that, speaking of liberty and the fourth of July.

Was I speaking of the fourth of July? I think it set me off on the irritability train, to tell you the truth. Here are the things that irritate me:

1. the Fourth of July
2. pictures of fireworks
3. patriotism
4. statements like "the ultimate sacrifice"
5. people who believe so fervently in the 2nd Amendment and go to such great lengths to equate it with patriotism and American "values" that they drive around in a huge gas-guzzler in a parade. My sister took this picture somewhere in the Amerikkkan hinterlands:

I have no idea why these things bug me and why they've pretty much always bugged me. I think the fireworks thing this year is because it felt weird to be celebrating Amerikkka. It was a strain.

My friend is right that I complain too much. 

IHEAE

Except of course, you, Dear Reader.

Please, Dear Reader, tell me what irritates you.

*You can listen to Eudora Welty herself read the short story here.

Saturday Night West Coast Re-Post

Me, taken by D in 1986

I can never write too much about my friendships -- those with women and the rare ones with men. There is one man who is, certainly, my dearest male friend, but he's also one of my best friends, ever. I met him before I turned 21, in a restaurant where we both waited tables. At some point, I read him aloud Eudora Welty's short story Why I Live at the P.O., and nearly thirty years later we've made a pact that we'll read the other the same story, whoever is on his or her deathbed first. Or maybe I suggested the idea and forced him to agree. We continue to argue over who's dying first and will probably do so until he takes his last breath, as I read the final paragraphs:

Of course, there's not much mail. My family are naturally the main people in China Grove, and if they prefer to vanish from the face of the earth, for all the mail they get or the mail they write, why, I'm not going to open my mouth. Some of the folks here in town are taking up for me and some turned against me. I know which is which. There are always people who will quit buying stamps just to get on the right side of Papa-Daddy.
But here I am, and here I'll stay. I want the world to know I'm happy.
And if Stella-Rondo should come to me this minute, on bended knees, and attempt  to explain the incidents of her life with Mr. Whitaker, I'd simply put my fingers in both my ears and refuse to listen.

Have you ever written about your friendships? Leave a link in the comments, if you want, and tell us about it. 

Here's mine, to D:

TUESDAY, JANUARY 24, 2012

Love letters to friends

A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious

daring starts from within.

Eudora Welty

We ate shrimp and grits at a small round table, and we drank a lot of wine. We drank so much wine that I drew stick figures on a napkin proving that I wasn't a prude, and you leaned so far back in your chair (you might have been laughing) that it tipped over. We might have been screaming with laughter, as far as I know, the rest of the people in the restaurant receding, their mouths open, silent. Years later, I picked you up from a Greyhound bus station in Nashville, Tennessee, trailing an enormous suitcase. You fixed my air-conditioner and swept out my apartment, and when I came home from my shift, I lay on the bed and you on a sleeping bag beside me and we talked in the darkness, and we talked through the years on the phone and in letters and now over polenta and eggs and no one makes me laugh harder.

Love letters to friends

A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious

daring starts from within.

Eudora Welty

We ate shrimp and grits at a small round table, and we drank a lot of wine. We drank so much wine that I drew stick figures on a napkin proving that I wasn't a prude, and you leaned so far back in your chair (you might have been laughing) that it tipped over. We might have been screaming with laughter, as far as I know, the rest of the people in the restaurant receding, their mouths open, silent. Years later, I picked you up from a Greyhound bus station in Nashville, Tennessee, trailing an enormous suitcase. You fixed my air-conditioner and swept out my apartment, and when I came home from my shift, I lay on the bed and you on a sleeping bag beside me and we talked in the darkness, and we talked through the years on the phone and in letters and now over polenta and eggs and no one makes me laugh harder.

Stories

Switzerland, 2007

Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them.

Eudora Welty