Well, neither of these scenarios ever happened, and since I'm now in a place when I don't feel any kind of ill will toward anybody I can look back and say that it was pretty dumb of me to want any kind of revenge, emotional or otherwise. It wouldn't have made me feel better. Probably. But for some reason, we seem as a culture wired to desire vengeance. At some point in the future I'll probably have a girl leave me for some better guy, and I'll feel the same things. The only reason I'm remotely interested in going to my high school reunion is for revenge. (Psychological. Like if I was a millionaire or famous I could rub it in everybody's face that I hated). Many (of my students, anyway) would argue that the reason we're in Iraq is to get back at "them" for what they did to us on 9/11.
Where does this come from? Are we just a culture of revenge? Certainly, it's not just America. Look at all the great Japanese or Italian revenge films. Is it humans? So this week's topic is revenge. Feel free to take the philosophical route with it, but I think hearing people's actual revenge stories would be very interesting, too. The only revenge I've ever actually gotten is in poetry form. Or the time there was this girl we all hated in Tallahassee we called Punk Rock Amy, so I made her into an unflattering character in Weed Time. Not that she ever saw Weed Time. Or knew that we called her Punk Rock Amy. Or would have cared. She probably just would have punched and/or flashed me, which is basically how she rolled all the time anyway.
PS - This revenge thing has nothing to do with my most recent ended relationship, which ended on good terms. There's no ill will there. There might be annoyed will if I stub my toe on these boxes again. But that's my own clumsy fault.
PPS - The situation can basically be applied to almost every other time I liked a girl and she broke my heart. So nobody take this personally or anything if you happen to be a girl I liked and broke my heart at some point. I probably got some good poems out of it.
PPPS - Courtesy of Nick:
4 comments:
Glenn, I love you and I will NEVER break your heart. Unless it's part of a strange, kinky, sex thing. Then I will break it to a million pieces.
i love this, i have had many a revenge fantasy that went unfulfilled because i knew it would be ultimately something I would probably feel dumb and petty about, but at the time, oh those lusty revenge fantasies, they satisfied a deep need.
and i have had revenge exacted upon me as well, and i think i must write about it, i will, and it will be at chezwhat?
You broke my heart when you moved to Florida, you bastard. I should have known you'd choose the food, shelter, financial support and parental guidance of a loving family over our dorky but profound and totally hetero friendship.
I should have known.
When I was in my second year at university the slumlord who owned our building wouldn't give us back our $750 damage deposit even though we didn't put a scratch on our apartment, and she told us we were lucky she wasn't taking us to court for not giving her four month's notice that we weren't renewing our lease. Her husband left his brand new truck sitting in the parking lot of our building the very next night and I keyed the shit out of it. I'm talking end-to-end and up onto the hood as hard as I could press. It felt fucking awesome.
I'll take revenge if I can get it, but I don't usually hold a grudge unless someone really fucks me over and is visibly smug about it.
As a lazy person, I stick with schadenfreude over blatant revenge.
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