Friday, October 29, 2010
Betrayal and my betrayals
Tonight's post is brought to you by a Spanish wine named "Wrongo Dongo" that was recommended to me by the nice gay at the Kafka wine shop. So helpful! This wine is perf.
After the semi-rambling I puked out last night, I felt as if I needed to write about a little something else. I've been thinking heavily, while drinking heavily, about Harold Pinter. I've been thinking about minimalism, and I've been thinking about Harold Pinter, and I've been thinking about Betrayal.
I've been a performer for my entire life. Even though I spent my formative years on the stage, I never felt anything as painful and as bizarre as when I saw Betrayal for the first time. I was either a freshman or a sophomore in college, and I was taking an introductory acting class at my very bourgeois, very tiny private college, in a very small town in Wisconsin. The story is as follows: Three people spend their entire lives figuring out that they have all fucked each other in various sexual and non-sexual ways. There are the two marrieds, Emma and Robert, and then Robert's BFF Jerry(who is also married) who enters into an affair with Emma whilst at a party thrown by Robert and Emma. The story is told beginning with the end of Emma and Jerry's affair, and we take the horrifying trip backwards through all of the stolen moments, and almost uncoverings of the affair, right up to the very first illicit kiss between Emma and Jerry.
I want to hate these men, and this woman. I want to stop them from making mistakes that will ultimately ruin their lives. Every time I have the opportunity to see this show, I will see it. Harold Pinter is the master of minimalist theater because he doesn't waste your time talking and singing about every single arbitrary thing the people in the cast are doing at any given time. The dialogue is so short and loaded, and that is why it is so uncomfortable. It is possible to communicate with truncated language instead of a Gilmore Girls-esque verbal diarrhea landslide.
Any time I start thinking about Betrayal, I start thinking about our relationships with the people who are closest to us. I start to think about all the threesomes and foursomes, and in some sad, silly cases, twosomes we get ourselves into.
Two days ago, I was getting my hair cut, and my stylist, who is also my friend said, as we gossiped about our relationships and non-relationships, that "we never like who actually likes us. We always want the asshole." I don't mean to get all superficial, selfish, sonofabitch Carrie Bradshaw, but.....the FUCK? As much as I want to hate Harold Pinter for being a misogynistic man, I can't help but agree with Emma. Why not try to have both of the men you want? Because threesomes never work out as glamourously as the movies allow them to be. In real-time, they are very much like Betrayal. We start something with one person, knowing goddamn well that this is the person that is mean to be the "right" choice, and, then, cue the third party who is more exciting, even a titty bit dangerous, and absolutely the wrong choice. The wrong choice will always win because it makes a person disassociate. Psychologically, you spend the vast majority of your time rationalizing why spending time with the wrong person is ok, and why spending time with the right person is boring and will never go anywhere.
Betrayal can serve as a morality tale for all of us who are in-between friends/lovers. Telling a person you are in love with, that you are in love with them is terrifying, and can be, in some cases, totally out of line and a case of mistaken identity. The line you cross can and will become unclear, and you will decide that the wrong is the right, and the wrong is the absolute.
Pretty words are what sways us in the end. Both the "right" and the "wrong" have said the right things, and I have said the right things, but we cannot all live together in peace and harmoneeeeeeeeee...Make a choice. Claim this person or lose them forever to the shit show that is non-descript relationships.
Claim a person and eliminate the prospect of a Betrayal like betrayal.
I can never love you both the same way.
XOXO
Betsy
p.s. Even if you thought it was Chopin's Nocturne in C Sharp Minor, this is my favorite piece of music ever written.
Private Lives.
In my youth, I spent many nights wasted out of my skull, entertaining the idea that somebody out there gave an ounce of a fuck about what I had to say. I would spend my nights writing about everything all over the place on MySpace, and, even though the medium, for a few seconds of sobriety, felt like a diary that no one would read unless instructed to(in a last will and testament sort of way), i knew that it was basically like jizzing my feelings all over the internet. I used to mainly write when I was 100% drunk, and I only wrote about people I knew were not "subscribers." Jesus I am so cool. Every once in awhile I'd get a case of the sads, and write about some poor fool named Patrick who I used and abused for many years. All of this information is free to the public. Anyone can go into my old ass generic ridiculous MySpace profile, and not only see old embarassing photographs of me, but you can read all about it. If you want the LOL of your life, take a trip back in time with me.
I'm J/K. The story is that I'm home alone all weekend, and if you are my friend on the internet, you would already know this. If you're not, then I don't know you, because if we're not friends online, then who are you really? All night I have been updating my status about what movies I'm watching, what I'm doing while I'm watching them, what I think about them, how I'm teaching myself Chinese phrases so I can go to Chinatown and feel cool and show off my totally excellent learning skills, how I drank a whole bottle of Malbec(no big deal, I'm Italian, so my blood is actually wine), how I took some pictures of my cat, my apartment's cold, etc. etc. etc.
My point is that while everyone is pissing and moaning about how their privacy is being violated in a non-sexy way by Mark Zuckerberg and palz, I am over here writing(drunkenly, thus, more sharingly than normal) about all the shit I'm doing, where I'm doing it, and who I'm doing it or not doing it with (everyone who wouldn't hang out with me tonight thus forcing me to drink alone I'm directing this at you). At this point in my relationship with the internet, I could not give less of a fuck who knows what I'm doing. I'll tell you. All you have to do is become my friend on some friend thing on the internet, and I will tell you every single thing I am doing at all times. I will show you photographs of things I am doing and projects I am in the process of completing. I will tell you what movies I am watching and give you my opinions about said movies. I will relay to you a series of adventures I have had on any given weekend and most likely will post the accompanying photos. We will all laugh the next day, and then, I will ignore all the comments I receive that are redundant and idiotic and remind me that my attitude towards the internet can be, at times, for lack of a better descriptive terms, chilly and dismissive.
This thing is powerful in ways that it shouldn't be, and that is both confusing and exciting. I know that I am going to share this entry on Facebook, and that people will read it and mostly not know exactly how to process it. Wait, it's not funny, or about DJ Pauly D, or some art thing she's into, wait what? It's not celebrity gossip, or nail polish sparkles, or, for FUCK'S SAKE HALLOWEEN??????? WTFLOLROTFLKITRIPXYZ.
I enjoy talking to people in my real life, why not share with people online. If I want to share private moments in my life(which I don't unless you are a person I see regularly), then I will do so how I please. I can't be intimidated by the prospect that someone might find some information I have posted online and attempt to use it against me in some childish and insufficient way. I left that information out there in the middle of cyberspace for a reason. I was just some emo wino searching for some boy to love me in a way I'd only seen in the movies. That is where these things originate, and that is where they will shrivel and die.
If you people wanted privacy, you wouldn't be on the internet every waking second of every day, and you wouldn't spend all your damn time checking yourself into Facebook Places. You would tell all social networking sites to suck a dick, and you would go about your business as if they never existed.
Since I'm kinda drunk and sharing, and remembering the good 'ol embarassing days, here's a link to my blog on myspace. I just read the first few and boy am I wishing the internet would self destruct. I just keeeeeedingggg!!!! Read away. I love the attention.
XOXO
Betsy
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