Being a good person is not a prerequisite for being in my favour. I am friends with liars, cheaters, scoundrels, whores, infidels, sodomites. What I seek out in a person is not so much a moral sanitization; I’m looking for a lust for life, a fire in their eyes and stones in their guts. It really piques my interest in my fellow human beings when I see them burn, pine, suffer, and live.
Michelle lives, all right. She won’t for long, mind you. She’s an alcoholic, and not exactly high functioning, though after having gleamed exactly how much she drinks, paired with how little she eats, the state at which she does manage to operate borders on impressive. Ah, that’s the other thing, the eating. She is not a big fan of consuming calories. So much so that she has multiple anonymous social media accounts which are each dedicated nearly exclusively to the sole purpose of lamenting her food consumption woes. She has an EATING DISORDER, in all caps. She’s beautiful, of course, that goes without saying. She’s Congolese with long legs and a tiny waist, and she has this look in her eye which makes you feel as if she’s rearing to lunge and attack you at any moment. Watch out, dear reader, the lioness does not strike with claws but with intellect. She’ll run circles around you and she’ll love doing it. She wants to make you as angry as possible; she feeds off your passion.
I have noticed a curious phenomenon in my relationships as of late: I have an easier time connecting with individuals who display a sort of charming toxicity. Partially because they force such strong emotions out of me, and partially because they naturally have a higher bandwidth for my own, let's say, character quirks. I feel it makes someone more human to me, if I see them treat another unfairly, if I witness them cause harm to an individual without motive, for no gain other than to satisfy some sick and unholy drive deep in the collective unconscious. I don’t have some martyr fantasy, it’s not that I select for all destruction and toxicity in general. There’s a specific, rare flavour of shit-testing a woman, or a man, for that matter, can take part in which comes off as more endearing than abrasive. Michelle has it, all right. She calls it rage-baiting
. It makes for a very satisfying round of banter, every time. She’s throwing jabs at you that make you reconsider your life choices, but then you get to go and throw a couple back; they will always land, she’s an easy target. It’s riveting.
If I had to choose one word to describe Michelle it would be this: Dionysian. Dionysus, the god of wine and liquid and mushrooms. The god of homogeneity, of the destruction of the individual in service of the group. She is the feeling of losing yourself in a crowd, be it on a dance floor or in an angry mob. Her emotional outbursts are primal, raw, untamed by ego or decency or societal norms. She is the personification of the roving horde of madwomen in the Bacchae. An alcoholic, filled with ardour and without care for social decency. Could one ask for a better drinking partner? And so it was that we found ourselves hitting the bars on a Tuesday night.
I’m paying, of course. I know I can often be found lamenting my fiscal situation, but, on every occasion without exemption, I feel a piercing, abject shame when allowing a woman to pay for her own drinks in my company. It’s not some gentlemanly action, I don’t do it in service of the girls I’m with. It’s a masculine pride thing, nothing more, and pride is a sin. It is one of my foundational beliefs that every last dime in my possession exists only for buying books and getting belligerently drunk with beautiful ladies. My male friends can kick rocks, they buy ME drinks. Typically I only show up in service of weaseling a couple free pints out of them.
We’re drinking at this joint I recently discovered. My bug-obsessed Vietnamese friend put me on, I ruthlessly made fun of his flagrant display of autism the first time he chose it. Eventually though, reluctantly, I had to concede defeat and admit that the place has serious charm. My best attempt at describing it would be as follows: it looks as if a highschool biology teacher took a few too many stimulants while decorating their classroom. Every surface displays some sort of taxidermy animal, a diagram of an organ or a beautiful pinned up butterfly. Glass display cases full of insects you’ve never heard of, insects you’re GLAD you’ve never seen, hence the jabs about the Viet’s special interest. What really sells it, though, is the pint-and-a-shot deal for $10. If you order tequila, that’s excellent value, that’s a $5 pint and a $5 shot. Elsewhere in the world, these prices are exuberant, but hell, in Ottawa, we take what we can get. When paying for Michelle, a deal like this is a must-have. That woman can drink!
We’re on our fourth round, that is, four shots and four pints, each. I’m $80 deep at this point, and she’s finally showing signs of intoxication. My God, I’m in the pocket, but I know she can’t tell, because Michelle is merciless if she catches a whiff that she’s outdrinking you. We get pretty competitive, and admittedly, I have, like, a hundred pounds on her, so I really shouldn’t be losing. I apologize to my Irish ancestors for this pathetic display.
Our conversations always begin with literature. She’s genuinely well read, Michelle, and as such she has a tendency for extremist beliefs. She’s violently feminist, she HATES men and she is not ashamed of that. I consider her misandry to be just another aspect of her pleasant toxicity. I often get along well with misandrists, actually. She mostly reads contemporary books. Big fan of Bukowski, another reason I feel so secure around her. She displays an appreciation for problematic writing, something required in being a friend of mine, these days. It’s a rare quality. Eventually, our conversation turns to more recent developments. Specifically, that of my new love: Cigarettes.
I’m telling you, Mike, I never knew.
I say with a sigh of resignation.
You never knew?
Nobody tells you how wonderful nicotine is, just that it kills you.
It’s alright.
It’s just, it’s wonderful.
I live in Quebec, dude, I’ve been smoking for like, forever.
It’s like smoking weed, but it doesn’t make you retarded.
Yeah, I know.
They make you smarter, even!
Aren’t you like, thirty or something? Why start now?
I’m NOT thirty. It’s been a stressful few months.
She laughs, more so out of understanding than actual humor. I continue:
This pack is more loyal than any woman I’ve ever known. The cig, she comes back to me even when I push her away. She won’t turn her back on me, like the rest of them. I could spend weeks lamenting her, insulting her, but all it would take is one night out on the town.
Uh-huh.
Michelle is barely listening. I have a tendency to go on and on, I get impassioned easily.
Couple pints deep, feeling lonely. All those emotions, those memories I drink to forget, flood back to me. I pass a dep, and there she is. She always returns my calls. She doesn’t leave me out to dry. I light a match, lean against some bar window, and feel a little better about myself; just for a moment. A moment worth all the money in the world. Respite. Real girls don’t do that. When you crack, and call them on a drunken night, they just make you feel worse. They act like missing them is some moral failing. The cigarette, she lets me miss her.
Grown ass man romanticizing cigarettes. You’re supposed to go through that at, like, fifteen. Loser.
Hey! Be nice.
Nice?
I’m feeling sentimental.
Grow up, you’re pathetic. You’ll get sick of them after a while, anyway. Like with everything else.
You’re a cunt, Mike.
Don’t say that. Don’t say cunt, that’s so gross.
Every conversation with her is vulgar, yet she has this strange aversion to vulgar words. You can’t say cock
or pussy
; you have to refer to them by childish fantasy names like Stick and berries
or flower
. Lately I’ve become aware that my audience is not a fan of my writings on sexuality. Understandable. Thus, to avoid the problem of this woman’s vulgar mouth, I have opted for an unorthodox approach. You see, I haven’t been eating much. I think a little bit of asceticism is good for everyone, every once in a while. Also, I’m so broke I can’t afford groceries. I lost twenty pounds during the month of May. Since food now occupies my mind much more often than sex, I have decided to censor the following section by making a few changes, such that the conversation we were having relates more to my current day woes and worries than to what we actually spoke of. That way, we both win, right baby? I love you.
***
We’re in the Uber back to my place. Michelle lives in Montreal (the sluttiest city in North America), so I let her crash when she’s in town. We speak of cooking
, loud enough that the driver can hear every word. My Uber score was perfect before I met her, I swear.
Eww… you eat chocolate!?
Sure do. No shame in it.
I mean, having a delicious seafood meal I understand, but to follow that up with chocolate?? You’ve got no palate!
You don’t know the half of it.
How could you get more gross?
I’ll eat chocolate the first time I cook with someone. Hell, I’ll do it the first time I meet someone. I eat chocolate, as dessert, every time, without fail.
You freaky frog!
She screams in response. You have no idea what kitchens they’ve been cooking in!
Don’t know, don’t care! If you don't have the skill to prepare a full course meal, just say that.
Jump off a stool and hang yourself, white demon.
She has a real way with words.
***
I arrive back at my house with the certainty that I have just earned a one star rating. I like my place, it’s got charm. I have six roommates. Six male roommates. I know, you’d expect that to be a recipe for disaster. Fret not, this is no frat house. The biggest difference is that people get laid in frat houses. No one is having sex here. Also, we keep it clean, thanks in most part to my roommate Scotty. An Anglo giant of a man who becomes debilitatingly anxious when encountering any stimuli, no matter how small. This story isn’t about him at all, I just wanted to sing his praises for a second. The last major difference between our place and a fraternity is the decor. It has been referred to as schizophrenic
, as art deco for the irony poisoned 2020’s
. Anime figurines and dakimakura, seven year old minecraft youtuber merchandise, political flags pinned up on walls which don’t align ideologically with any of the residences. Looking through the front window, you are greeted with a tapestry of obese, near death Elvis Presly, hanging directly beside the red and yellow flag of the People’s Republic of China. My only contribution to the interior design of the apartment has been the sporadic piles of books which magically seem to spawn in, in any space I exist in for more than a week. Hemingway, Goethe, Sappho, Homer, Balzac. I don’t remember moving any of these, and yet there they are on the counter.
The living room has as many couches as we could fit in it, all of which were obtained for free off of Facebook Marketplace. As Michelle and I enter, we are greeted by a rare sight. My most elusive roommate, Kaoru, is sitting on the couch. He’s wearing his usual uniform. Black pants, black t-shirt, black socks, long black hair parted in the middle. He’s short, very short, and he’s so thin he must weigh less than a hundred pounds. I’m taken aback. I’ve lived here two months already and I’ve seen the guy maybe twice. Kaoru is a classical Japanese hikikomori, a NEET, a recluse. He sleeps all day and stays up all night, playing video games where the objective is to gamble real world money in an effort to perhaps win a JPEG image of a well endowed anime girl wielding a gun and sporting a halo.
Hey, nice to meet ya!
Michelle’s voice makes my hair stand on end. Kaoru looks up from his phone briefly and nods.
What’re you doing?
She says. No, no, no! These two must never, EVER interact. I feel I’m watching a car crash in slow motion, as the young Japanese man points his phone screen towards us.
Just pulled this. Three stars.
On his screen is a loli anime character with white hair, in a swimsuit. She looks tired. And young. Very young.
What the fuck? You some kind of pedophile?
It’s too late now. The damage is done. An unstoppable force has hit an immovable object.
I don’t want to fuck her, asshole. I just think she’s cute.
Suuuuure.
Michelle’s eyes are shining hungrily.
I know a whore like you wouldn’t understand this, but not everything is about sex.
Who are you calling a whore, you little virgin!?
Take a guess, bitch.
I retreat to the bathroom, hoping that maybe Michelle will disengage on her own. Deep down, I know she won’t. Okay, it seems I must fill you in, my audience, on a couple of Kaoru’s less than ideal character traits. I must tread very carefully, given my already not-so-stellar reputation, when it comes to this topic. I’m certain none of you gave it a second thought, earlier, when I praised Michelle for her misandry. With the exception of some boring and unintelligent males, most people have come to accept the man-hating woman trope and its growing popularity. After all, who can blame them? I know better than most the beastial nature of masculinity, being a bit of a dog myself. That can’t be easy to deal with, especially in a romantic context, where every gesture, every glance is filled with meaning, is analysed over and over in an attempt to understand one’s partner, in a fruitless attempt to avoid inevitable miscommunication. I’m sympathetic. Unfortunately, this sympathy goes both ways. Ladies, I’m sorry, I really am, but I’ve been in relationships before. There are patterns of behavior I have noticed in women, from all different walks of life, which leave me with a sour taste in my mouth. Obviously, these are sweeping generalizations which do not apply on an individual basis, and it is important to keep that in mind. But life is all about sweeping generalizations. We are pattern seeking animals. Love is much closer to hatred than indifference. What was once love dissolves into hatred much more readily than it dissipates into nothing, and hatred can easily become love, under the right circumstances. They are Yin and Yang. Infatuation makes us all fucking crazy, irrational, emotional. Any true romantic is necessarily filled to the brim with anger for those they wish to hold.
It is true, tensions between the sexes have never been higher. Clearly this rising, bubbling wrath tells us something about the state of modern dating. I don’t believe this to be another facet of the patriarchal misogyny which has kept women down, since time immemorial. That has always been around, it is a constant, and it must be abolished. This is a new phenomena, an increase, and it is exponential. Why condemn the lonely misogynist, the lonely misandrist, as opposed to those modernist structures which have made them this way? Why are we condemning the symptom, instead of looking for a cure? Is this not a clear indication that human beings everywhere are screaming out in agony for connection? For something true, something real, something higher than an algorithmic selection process and an unsatisfying situationship? Maybe hyper-individualization is not the route humanity should be headed towards. Maybe, just maybe, sex isn’t casual. Ever.
I want to make it clear: I do not hate women. I grew up in a matriarchal household, my mother was the primary breadwinner and, quite frankly, that’s a dynamic that works well. The fairer sex have outperformed me in school, in the workplace, in writing and mathematics and family and art and music and every other facet of my life. Call me longhoused, call me a beta-male, but I hold the highest respect for the divine feminine. I don’t think women are better than men, but, on average, they are certainly better than me. However, I cannot deny, as much as I wish I could, that I have hated women. I have hated them briefly, in passing, as a spurned lover, as a successful playboy, as a cuckold and as a mistress. What, pray tell, is my crime? Feeling? Feeling love so deeply and utterly that it consumes my entire being? That it destroys my better judgement and sets aside my morality? Arrest me, Officer, forgive me, Father, I am human! I live! I feel!
Kaoru is what the uneducated would refer to as an incel
. An involuntary celibate. Though, truthfully, he does not fit the criteria, for he is not a hugless-kissless-virgin. He had a brief and harrowing romance as a teenager, with a girl he met through a popular online messaging server designed for video game voice chats. He would not be considered a truecel by the larger men-who-don’t-get-laid community. However, that is the extent of his romantic experience. His comments about Michelle weren’t completely off base, either. She is a very promiscuous woman. They highlight an interesting comparison. Men build resentment through being excluded from femininity, whereas women build it through over-exposure to masculinity. Make of that what you will, but, in both cases, what they are lacking is love.
I emerge from the bathroom to find that Michelle has taken a seat on the couch across from Kaoru. The pair are still arguing, to my dismay.
I don’t believe in eugenics.
Michelle is in the middle of saying, as I enter the room.
Good for you
But,
But…?
But, if there was a way to know early enough, and I found out I was pregnant with a boy, I would abort him.
What!
The world needs less of you disgusting males.
How can you say that?
You should all be chemically castrated.
That’s literally just eugenics, you support eugenics, you can’t say you don’t and then just describe it anyway.
Don’t care.
What are you, stupid? No wonder you can’t hold down a job, or a relationship. Wench
Now, I can’t imagine anyone being upset about being called an insult from antiquity like wench. And talk about the pot calling the kettle black, on the employment front. But, Michelle is pretty drunk, and she has been having some problems in her romantic life as of late, with a recent string of breakups, so the jab hits home. She shoots to her feet.
I’m going for a smoke.
She practically runs out the door. We can hear her sobs from the other side. I give Kaoru a disapproving look. He doesn’t seem proud of himself as he speaks:
Sorry, man. I finished a bottle of Crown Royal earlier. I didn’t mean it.
Just make sure to apologize when she comes back in. That’s no way to treat a lady.
To his credit, Michelle did ask for it. She doesn’t mean those comments about eugenics, either, she was only trying to get a rise out of him. Kaoru’s not a bad guy. He might be a lolicon, and an incel, but I like the kid. He has a good heart.
After a while Michelle returns indoors. You wouldn’t even be able to tell she had been crying, if she didn’t immediately announce it:
Look, you made a girl cry. Proud of yourself, big man?
In response, Kaoru takes me by surprise and does something completely unexpected. He falls to his knees at Michelle’s feet, and grabs hold of her long legs. Suddenly, I become aware of a thick tension in the room, one that has been present ever since I left the lavatory. I had initially read it as anger, but I was wrong. Kaoru begins to plead:
Michelle, please, I’m more sorry than I’ve ever been in my entire life.
You better be.
She smirks a little.
How can I get you to forgive me?
I won’t. Ever.
Michelle, please, hit me. Just hit me.
SMACK
She doesn’t even hesitate. Kaoru reels, then looks at Michelle again. His eyes are shining like I have never seen them before.
SMACK
A second hit, fast. Kaoru is blinking while opening and closing his mouth repeatedly. His ears are ringing. He really felt that one. She goes in for a third hit and I catch her hand.
The kid’s had enough, Mike. You’ve proven your point.
Aww come on, just one more!
You’re enjoying this a little too much, psycho.
In an effort to stop the violence, I try to find some common ground between the two of them:
Did I ever tell you I found a physical copy of the manifesto written by that chick who shot Andy Worhol?
The SCUM manifesto? Are you serious?
Not kidding. I lent it to Kaoru, he’s reading it now.
It’s funny. Good read.
Kaoru chimes in.
That changed my life when I read it on my phone at fourteen!
It’s in my room… if you want to see it.
Fuck yes I want to see it!
Kaoru grabs hold of Michelle’s hand and leads her to his bedroom.
***
They’ve been in there for a while. Out of curiosity, and mild voyeurism, I walk down the hallway and press my ear to Kaoru’s bedroom door. My heart sinks.
I HATE YOU
It’s Michelle’s voice, in a muffled yell, followed by the sound of furniture slamming against a wall. They must have started fighting again. I would go in there and stop them but, honestly, the pair are in the same weight class, so I’m not exactly worried for Michelle’s safety, and it might be good for them to get their anger out physically. Maybe this altercation will bring them closer together, give them a better understanding of the opposite sex and help settle their differences. I decide, instead, to begin cooking dinner.
I’m making homemade gnocchi and sauce from scratch. I start by boiling some potatoes, then I peel and mash them. Mix well with some eggs, flour and salt. Then roll the dough into a long cylinder. Not too thick!
SLAM. SLAM. SLAM. Are they throwing chairs at each other? Michelle is pretty into WWE.
FUCK YOU.
She screams
You’re loving this, aren’t you, little slut.
Kaoru laughs. Guess he’s winning.
Chop the dough into sections, with a knife, and use a fork to fold into gnocchi shape. Set some water to boil on the stove. I proceed to go pick some fresh vegetables from my garden.
You’re such a cunt.
Woah! Michelle doesn’t usually use that kind of language. Things must be getting pretty heated in there. I can hear them from outside!
It's nighttime, so I have to hold my phone flashlight in one hand and grab the legumes with the other. I pick zucchini, bell peppers, green onions, tomatoes and some fresh oregano to boot. The vegetables are doing great this time of year, and I haven’t been having any problems with rodents either, surprisingly. The only thing that isn’t panning out is my strawberry plant. Not the right climate for fruit, I guess. I return inside and begin chopping. In addition, I dice some onions and crush more garlic than I ought to.
SLAM. SLAM. SLAM.
“Bite me all you want. This is where you belong. This is what you’re good at." Says Kaoru. They’re resorting to biting now? Let’s try to keep this one above board, fellas. Nothing below the belt, yaknow?
Vegetables in a large saucepan. Fry em’ for a couple minutes before adding a can of crushed tomatoes, salt, black pepper, the fresh oregano, thyme, and some red chili flakes for a little kick. I throw in a splash of wine too. Not too much, or the sauce will take forever to boil off. Let it simmer and stir regularly while boiling the gnocchi. That only takes a couple minutes. I spend upwards of an hour on the whole process, though, and the two of them are still at it while I’m sitting down to eat!
I HATE YOU. FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU.
Michelle lets out in a strangled voice. How do they have the energy to keep fighting? Their hatred for the opposite sex must be nearly limitless! What ever could those crazy kids be up to?
I don’t care anymore, I’ve got my gnocchi. It’s my first meal of the day, at eleven at night. I am of the opinion that a delicious meal such as this one can only be fully appreciated when starving. My hands are shaking, my pupils are dilated, my heart is pumping, I can feel the blood flow past my ears and my mouth is filled with saliva. Dig in!