Author and Columnist
Over the weekend, Emily informed me about sororities and frats in frightening detail.
I won't get into the specifics of what she said beyond noting that it existed in the overlap between human trafficking and pornography. At best, these were embellished urban legends she repeated with authority.
Last year, Katie spent a great deal of time at "The Boys" house. They were, in the opinion of some, pseudo-intellectual snobs and generally jerks.
You label them as such because she liked them better than you, and she had "cuddle buddies" there, one she visited after you wept in her lap over how much being around her hurt.
I don't know if they were pseudo-intellectual snobs. I do know that, if you were in their place, you would have looked at you with pity at your most generous. "Oh, your clingy ex-boyfriend with whom you occasionally hook up thinks you will have a relationship? How droll!"
I often wonder whether part of the club's initiation wasn't a loss of the innocence and love for the world that kept us together and her away from the desire to escape reality.
She likes doing drugs, drinking, and having sex with other people. She is not adopting nihilism as her credo. She is well nestled in reality. It simply isn't yours.
And you claim other people are pseudo-intellectual snobs.
There were other initiation that she underwent in a torturously hazardous way, which actually (in my opinion) parted her from them, one by one. Then this tree house dissolved into hatred, as all bad things must, and broke apart.
What are you talking about? Why do you consistently leave out the best parts that would give sufficient context? If you are going to air other people's dirty laundry, let's not be coy.
Stupid Pagans versus Intelligent Beings
You would be more content if you could stop being reflexively embarrassed by members of your spiritual path. Are they sometimes grating and awkward? Sure. Show me a group that is immune to this, especially as you are publicly quoted calling it "a religion of healing people."
Friday, Emily and I held a meeting of the Mid-Hudson Pagan Network to discuss the World Trade Center disaster.
That's bold of you. I respect it.
While we certainly did not all agree, the debate and discussion was civilized, candid, and very much welcomed.
I am impressed by everyone who attended.
This concord is short-lived and poisons at least the subsequent two decades of American -- to say nothing of world -- culture, media being our biggest export. I fantasize occasionally (but far from often) about where America these attacks had been averted. After the greed of the 80s and the assumed cynicism of the 90s, America might have turned closer to prosperity and more united progress. The attacks put a tidy end to that.
In short, aping the cliche, the terrorists won. America crippled itself in its fury.
Emily and I have a growing distaste for a great deal of Pagans (though I think that it is fair to insert the name of almost any group by which people define themselves, if you wish to make this more applicable for yourself) we have encountered.
Too bad. Stop being insecure snoots.
I do not wish to be associated with people who proclaim themselves Grand High PooBah of the Universal Silver Wolf Raven Coven that they report goes back to the Mesozoic Era, but have no idea who the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was or how to define "a circle" (in the religious sense).
Too bad. They are also insecure snoots, but you cannot control their journey. Stop trying. If someone is silly around you, laugh inwardly and turn toward the person you find more complementary, who you ignore while sniggering behind your hands at the fluff bunny.
Also, the sort of people you are scorning here founded the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Israel Regardie made people and rituals up to make his group sound portentous and ancient, something you would know if you bothered picking up that black brick of a book.
Don't get haughty about magick. That is not where you will find its power in your life.
If one honestly honors one's path and wishes to be respected by those one chooses as peers, a basic knowledge of it is expected.
Who are you talking about? You have skimmed most of the witchcraft books you have.
I have practiced for years and studied for more than a decade (yes, I am aware that if one does the math that makes me ten. Ten year olds study history, math, grammar, literature, and the like. Very basic theory and theology isn't a stretch).
Ugh, you can be insufferable. I'm not responding to a chunk of this, but seriously. Imagine if anyone at a Mid-Hudson Pagan Network meeting had said this to you. Would your eyes still be in their sockets from rolling them so hard?
Yet, at nearly twenty-one, I am greeted with adults twice or thrice my age that maul me for pointing out basic points that I learned very early.
Their being jerks doesn't absolve you of being a jerk.
It seems that psychoemotional maturity and respect for oneself and one's path is often enough neglected in Paganism in favor of a bombastic lifestyle that fizzles out quickly.
I will give this one thing to you: I have persisted in being witchy. I have, however, mostly given up being as obnoxious as you are about it.
One of the more annoying members gestured to me during a speech involving how PSU was an S&M club and stated that I could be her whipping boy. I verbally cut her to shreds and cauterized the wound with vitriol.
The degree to which you overwrite things makes me groan.
But, yes, I can't fault you overly much for being put off by people equating religion to sexuality and your presence for consent to harassment.
the assembly quickly degenerated once more and the club trickled out after one girl (who did not hold any office) left to attend a drunken frat party when she would be table dancing.
That's Trish. She is your first cousin once removed's cousin, which doesn't make her your cousin -- though she still calls you that. She's good people.
Somehow, it didn't occur to you in college that she might be related to you, despite sharing your cousin's last name.
I believe, and would be willing to stake money on my assertion, that a bloody lot of college Pagans are in it to rebel/be popular/be fashionable/get unholy powers of darkness (hey I am still waiting for mine!) and will likely outgrow it.
Well, obviously. College is a time of exploration, thus why the idea of being Lesbian Until Graduation exists. Why not explore spirituality and politics while experimenting with bedroom company and drugs?
Yesterday, Emily and I went apple picking. It is a yearly custom with my family, one to which I confess I am increasingly fond. I guess I am getting nostalgic in my old age.
I will beat you to death, child.
It is surprisingly soothing to pet milkweed spores, like expensive doll hair.
When I proposed to my wife, it was amid milkweed. We then gathered and emptied the pods so guests could blow them into the air after we were pronounced man and wife.
Did you know people can be allergic to milkweed fluff? That is made abundantly clear by the sneezing.
As some of you know, apple picking has a particularly weighty meaning to me. Mythical, almost. I shall give you an example, though not from my own life, of the apple orchard power. My dear friend of mine lost her maidenhood after an enchantingly romantic picnic just after sunset in the very orchard I was then picking apples. Mythic.
Again, overwritten. You try so hard to make things sound grand that you obscure their importance.
You did envy Laura's story of losing her virginity, as yours happened in a basement den that looked and smelled like an artifact of the early eighties.
Her family never much celebrated holidays and as such she had not even carved a pumpkin since she was six. Luddites, I tell you.
The amount of bitter herb and matzo ball soup you end up having contradicts this.
As such, she finds herself in the atheist's lamentable position of having no holiday traditions, save for those my largely atheistic (save my father and me) family can provide her.
I have never encountered a person who loved Christmas as much as Emily. You had to tell her she couldn't listen to Christmas music until after Thanksgiving. Otherwise, she would have played it while trick-or-treating.
It was charming, don't be mistaken.
Last night Emily and I hung out with Dave, my former psychology teacher from Dutchess who probably is a goodly reason that I am considering getting a Master's in psych.
You did not get a degree in psychology because you were scared of taking a statistics course. You have the bane of the gifted kid, told you were brilliant, so you feared anything you did not intuitively grasp that would have made you feel like a fraud.
You would not have struggled with statistics but wouldn't have been perfect.
I do not know what you would have ended up doing had you gotten a Master's in psychology, however. I cannot tell you now that getting one in teaching was the right thing, only that you did and it brought me here.
Again, we cannot pick these threads without consequence.
We decided to meet at the Moonlight Cafe in New Paltz, mainly because David suggested New Paltz and I had been meaning to patronize the Middle Eastern proprietors as a show of good faith to them.
I ought to state that Dave was and is cool. You attend his wedding but are such a mentally ill mess that you do not have as good a time as it deserves.
(Many people are still being myopic pricks toward all those of Middle Eastern descent.)
Yeah, that hasn't changed.
Emily and I arrived early, which was likely salutary because I was rather anxious and it gave me a chance to calm down for a few minutes.
You know why you are anxious? You are diagnosably mentally ill. You have anxiety.
After you were mugged in high school, you spoke weekly to a school counselor, treating him as a therapist. This was unwise, as he lacked professionalism and confidentiality, to say nothing of his advice being dicey. However, you understand the necessity of therapy in your life, but you think you don't need it when the right word is put to it.
If you went to a therapist, your thinking went, that signified you were crazy. And, of course, you aren't crazy, just occasionally debilitated by thoughts racing ahead of you, perseveration, anxiety, and depression. Perfectly normal.
He counseled me as to the life of a community college teacher, which was oddly refreshing. No sugar-coating, just the truth that it could likely suck and likely be as wonderful as being a public high school teacher.
I will rate this: Eh. I have taught learning disabled, gifted, wealthy, impoverished, inner city, and, for the last decade, felonious kids. I also teach a community college English 101 course though to adjudicated minors.
I've had several friends who taught at colleges. It is less reliable and often less respected (by the administration, at least) than public school teaching.
Dave had spoken of nothing but the WTC in class for the three days after it and had actually let his classes just watch the footage of it when it happened.
It seems a critical failure of education to ignore the most significant historical event of the students' lives.
I mean, aside from the pandemic and lockdowns.
...Don't worry about that. Forget I said anything.
None of my teachers deigned it a worthy topic of conversation. Bloody hell, not like it was history or anything.
You learn early into your substitute teaching that, if you cannot otherwise control an unruly class, you could ask them where they were on 9/11. That tended to bring snarling children back to human beings for a bit. It is a cheap trick.
You will feel ancient when this no longer works because the kids were not born when it happened.
Dave also lamented the less than pleasant state of his romantic life.
Soon, he will meet Nikki, whom he married and with whom he fathers two daughters.
The one he loves, who loves him in return, cannot be with him because her parents think he is too old for her.
I will not do the math, but you deal with a similar issue about the age of the loved one. In your case, your girlfriend's parents will not seem to care much that she has fallen into bed with someone closer to thirty than twenty.
As we parked, Emily informed me through clenched teeth that we were next to the car of one of the primary anathemas in our lives.
You later suggest you would fight them -- you have oriented your life so you do not have to fight anyone, and you *are* dating a martial artist -- so we can assume it was not a woman. Your snarling against women is only nasty looks.
My guess is this would have been her ex-boyfriend. I cannot speak to the degree to which he was an adversary or whether this was indeed his car. Still, you sure jump to the occasion to be Emily's roaring kitten.
When I next go to a carnival, I am going to write out a contract for the carnie to sign backing up the wild claims he makes. That'll fuck with them.
I assure you, no carnival worker would care, nor would you do this.