#with their nonsense like they were Those ppl that act entitled and irritating just bc their customers so i go to clean one of the tables

[avatardoggo]

🪴

#today the stress of working 6 days for almost 2 months straight while doing 2 3 jobs at once finally caught up with me #i was hosting today which i hate bc customers succ!! soemtimes and this group of 8 ppl wanted to sit by the water at 2 tables of 4 but for #big groups we have the picnic tables out back that are shaded and outside just not by the water and i was them o no you cant sit by the #water bc if a group of 4 comes i can't seat them at the picnic table bc duh it's for big groups and one of the guys was so rude straight up #just says 'no idc that makes no sense im sitting by the water' walks past me without menus tO A DIRTY TABLE STANDING LIKE THE BELOW ZERO #BRAIN CELLS ZREO MANNERS MAN HE IS and the other 2 ladies kept saying 'we don't want the picnic table we don't want it' so i can feel my #heart burning bc what im NOT going to do is argue with a customer when im following the rules my manager has told me and i can feel myself #about to angry cry bc i don't want to be rude but the next thing to say is leave if you don't want to be seated where i put you #so i go get my manager and he sees my face and i tell him everything and he just seats them where they want to bc he didn't want to deal #with their nonsense like they were Those ppl that act entitled and irritating just bc their customers so i go to clean one of the tables #they wanted to sit at and they're talking smack and they KNOW IM RIGHT THERE and theyre going on sayng how i make no sense how i should've #just let them do whatever they want blah blah blah and it took 4 tries for me to carry the plates bc my hands were shaking and i was trying #not to cry and when i was finally able to pick up the plates i dropped them in the kitchen then went to ask my manager for my break and #before i could say anything he was just like 'go take your break' and even one of the chefs gave me food without me asking i think bc he #saw my about-to-cry face which was so kind of him #so i went on a walk and sat on a bench to calm down and then i ate something and calmed down bc honestly i couldve flamed their lives and #souls and ended their careers in a couple of sentences but i knew i shouldn't so i didn't but it was so hard to contain that espeically wit #how they were mistreating me and i was teling my dad and he was like ''🤔 racism??'' bc surprise! they were white but idk some ppl are just #horrible to all ppl not just a particular kind yk? so idk honestly #but ya that's how my week has been going #pray for me yall i need more patience with this silly goose (derogatory) customers #vk overshares in the tags

[makeroomforthejolyghost]

OK!!! saint-loup. it is saint-loup o’clock. i do not have these thoughts well formulated so this might get kinda long n messy but i promised myself i’d Talk This Out w/ myself on this reading, so. icee straw kazoo.

ok so saint-loup is the narrator’s friend tho like... to the extent this term is applicable in friendships m’s kinda The Unrequiter, often exhibits w/out expressly saying that he feels kinda guilty for Using Him or at least for like. not being able to match the energy saint-loup brings to the relationship. in fact the main thing he consistently notices in saint-loup is energy, strength. but also solicitude! which combination to me seems weird? i’m fond of saint-loup but he makes me uncomfortable, i think bc while, on one hand, his slightly sophomoric intellectualism and nervous quickness and tendency to be officiously solicitous*--which 3 traits m associates w/ saint-loup’s ability to assimilate quickly (3.98, 153)--all remind me of me, and also of many people i’ve known, but then...? on the other hand, i have never seen those traits (esp. solicitude) in a strong person; saint-loup is passive-aggressive and i have only ever observed that demeanor in weak people--most of them sick, bats and/or non-men; certainly not in a straight-passing man (as saint-loup does at this time) if he’s also healthysane--since passive-aggression is so. roundabout, and mind-over-matter &c. like. all the things i have in common w/ saint-loup are traits i’ve developed because i’m not a man, not straight, not neurotypical, not strong, u know? and certainly these traits are ones people like me are supposed to dislike in ourselves, but i find that recognizing them in someone usually makes me more comfortable around them, because... well, you know. because the ways in which we’d be likely to hurt each other are basically the same?

meanwhile early in volume 3 you get this scene where saint-loup introduces m to a bunch of his friends, all adorably over-eager to Show Off m’s intellect, make sure he makes a good impression, and

“No? You don’t agree about Stendhal?” he went on, with a naïve confidence in my judgment which found expression in a charming, smiling, almost childish glance of interrogation from his green eyes. “Oh, good! I see you’re on my side. ... The Chartreuse is after all a stunning work, don’t you think? I’m so glad you agree with me. What is it you like best in the Chartreuse? Answer me,” he urged with boyish impetuosity. And the menace of his physical strength made the question almost terrifying. (136)

N.B. THO that here and elsewhere m fuckin glories in that strength. here, for example:

My departure depressed me less when I was no longer obliged to think of it alone, when I felt that the more normal and healthy exertions of my energetic friends, of Robert’s brothers-in-arms, were being applied to what was to be done (179)

but also, before we even GET to rachel:

“I’m furiously jealous,” Saint-Loup said to me, half laughing, half in earnest, alluding to the interminable conversations apart which I had been having with his friend. “Is it because you find him more intelligent than me? Do you like him better than me? Ah, well, I suppose he’s everything now, and no one else is to have a look in!” (Men who are enormously in love with a woman, who live in a society of woman-lovers, allow themselves pleasantries which others, seeing less innocence in them, would never dare to contemplate.) (153)

idk, like. i’ve had multiple people talk that way to me? but i possess what almost seems like an “only we can say it” sentiment about it--only people who don’t pass for straight men, maybe, or only weak people, neurotics. and saint-loup has that entire demeanor he seems to think he’s entitled to it as an intellectual or maybe just picks it up from m and rachel but it’s weird on people whose intellectualism does not compensate for frailty of body and/or “willpower,” idk. he does the fuckin... what do i mean, um. OH!--i associate his flirtatious self-deprecation w/ the thing women do in victorian books and in old movies; the thing lizaveta nikolaevna does in demons when she asks what’s his face whether he’d still wanna hang if she broke her leg. and possibly i’m wrong to see saint-loup’s comments as the outpost of a similar thing? but

“You know,” I said, “I did come to say good-bye to you the day I left Doncières. I’ve never had a chance to mention it. I waved to you in the street.”

“Don’t speak about it,” he replied, “I was so sorry. I passed you just outside the barracks, but I couldn’t stop because I was late already. I assure you I felt quite wretched about it.” (233)

haha yeah no i don’t think i’m wrong. so maybe it’s like the last few days’ irritation at hearing my mom employ the detached, bodily-self-contemptuous infodump tone i often use irl to talk about My Limitations--sitting like i do then, w/ that buzzardy hunch as though to tell a secret, and w/ the same aporetic expression--without having also to euphemize, circumlocute, pause and screw up her face and twist her wrist around for long intervals, blushing, trying to think of a less self-flattering [vulnerable] word for what she means, like i would in that situation. but i think it’s... also that i’m uncomfortable on m’s and rachel’s behalf? that in order not to intimidate or seem to condescend he adopts a piece of their demeanor that makes him look harmless. because like. another way in which saint-loup attempts to Regain His Dignity (or at least vent frustration) during his fight w/ rachel is that when the journalist w/ the cigar refuses to put it out, um,

“Would you mind, sir, throwing away your cigar? The smoke is bad for my friend.” [...]

“There’s no rule against smoking that I know of,” said the journalist. “If people aren’t well, they have only to stay at home.” [...]

“In any case, sir, you are not very civil,” observed Saint-Loup to the journalist, still in a mild and courteous tone, with the air of appraisal of a man judging retrospectively the rights and wrongs of an incident that is already closed. (239-40)

and see THIS IS ME this is exactly how i act when i’m angry at someone in public (incl. or maybe esp. if that someone is myself ha), fuckin carrying on another conversation in the background as proof ur Still Sane, BUT THEN

[A]fter the courteous words that he had just uttered, he brought down his hand with a resounding smack upon the journalist’s cheek. (240)

AND LIKE?? i don’t think this would creep me out nearly so much if the pretext (tho obv not the reason) for it weren’t. an ableist comment. “If people aren’t well, they have only to stay at home.” but i’ve more than once gotten angry w/ someone, chewed someone out, for saying something ableist to my friend (tho in the case that comes to mind the comment could be applied to me as well), and in my experience that kind of vicarious anger is?? because you know your friend’s upset about it but don’t know what to say to help them, so you resent the perp for showing you your own impotence, for distracting your and your friend’s attention from more important things w/ their needless judgmental bs. and THAT makes sense here? but without those other layers--of 1. “this insult implicates me also” and 2. “you have upset my friend and therefore obliged me to Avenge them since i don’t know how to make them feel better”--it’s... weird. it’s just so Not His Fight i guess, and. i’ve actually written a similar scene, too? in which case some of the interest was in like... the assumption by stronger people that we’ll be flattered to see them use their greater strength in defense of Our Honor, when. no, saint-loup; that’s a nonsensical n paternalistic pretext to vent ur own unrelated anger? m neither needs nor wants a healthy person to punish ableists’ contempt of his ill health? and in fact it’s embarrassing in the first place when ppl respond to our not making a fuss by making the fuss for us?? blugh! i don’t know. i can point out so many gross things about this but still am not satisfied i have identified The Thing About It that makes me so uncomfortable; maybe it’s just because at the same time i do understand both m’s fetishistic admiration of saint-loup’s strength and aristocratic solicitude and saint-loup’s paternalism itself. i’ve been on both sides, tho without the... punching. thing, ha. on that note:

Now that to the measured conversations of the diplomats, to the smiling arts of peace, had succeeded the furious onthrust of war, since blows lead to blows, I should not have been surprised to see the combatants wading in one another’s blood. ... Fortunately the journalist who, staggering back from the violence of the blow, had turned pale and hesitated for a moment, did not retaliate. (240-1)

M OH MY GOD ur purely academic understanding of How Fights Work! sees a guy 2 whose general opinion on violence he defers punch someone n is just like “well, shit, this is it, we’re all gonna die” fdlahgsdf ur......my favorite, and also, same, but possibly this is a mistake we both oughta quit making. Fuckin Liberals &c. &c.

*appropriate since he’s a sergeant!! but what i mean is e.g. when rachel (his gf w/ whom he needs to break up) makes him feel small in public saint-loup will then try to get back some dignity by turning to m like “You oughtn’t to stand about in the cigar smoke like that, it’ll make you ill” (3.237). it’s like what i said yesterday about my own solicitude--that it’s about liking to feel useful, liking for there to be a subject on which you know what to say. but it’s jarring to me to see this sense of return to familiar ground detached from same-feeling--to see the “useless person’s dream come true” phenomenon in a situation where saint-loup has no obvious reason to consider himself an expert other than his general aristocratic + busybodyish(!!!) tendency to anticipate people’s interests, to want to Know Everything about his friends.

#tell marcel i'm ignoring his text posts #romanticize ur mental illness 1k866 #icee straw kazoo #screalth tag #violence ///