International Man Named Mystery
Except for Gill the unlucky goldfish, whom we may have inadvertently buried alive when I was in third grade, I have given away every pet I’ve ever owned. I once put a cat on Craigslist (though it was her fault we could not get along, I maintain). The one pet that’s stuck with me, I’m not proud to say, is the peeve. Here are tales of living with the sole critter I’ll never let go … and feeling guilty about it.
My Pet, The Peeve: Backhanded Compliments
by Mary Adkins
I am a glutton for affirmation. Like Mark Twain, I could survive for two months on a good compliment. Do I fish for them? No, because that’s irritating. But if it were socially acceptable, would I fork over a thousand bucks to install myself on a deep sea vessel with a bearded, personal captain and one of those special leverage chairs that makes it possible to haul in a nine hundred pound Mako shark? Probably. (The captain would be there to congratulate me on my catch—double compliments.)
“Nice dress!” makes my morning.
“Good column!” leaves me giddy and high like I just swallowed half a case of fancy European hazelnut chocolates… with minimal chewing.
I even love remarks that are clearly, solely designed to keep me from jumping off a bridge like “You look beautiful!” when I’ve been sobbing and my cheeks are all red and my eyes are slits and I’m slobbering while whining, “Dontlookatme, I’M AN UGLY CRIER!” It’s a lie, but no matter. My heaves subside into whimpering.
Perhaps it is for this reason that backhanded compliments strike me as a particularly cruel means of conveying a negative opinion. Giving me a backhanded compliment is like giving a trick-or-treating kid who hoards Snickers in his sock drawer a candy bar with razor blades inside. Except the part about attempting to murder a child.
Backhanded compliments I’ve received in my life:
1. You’re nicer than I thought at first.
2. You look fit today.
3. I wish I could be more like you–you just put yourself out there and try new things, even if you’re not good at them.
4. It’s sad when someone like you has to date online.
5. That dress doesn’t look like it came from Dress Barn.
Just kidding, I have never shopped at Dress Barn, although the fact that a women’s fashion store with the word “barn” in its name has flourished says, I don’t know, a silo-full about the market for low-cost, working women’s attire. I’m terrified to imagine the names that came in second and third. “How about COW MART?” “No, no, too much like K-Mart.” “And Sow Ville will make women feel like pigs… Let’s go with sleek, feminine… Barn it is!”
Anyway. A few years ago after a night out with co-workers, I found myself sharing a ride home with a colleague, a small man with a proclivity for telling stories that meander in boring directions and a penchant for talking about his many attributes for many hours. I had spent the evening watching him charm women a foot taller than him, attractive women with good hair and all their teeth—buying them drinks, making them laugh, even playing them against each other.
I gave him props in the cab. And that’s when I first learned of The Game, a manual disguised as a memoir teaching geeks how to morph into enviable pick up artists.
“I just use the strategies Mystery uses, like, I gave those girls negs.” A “neg,” he informed me, is a compliment that’s actually an insult, i.e. a backhanded compliment. He had told one girl, “That shirt looks good on you—everyone’s wearing it these days,” and the other, “Your hair looks better up, I bet.”
Apparently, men (euphemism) scattered across bars, scattered across the country were conning gullible women scattered across bars, scattered across the country by insulting them. The theory (as I understand it) is: Insult a chick in order to make her insecure enough to try to explain or defend herself, leaving her desperate for approval from the geek-turned-pick-up-artist. Then dangle approval in front of her like a carrot-shaped geek-appendage until she becomes convinced that the GTPUA actually is a prize, at which point, she lets him buy her another drink, or swat spit with her, or do things I don’t want to think about.
I told all my friends about this. After becoming mildly panicked, we decided to write it off as a pathetic, desperate nerd tactic—low-brow nonsense to which we would never be vulnerable.
And then. A few months ago, I found myself at one of those friend’s friend’s friend’s friend’s “buddy’s” concerts, in a room too dark to tell how dirty it is, and yet somehow one senses that traces of beer spilled in 1998 still graze the interior. Senses as in, your feet stick to the floor.
Sweaty, twenty-something hipsters surrounded me. I was wearing a new shirt—a sorta fitted number with blue and white horizontal stripes. I heard a creepy voice whisper from behind, “Aren’t horizontal stripes supposed to make you look fat?”
Excuse me?
I turned to evaluate my offender. He continued, “I hear vertical stripes make you look thin and horizontal stripes make you look fat.”
“I think depends if you’re fat or not,” I say.
“Calm down.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You seem a little… stiff.”
STIFF? I SEEM STIFF? I AM NOT STIFF. I AM VERY, VERY EASYGOING.
Before I knew it, I was talking to this man, consciously trying to relax my shoulders, cocking my hip, tossing my hair. I WAS NOT STIFF.
I was mumbling something the opposite of stiff when he interrupted me.
“That’s interesting but I’m distracted because in about ten seconds, I’m going to ask you out.”
Have I mentioned I’m flattered easily?
Sad to disappoint my new friend, worried how he’d take the news since he seemed to find me so charming, I gently offered, “I’m dating someone,” but by the time I got to the word “someone,” he had disappeared into the crowd. A few minutes later, my friend approached.
“Did Adam hit on you?” she asked. “He’s super into The Game.”
I had been negged.
And I think what remains most nagging about this negging is that I saw it coming and still fell for it—at least for the lifespan of one vodka tonic. One stiff, horizontally striped vodka tonic. Who knew being a Mark Twain quoting, affirmation addict could leave me at the mercy of someone who took $40 he would typically drain on gaming equipment and instead bought—then read—a book about tricking women into wanting him. Trick or treat.
