socratic dialogue at the joke bar

a trans woman walks into a bar. she sits down at plywood veneered mahogany, waxed reflective and reflexive. she orders a diet pepsi, oh, coke is okay.

the bartender says:

"why the long face?"

she ignores the possibly transphobic play on the popular joke and begins:

"i have spent my adult life debilitatingly repentant to people, yet also too emotionally impotent to truly affect them in any tangible way. people hurt me and i apologize to them and they offer an olive branch and then change their mind and i am hurt again. i am constantly being burnt by the whims of others and intentions inaccessible to me. this is not to absolve guilt, i act as disordered, hurt other people as much as anyone else, but i pass through people and they pass through me. no one will give me anything concrete and i am consistently left hysterical. a case study in a new sociological book called 'inevitability of failure in anxiety disorder and interpersonal relation.'"

the bartender replies:

"have you talked to your therapist about this?"

the trans woman sighs:

"she tells me everything i think is correct and every way i feel is okay, that how i react to others is within my head, that i should just trust that people will come around on their own time, but i cannot rely on these placations of the resoluteness of my self anymore. i tell people that all i want from them is to be their friend, and they tell me, 'that's funny coming from you,' and it confuses and scares me, because i do believe that that is all i want from them, but can one be aware of their own intentions? are my intentions more visible to other people than they are to myself? do bad people know that they are bad people? i believe i have never done anything truly wrong, only what is rash and misguided, but is that really enough?"

the bartender wipes his face and speaks:

"has anyone ever told you that you spit a lot when you talk? regardless, as i am sure you are well aware, the self is not the self but what is projected and reflected back. these are two separate things that are never congruent, and one is never able to fully grasp either. what even is a 'bad person' to you?"

"one who hurts other people on purpose."

"have you ever considered that maybe through your obsession with not being a 'bad person,' you are inadvertently hurting others through your avoidance of that very occurence, and in turn hurting people on purpose?"

"constantly."

"right, well-"

"i am constantly trying to help people that don't want my help, and then when people want my help i cannot give it. everything i do is poison. i am wracked with the loneliness of midas."

the bartender begins to wash a glass, gazing off into the neon of a bud light sign with a subconscious ironic turn in his mouth (an observational gag that dates this story firmly in 2023). he closes his eyes on its blue glow and replies:

"i think your preoccupation with what you call 'helping others,' whatever that may entail, belies the fact that you act with a general need of being liked, and a fear of not being liked. you do the things you do and act how you are so people will like you, and when they don't (for ancillary reasons), you see it as a fault on their part to accept your 'help.' hold on,"

a horse, a rabbi, and a gynecologist walk into the bar. the bartender says:

"i'll be with you in just a moment,"

then turns to the trans woman and says:

"now really isn't the time for something like this, is it?"

"not particularly, no, but it made me smile a little bit, so that's good."

"well, anyway, in response to people's distancing from you, you apologize profusely as a defense mechanism against the burden of your own guilt. this is not to say you do bad things, but you obviously must have some system or pattern of erratic behaviors to have provoked this sort of reaction multiple times."

"but i know i am guilty, all i feel is guilt and shame, constantly!"

"but is it an actual sense of concrete guilt over concrete acts, or is it more of a gut feeling of knowing there is something wrong with the way you interact and relate to people? you don't allow yourself to feel guilt over things you do because you are too busy feeling guilt over your AVOIDANCE of guilt."

it has become audibly evident that this bar has not been the first stop tonight for our group that entered a few lines ago, and the bartender excuses himself for a moment. the trans woman has finished her diet coke and plays with the ice cubes with a kind of violent apathy while taking the time to put her next thoughts together.

the bartender returns and she retorts:

"all that about my avoidance of guilt may be true, but i would have a lot easier time coming to terms with that if people would TELL ME THINGS! no one ever wants to tell me what's going on, i am always being left in the dark, left to assume the worst about how people feel about me. all i really want is open communication between people, i don't understand why other people find it so hard."

"oh yeah? when you do have open communication, when you are called out on things, how do you react?"

"what?"

"like, do you take things with stride, or do you whimper and cry, and attribute what's being said to you to senseless anger in order to disassociate yourself from it?"

"how do you-"

"you just seem like the type. you don't want open communication, you only want to be told you are good and perfect and not in the wrong. people avoid communicating with you because they know if their communication is seem by you as negative, you will just shut down and become a puddle, incomprehensibly begging for forgiveness."

she starts to shake and tear up a bit.

"you're a real fucking asshole, you know that?"

she is then hit with a wave of self awareness not related to self deprecating intellectualism for the first time in a long while so strong that she slumps down on the bar. after a moment, she speaks muffled through the sleeve of her sweater:

"i need to learn how to love in a way that doesn't vacillate between idealizing of others and self destruction, a love that doesn't revolve around maximizing the importance of my intentions and minimizing the effects of my acts and words, a love that is fair to all parties, a love that involves more careful selection and hesitation in order to be more lasting. this will take a while, so in the meantime i need to learn how to be alone, something i haven't been able to be since i was a teenager. i cannot love until i can love myself. i cannot love until i can love myself. i cannot love until i can love myself. this is something true, this is something tangible. this is something that makes sense. how could someone love me, how can i love someone if i don't love myself?"

she pauses.

"how do i love myself, by the way?"

she looks up and the bartender is not there. she whips her head around and sees him on his way back from serving the group. he cocks his head at her as he sets the serving tray down:

"i'm sorry, were you saying something?"

"oh, it's nothing. funny bunch that came in, isn't it? straight out of one of those jokes. i was half expecting you to tell them you don't serve their kind here."

"i ordinarily would, but there's federal laws about that kind of thing now. and don't act like you're any different."

"i suppose you're right, there."

"one of them bought you a drink by the way, will it be another diet coke?"

she glances over her shoulder at the group.

"yeah, thats fine. which one was it?"

"the gynecologist. he thinks you're cute."

the trans woman downs the soda, stands up, and pulls a couple dollars out of her purse, looking somewhat disappointed.

"well, he can't do much for me, anyway."