I met a girl in Austin. She was beautiful and blonde, graced with great genes. We sat at a bar. Me, my roommate and her and a guy she knew named Alex. He sold software in California. He was smart and nice but he had an underlying macho attitude that revealed an aggression. His aggression stemmed from his fear of not meeting the standards of what a man is. His muscles and behavior towards her made me think this. He was definitely with this girl because she was beautiful and it made him feel good about himself. Having a beautiful girl meant that he was a man and therefore, his fear and aggression could be subdued. However, it was still there because, like I said, he was smart and what he really needed was to be stimulated. I don’t think she did that, mentally at least. And because of this, even though being smarter than her and explaining things to her made him feel like a man, only half of his aggression was tamed.
They seemed to not know each other very well. Their bond was mostly physical. I didn’t get the sense he respected her too much. She made comments like “wow that’s a nice pink”. She wasn’t very smart but she wasn’t at all dumb. She might not have ever heard of Timothy Leary or Bukowski but that doesn’t really make a person smart, especially today when anything is just a google search away.
She knew her wine though and ordered it with an authority. This authority also revealed an aggression. She told us she had a prescription for Xanax after we were discussing sleeping on planes. This explained her slow, drawn-out speech.
“Oh I love this song,” she said. I don’t remember what song it was but it was a good song.
The girl came off very ditsy if you weren’t paying much attention to her but I could tell there were things hidden in her that she didn’t totally understand. Maybe it was because she was born pretty that she didn’t have to focus on those demons. Her perfectly shaped eyebrows and her focus on beautiful things like the color of her cocktail and the melody of a song brought me to this conclusion. You could tell she actively sought out beauty in all things.
My debate is whether she actively sought it out because that’s what she was taught gives things meaning and value or because she had a kind and generous heart that just wanted to know love in the face of a scary existence that she could not look in the eyes.
The fact that she took Xanax, combined with her hidden aggression made me think that the latter was true. Much in the same way Alex used her to hid from his aggression she used Xanax. There was a voice that told her there were more important things than beauty, but when your whole life has been centered around one thing, giving it up is the absolute and most terrifying impossibility.
I wanted to help her face her aggression and her fear but I wouldn’t know how. Who am I to say she needed help or that I could help her at all anyway but I thought that it might set her free. But again, what did I know? I met her for an hour over lunch. For all I know my fascination with her was only brought on by her looks.
When she left, our bartender, who was also pretty but in a different way and who we had also included in our conversation said, “He was cool. She didn’t have much of a personality.” She wasn’t entirely wrong but she wasn’t entirely right. How long could you talk about the color pink? But her statement also revealed her own aggression. But what I liked about the bartender is that she seemed to acknowledge her aggression. It was cool and kind of sexy. She didn’t need my help. Honestly, she was a little intimidating and I realized that the only reason I wanted to help the other girl was to distract myself from my own aggression. I couldn’t hide from it with the bartender.
Like I said earlier, aggression stems from fear. So after lunch I was left wondering about what I was afraid of. Maybe there is a unique answer for everyone but as I left the restaurant I thought that maybe there is a universal answer and it is that we are afraid of our own aggression. I mean, doesn’t it eventually seem to always find a way of taking over anyway? And doesn't that just haunt you?
