Ha!
You didn’t think this “Dinner and…” series would last past its pilot, did you?
Did you? DID YOU?!?! ANSWER ME!!!!
And voila. That’s my intro for today’s episode from last night’s dining entertainment: a Showtime series dubbed “7 Deadly Sins”. My favorite, as you can mayhaps tell, is: wrath. While the series covers all’a them, the whole season’s already ended and now the entire collection resides in my OnDemand library for free. Thus, I had a chance to browse the preview of each and decide which was the one I really wanted to watch the most. And, in so doing, I realized which sin is my favorite to indulge.
I used to think it was vanity – but I think I just got that idea from Al Pacino in that one movie about Satan and Keeanu Reeves and a young hot Cupid-y looking Charlize Theron (“Vaaaanity! My favorite sin!”) But really, vanity is more of a chore. Just like envy. I don’t enjoy vanity unless I’m being validated. And envy sucks unless it’s motivating me to be better. (But then when I get better, then I’m just proud and vain over it and waiting to be validated about my great new status again. Vicious circle, you see?)
Then there’s sex. Great, but it only lasts if you make foreplay a part of it, have a ceaseless sea of ready-to-go gigolos waiting at your bedside like a DMV waiting area, or bed another woman (has its benefits – you could make a marathon affair of it, butchya get zero of the real sentient plunger action gratification you get with the warm-sword).
As for greed – it’s become easier to relinquish than the others – but not wholly. It doesn’t make me happy to be greedy, so I give up material things easily. Giving of my time and energy, however, can be such a goddamned task that it often feels like the penalty fee I hafta pay for being human. Usually because of the burden of those other vices I indulge joylessly – like vanity. “What if I’m not cool enough when I share my time with the rest of the world?” I’m half and half on beating this vice, but I still don’t enjoy it.
Gluttony is easier to avoid because I get fat really quickly and I drop weight really quickly. When the grand prize for eating like a porker happens rapidly, you’re less likely to indulge it. And the same goes for sloth (laziness) – for me, at least. I hate labels – especially medical ones – but I’ve been told by more than a few white coats with expert-letters caboosing their surnames that I’ve got that “fibromyalgia” thing. (Hate that word. And the geriatric association that goes with it). I just think of it as “Stop sitting on your ass-it is”. Because if I do – for too long – the resultant thoroughgoing full body pain is one I’d never wish on any-… Oh, who am I kidding. I try to be nice, but if I didn’t combat my intrinsic cruelty every day (and if the law wasn’t a thing), I’d make people feel this shiz until they cried out to the god they don’t believe in when they so much as made my soy green tea latte wrong.
And I’d do it with a mace.
(“Yes!”… “No!”… “Wait, which one of us are you asking?”)
Enter: Wrath. My favorite sin.
I didn’t even realize it was my favorite until I read the description of this episode and got a full brain, body, and soul wettie over the shared stories I was about to watch. The first and last examples were boring – a woman who made a site to expose homewreckers (too emotionally based with no climax-release) and the last one was about wrath-utensils like scatter shot guns (too impersonal). These from-a-distance wrath dealing means might work for some, but what really made my eyes glaze over like a four year old winning the fluffiest, biggest unicorn at the fair… was the Oakland Fight Club. Because the rules there are more lax (or so they say), a bunch of motorcycle dudes began an underground fight club – ring, audience, and all.
It’s a place where people of all backgrounds can come and punch the shit out of eachother… instead of taking it out on their wives or children. The most fun part, though, was seeing this meek vegan cook chick show up and tell her story in a quiet tone that matched her career choice and overall aura: “I don’t think of myself as a violent person, but sometimes customers will try to be tricky. They don’t play by the rules. They ask for the baked goods that are closest to me that are the freshest.” She seemed really calm and tranquil while relaying this to the camera. But once in the ring against this girl (also interviewed – and seemingly a downright badass), you could see her inner fury blossom like an Old Testament god.
She became Milton from Office Space – setting Initech ablaze over a stapler.
She became wrath.
And it was good.
Maybe I’ll move to Fight Club, Oakland one day when I wanna up my wrath game. But for now, I’m content to know that my own spontaneous violence against inanimate objects – raping the quiescence of my own solitude with my favorite sin – is enough. Nothing else will do. You eat, and the high is over. You fckk and the high is over. You brag or get a compliment and the high doesn’t last until the next comes and eventually even your tolerance grows to hearing the same words. On the contrary, when my venetian blind collapsed and broke yesterday, dousing those seething seeds already festering in my subconscious with mutant MiracleGro, I Hulk chucked my nightstand into the wall… and there was no regret. No pain. Just that shower of serotonin that washes over you the moment you hear hear the crash and witness the destructed fruits of surrendering to your own rage.
(Or legs. Or table legs.)
Even now, I’m not sorry. As I type, I can look up fondly from my work at the hole I made which I can fit my fist into – knowing that if life gets to be too much, none of these non-sentient things in my cozy abode are safe from me. It’s never planned. Who knows what the next victim will be? That simultaneous control and spontaneity makes me feel strangely safe. And loved. And capable of loving others later. Without punching them first. And, like a gift-sign of confirmation from the cosmic deities above, something happened after the show ended last night. Typically, I won’t “channel flip” through T.V. after getting my fill. But last night I did. And the very first thing I flipped to after “Sins”? “Fight Club”. Starring Pitt. Who was also in “Se7en”.
Boom. God’s way of saying he loves me just as I am. Aggro and angsty ‘n all.