The Bourgeois Life - An Introduction

I have a very bad habit. I observe people with an eye to categorizing them. Wait, no, I judge them. I think – are they better than or worse than I? It really is so bad that it bubbles up completely uncontrollably like mental vomit. Yes, it does too. Even when I am trying my best to be “tolerant.” Or to not even look. I actually believe this is an inherited trait. I got it from my adult-child-of-an-alcoholic, inferiority-complex-ridden dad. We are both afraid of people. That is my rationalization.

I got called out on this last week. I was spending a boring evening with my husband*, waiting in a bar lounge to pay too much money for mediocre food at a crowded, oceanside restaurant. Because that is one of the things I am supposed to do. My gaze of appraisal was drawn to a crowd of “late-40s, divorcees,” with big hair, tight jeans, high heels and a chokifying cloud of perfume. I know they were divorced because I looked. I decided these were the “type of women” to flaunt serious ice. No ice, but there were expensively manicured fingernails. I remarked aloud to my husband, “I think I am the only woman in a quarter-mile radius without manicured fingers.” He didn’t respond because, well yeah, exactly.

Walking to our table, I was caught up in my game of checking out feminine fingernails, lost in my judgmental thoughts, when I heard, “What the fuck are you looking at BITCH. You’re ugly.” The comment was snarled at the back of my head, and I did not acknowledge hearing it. I was mortified. Oh my God I am so pathetic. Then, I thought, “gum-snapping, hair pile.” And my equilibrium was restored.

Anyway, you can categorize me. It’s OK. I am a stereotype. I live in an “affluent” yet “left-leaning” suburb in a “blue state” characterized by “economic and racial diversity” craved by the many “urban transplants” who are my neighbors. I am a “soccer mom” and I live in “spacious five bedroom center hall colonial” nestled on “well-maintained” and “park-like” grounds. I have a lot of stuff coveted by those who covet consumer status markers. I am a member of that club. “Sub-zero” “BMW” umm and a bunch of other things. We are already bored with this list. I am bourgeois.

I would feel bad about this, except I could have turned out much worse. As a depressed, suicidal, promiscuous, self-hating and self-destructive adolescent alcoholic, the way I might have turned out is dead. That is my rationalization.

Plot point. At the age of 18, I entered an Ivy League university, met my future husband, and skulked into an AA meeting – all in the same week. I got sober, joined the privileged, married up. I stopped checking the ethnic boxes that got me scholarships and affirmative action, and started checking “white.” Wait...hold that last thought for another post.

Anyway, here I am. I am ordinary. I am not at all special, except in the way that all the world’s beings are singular and important. Blah, blah, blah. In this blog I am going to write about me. You can stop reading now or go start your own blog.

*fodder for many future posts, I am sure, but for now he’s just the man to whom I am married. And I will leave it at that.