Posted on July 11th, 2017 by Adam-Troy Castro
Originally published on Facebook 11 July 2016.
David Gerrold has a post up today about being fast and ruthless with a comeback, and not particularly looking for opportunities to show it.
Guys: the same is true of me.
I am not as fast or as consistent about this as him or Harlan, but I have been known to shut down the cornball insults of wiseasses so quickly that nothing was left but the shadow burned into the wall where they were standing. And if I get to release in prose? If you have been here any length of time you have seen the full force of my verbal wrath, directed against people who wanted to fling poo. It is not pretty.
Connected with this is the ability, intermittent but demonstrated on multiple occasions, to diagnose and in so doing shatter an opponent’s self-delusions in a sentence. I have said to people, “Back off, now, or I will unload the neutron bomb.” When they don’t I tell them the truth of their own lives. I sent one person fleeing in tears, and saw another dumbfounded, his rage obliterated in a moment of brutal self-reflection.
None of this is bragging. This is just the statement of a fact.
I can and have done this.
You know what, though?
It sucks, honestly sucks, when the necessity comes up.
Oh, the back-and-forth insult-comic shenanigans of two good friends zinging each other, that’s harmless, that’s bonding in another name. (My wife and I sometimes sound like we’re emotionally flaying one another, with smiles on our faces, each taking pleasure in the verbal wit of the other; she’s terrific at it and maintains that I’m an easy target.) But when it’s deadly serious? When I have to say something shitty to someone, online or in person? Good God, that ruins my whole goddamned day.
This is, I guess, the equivalent of being a guy who’s great at street brawling, who you take a swing at only at your great peril, but who would vociferously rather not have to lay you out.
Verbal self-defense is a powerful thing, and it sometimes takes the form of offense, but you know what?
Cleverness is not necessary for it.
I have a good friend, not stupid, who is nevertheless not verbally adroit, not a great swordswoman of the sentence, splendid in other ways, who complained that my penchant for friendly joshing, which she recognized as a manifestation of love, left her feeling inadequate not because of anything I said, but because she could never figure out what to say back. It was a real problem, because it put this barrier between us. We solved it by training her to snap back, “Oh, yeah? YOU’RE STILL BALD!” It’s a marvelous comeback, withering in that it dismisses anything I just said. She uses it with great pleasure, and I enjoy the great pleasure she takes in zinging me back. It’s really just a statement, “I matter too, I can take you apart, too; I’m formidable enough to make you harmless.” She can use the line five times in a lively conversation. And we are thus evenly matched.
Apply that lesson to a more serious situation. Some guy confronts you with non-stop, toilet-flavor abuse, calls you an asshole or a fag or whatever, all you really have to do is to look nauseated instead of pained and say, “You’re wasting my time.” Boom. I guarantee it will hit home. You didn’t utter a retort in the league of Winston Churchill or Dorothy Parker. You did let him know that his worst was like the harassment of flies. If you can’t come up with “the perfect thing to say,” say that. It works.
With all that said, though:
When it *must* be used as defense, any pleasure I take in successful defense is off-set by the knowledge that, ultimately, I have just been the victim of an energy theft.
I have seen Harlan, who’s as good at this as anyone, reducing some annoying guy to a quivering smear, and I must tell you something he might not be happy to hear that I’m sharing: afterwards, he’s left shaken, and sometimes even disgusted with himself. He is proud of being able to self-defend. But, depending on the seriousness of the incident, it does take something out of him. I’ve seen him tremble from it. I never personally disgusted him more than when I made the mistake of suggesting that he enjoyed it.
Rude people? Unpleasant people? Hateful people? Are still speed bumps, chipping away at your life momentum. They still required some of your energy, no matter how well you navigate them, even if your words leave them slack-jawed and wounded in your wake. So, yeah, like that martial-artist of the metaphor, trust me, I’d rather not.
Tags: Assholes, david gerrold, Harlan Ellison, Life Wisdom | Category Life Wisdom
