Cynic Be Gone, by Rosicky Jones

I’m insatiably judgmental.  It may stem from the fact that I was judged from jump street at a young age as “a person in dire need of an ass whipping.”  It is definitely a defense mechanism –

“You don’t like me – well I never liked you!”

I have episodic cynicism that appears when you least expect it, but when I need it most.

The cynics were born out of a belief that society’s conventional desires were not pure. So they yearned to satiate desires that they felt were pure.  They were shameless, because virtue knows no embarrassment.

My cynicism is born of disappointment.

“You don’t want to hire me – well I never wanted to work here”

When my mind is right, I loathe cynics, because they are usually laying blame for their own failings at the feet of others.  But godammit, failing sucks, and it feels better to blame that guy than personal shortcomings.

Cynicism fuels self-fulfilling prophecy.

I began writing at a very young age.  I had a strange desire, a need, to read everything in front of me and I was really good at mimicking (which is what my writing was at that time) the methods of writers I liked.  I was creative, hyperactive, and had (still have) an imagination that would shame John Lennon.

I remember Mrs. Helm, my second grade teacher, contacting my parents because she thought something was wrong with me.  The assignment, which led her to question my sanity, required us to write a paragraph about our dinner.  Not much to ask of a second grader…

“I ated chycken with my mom my dad my brother and my dog.  It tastes good and I like chycken cause mom said they were genetically altered chyckens, an I will prolly get incredibley obese since chenicals and growing hormones propagate from chycken feed to chycken meat to my plate and finally in my body making me chubby and the target of other kid’s jokes leading to a devastated self-image forcing me to turn to alcohol to numb the pain which increases the lethargy and obesity and then in my forties as I sweat in winter and can’t recall what my penis looks like because I haven’t seen it in ten years I collapse in home depot as I search for a toilet with porcelain thick enough that even my fat ass can’t crack it and I finally die because my heart fails as my hands grip a reinforced steel toilet seat off the clearance rack.  I reely like chycken and then watched Rugrats and I took a stoopid bath.”

Mrs. Helm called the conference because my paragraph was wildly different from my classmates.  This event is imprinted on my mind because there was such a big deal made about something that I thought was normal.  I remember it so vividly because Mrs. Helm talked slower and treated me like fine china primed to shatter spontaneously.

Back in the day, parents would beat a kid violently when they wanted them to remember an event.  They would beat the kid on the day of the event so that the memory was set apart and they could recall it with greater clarity and accuracy when the time called for it.  You’ve got to love child psychologists and their special brand of bullshit.  Anyways, the verbal punishment (setting me apart from the class) left its mark on me.

My paragraph was about my spaghetti dinner, but I wrote it from the perspective of the noodles.  My teeth were the bars of a jail cell and each noodle that slipped off my fork was a noodle that extended its mortality that much longer.  I remember Mrs. Helm made a big deal about the fact that I said the sloshing noise the noodles made against my teeth was the sound of noodles crying.  Between you and me, I don’t think my writing has ever been as good as that stupid spaghetti paragraph.

My parents convinced her that I was normal and that my imagination was in overdrive.  I remember my mom and dad clowning Mrs. Helm on the ride home.  They were trying to make me feel normal.  But maybe that was the beginning of my weird style of rebellion.  Weird because I was not a troublemaker, I didn’t drink or do drugs until college, I was a model student – my rebellion manifested in my dealings with people who have positional power.  I thought I knew more than all my teachers.  I don’t work well with others.  I don’t take orders real well, to this day I may add, which is probably why I will either be promoted or fired within six months.

My method worked well in objective, hard sciences, but not well in writing classes when a teacher’s disposition, opinion, and biases come into play.  I shied away from writing classes in undergrad because I did not want some stupid ass teacher judging me when I thought I was so much better than him.  But I had to take a writing class for a general education requirement and my cynicism bred self-fulfilling prophecy.

So I didn’t try and earned a “B,” all the while proving my stupid and immature hypothesis.

Looking back, my actions were quintessentially insecure.  What if I tried hard and he told me my writing was shitty?  Not only could my ego not handle that but it couldn’t even handle the possibility of it.

During grad school my literary fire was reignited and I began writing maniacally again.  Upon graduation last December I had a series of interviews with this guy.  I was one of the final two candidates for a pretty swanky position.  I didn’t get the job – he told me that my academic successes couldn’t mask my lack of real world experience.  I lost it.

I drove home from the final interview nearly in tears as I convinced myself that that asshole was an idiot of the highest order.

I got home and sat at my computer.  I think I watched The Daily Show and then started working on this short story, The Racist Black Dildo, that I envisioned including in a book of essays.  And for some reason I had a sublime moment of introspection.  I didn’t get that stupid job because the guy was an asshole – I didn’t get it because I was not qualified.  I was not getting anywhere with my writing because I only brought it out in environments that were sterile and wouldn’t force me to confront reality.  I am either horrible and have been tricking myself like those contestants on American Idol who think they can sing and blame there expulsion on Simon and not on their lack of talent – OR – I am really good and wasting my talents which is just as bad.

So I pulled up www.FlipCollective.com, got Paul’s email, and wrote to him. I read Paul at the Flip and ESPN and not to sound like a sycophantic fan boy – but I love Paul’s writing.  I have a bit of Hunter Thompson in me since I swallowed some of his ash at the funeral and because, like him, I think that a lot of self-proclaimed writers suck.  But Paul’s is funny and smart and talented and I routinely forwarded his columns, even ones I disagreed with, to my BFF and best living writer Michael Vincent Gibson because they were worth sharing. I had no idea what to expect when writing to him; but I soldiered on and dejectedly typed up this email:

On Thu, Mar 4, 2010 at 2:09 PM, Jones, Rosicky < > wrote:

Hello – my name is Rosicky Jones.

I write.

Is it possible to become a contributor to your website.

I have loads of samples available.

I have been published in loads of meaningless places.

I have a book that is sitting in a literary agents desk somewhere waiting to be bought.

I will write for free.

I am a fan of your writing.

I think I could add a unique voice.

I have a weird name.

Ok, bye.

Rosicky

He responded and then I sent in some samples, that he dug, and within a month of my initial email, The Racist Black Dildo was live.  I was at the bar with my BFF and best living writer Michael Vincent Gibson when Paul’s email accepting me in the FlipCollective club showed up on my Blackberry.  I was ecstatic.  I actually stopped drinking and I sat around with the gayest smile of all time on my face.  Before I got this gig I was just a dude with an essay about a black dildo on his hard drive and now I was legit.

If Paul had ignored my email or politely informed me that writing for the site was not a reality then I would have probably called him an asshole and blamed him completely for my failure.  I probably would have tried getting someone else to accept my prose but my cynicism may have hardened so much that instead of writing an email presenting my skills, I would have skipped all that and simply wrote myself a rejection letter.

My cynicism was and still is a defense mechanism – but I realize how sad it is, I do.  Cynics believe that the society’s conventional desires are not pure, and that belief itself is not pure.  It dirties things so much that reality grows blurry.  My cynicism and instantaneous judgments of others doesn’t just prevent me from knowing them, but it prevents me from knowing me – which is sad, because I seem like a guy I would like.  The worst part about it is that it precludes you from growing, from improving yourself.  It embeds people in a place far removed from reality; it makes you way worse than the people you blame for your problems… it makes you the problem.

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