January 12, 2004

Have you ever been referred to as sweet? You have? Mixed reactions followed the reference didn’t they? I mean, whether to be proud, or to be mortified depends largely on the context, the time of the utterance, indeed on the utterer.

If you were between the ages of one and five then it was fine. At that age, sweet is harmless. It is just an unimaginative compliment, a way of saying you are not as absolutely repulsive as other children.

If you are a teenager, male, and have just been informed of your sweetness by this chick you fancy, it is cause for worry. For where you find the words you are so sweet, the words I only like you as a friend are never far off. “You’re really sweet, but I think of you more like a younger brother,” she says, causing you to get very angry with yourself for not being a bit more... whatever the opposite of what you were was. Ironically, because of this juxtaposition being sweet makes you bitter.

Then you grow older and wiser. Like myself. You find that in this society of ours the general vocabulary doesn’t provide for the simple basic act of being a good man. Unable to grasp the concept that the absence of malice, spite and selfishness can be a concerted effort based on principle, preferring to believe that one is only nice because one daren’t be nasty, they call you sweet. The same adjective they use for four-year-old toddlers.

I have been "sweet" for ages, but before that there was what we could call the dark ages, a period of deep misanthropy, when I listened to a lot of gangsta rap, cussed a lot and walked with a slant, courtesy of the chip on my shoulder. Cynicism is fun. It gives you the opportunity to mock and scorn everybody and everything, and to use sarcasm, which a lot of people think is funny. So if you lack a sense of humour, you can get by with sarcasm. Unfortunately, you cannot go through life acting like you are too cool for everything. Because, the fact is you aren’t. You suck just as much as everything you purport to disdain. Anyone can go about being unimpressed by what they don’t understand. It doesn’t take much brains. It’s not even clever. Actually its quite stupid.





(I never finished it.)