Hateful young urbanites

I am sitting on pauls bed listening to the strains of his upcoming mashup set through the wall, wondering: what is life is going to be like when the first flush of romance has withered and crawled into the same corner as he throws his dirty socks? Lots of things brought us together, my severe dislike for squinty eyed cricket players and his hatred of chilli notwithstanding. We have things in common: our seemingly endless capacity to watch (and re-enact) scenes from high fidelity, our love of swiss-rolling ourselves into a coverlet and sleeping the day away, our morbid fear of dogs. But I think that in the end what really keeps us together, the real glue, if you will, would be that we are hateful young urbanites.

Watching the movie Crumb last night while eating buttered popcorn and dissecting a certain friends lack of sex life, I was struck in mid-sentence by the term. Robert Crumb – he of the bowtie wearing stuck in the surreal underbelly of 1950s america (bless him) – used it to describe a young san fran couple eating in a coffee shop and I think that the moment the words left his lips paul and I knew exactly what he was talking about.

He was talking about us.

See, I think that some people may get the mistaken impression that we are nice. Nice, sweet, friendly, good hearted people.

Excuse me while I get up to use the last toothpaste to clean the coffee sweaters from my teeth.

Um. No.

We’re not nice. We’re not even particularly friendly. We are mean, mean, bitter people. We hate puppies and sunshine and rainbow alice bands. Children sense our coming dread, and indie kids shrink from us at parties. We hate the beach. THE BEACH, people. For gods sake, who hates the beach?

We do.

Maybe it has something to do with being outsiders, but we hate outsiders too (whiney annoying bunch of self-congratulatory pussies. I totally hate you, outsiders!) I always thought it had something to do with being an only child, but Paul has brothers and god only knows he’s not any more adjusted than I am.

Sitting here, the the laptop slowly irradiating my lady bits, working it’s warmth up to my cold, cement heart, a thought unfolds. Maybe we hate other people so much because we love each other so much. Perhaps we don’t hate them at all, but only think we do because our love is so grand, so strong, that everything else pales in comparison. Except the sun. which is still too goddamn bright for me to be out in.

Or maybe we are just angry bitter people.

But if we are, then at least we found each other, right?