A few weeks back, I hurt the feelings of someone—shocking, I know—when I indicated, in the course of messaging, my serene satisfaction at the fact that another someone, one I loathed personally, was dead and likely not coming back. This fellow was appalled, ignoring or dismissing my specifically stated and, to my mind, clear and completely justified reasons for my loathing of the deceased.
He proceeded to tell me, in no uncertain terms, that although I had seemed nice at first, I was a bad person. I don’t recall, but he might have blocked me before I had the chance to do the same. It’s a win for me either way.
In this particular case, it’s clear that he took so profound an objection to my pleasure at still breathing while this other person was moldering in his grave simply because he just didn’t share my distaste for the dead fellow.
Fine. If this were just one instance of this sort of thing, I’d write it off to the unconditional love all too often embraced by fandom and move on.
But there seems to be an emerging cultural mindset that regards the above stated satisfaction I experience and occasionally express, alongside the pleasant occasional anticipation of the death of those I loathe, with pious and outraged objection, as a performatively moral pearl clutching add-on to what I have long regarded as the utterly ridiculous idea of never speaking ill of the dead…as if death is a forgiveness for all trespasses.
Sorry, but no.
Understand, I like a lot of people.
I love quite a few people.
I am profoundly indifferent to an even larger swathe of humanity.
And finally, I despise a specific and select few.
I don’t necessarily wish death on the majority of those I despise, but I will admit, I certainly do on some of that swathe. And in regard to those who don’t fit into this “I wish they would die, tasting their own blood” category, I can unequivocally state that should they predecease me, I will not mourn their passing in any crocodile teary phony baloney presentation of regret after the fact of their passing.
Furthermore, I would hope that this is reciprocal, but I also recognize the hypocrisy endemic in many of those I disdain, so they might very well see the potential of generating juicy brownie points by acting out the pantomime of sorrow, to demonstrate for the credulous that at least someone—them, of course—in this thing is a bigger person.
Fuck that.
I think we sacrifice a bit of our deep-seated primal natures when we deny ourselves the small pleasure at the passing of an enemy, the satisfaction of outliving that enemy, and the quiet delight of the concomitant schadenfreude from such an experience.
If then, the fact that, when I find myself in the company of someone I truly despise, I will often imagine I am at their memorial makes me a bad person in the eyes of those who can’t tell the difference between “nice” and “good,” I will just have to live with it.
As ever, I remain,
Howard Victor Chaykin…a Prince.