Flaunting Your Flaws
The Pleasure of Proclaiming Them
We have come to an age, my friends and I, where we are no longer attempting to improve ourselves but merely trying to stay the course, hoping to be as lively and engaged tomorrow as we are today. Our flaws, we may feel, are part of who we are, part of our individuality, our essential nature, our quiddity.
By now, our weaknesses are obvious to others and ourselves. We are fallible in predictable ways. What I find surprising is how happy we can be to revel in our failings and to flaunt our flaws.
What lies behind this strange display? Is it an odd appeal for love? This is me undisguised. Can you love me anyway?
I give you three examples.
A popular and gifted Substack writer of exactly my age occasionally writes that she has no friends and lacks the ability to keep friends. I wonder if it’s true. Perhaps many people consider her their friend but she wants something deeper and more intimate, something she had, perhaps, with a sister or a cousin. No friends? Is this a form of humblebragging, saying she has no need for female friends because she gets along so well with men? Or that her life is so full she doesn’t need friends? I can’t imagine life without my good friends, even when they enrage me!
As this inability keep a friend is a recurring theme in the essayist’s work, I wonder why she doesn’t look into herself and examine why she fails at friendship. What has she done, or not done to arrive at this state? Does she even try for friendship? Does she make the first move when she meets an interesting woman? What does she imagine friends do for each other? Wouldn’t she like the love and understanding and stimulation and support we get from our friends? The fun we have with them? We can get all these from our partner, of course, but it’s nice if more than one person provides them. But the essayist waves her friendlessness about like a flag. Maybe it’s a red flag.
Example number two. I have a dear friend with a talent for disorder. She will unpack her suitcase by strewing clothes and tech stuff across the entire room. When she writes, she accumulates many drafts and saves every one of them, causing great confusion later. She has trouble either initiating or finishing a task (though I note that she’s quite efficient at booking tickets for concerts and plays).
She blames this general confusion in which she lives on her ADD, which at first she self-diagnosed and then had various therapists confirm. She now takes medication for the condition, but what I find curious is that she never seems to try to compensate for it. She could write lists. She could keep a whiteboard. She could have the mindset: I’m not naturally good at being organized but by really trying I will get a little better, and the first thing I’ll do is download an app . . . or whatever. But no! Whenever she forgets to call back or leaves something behind, she proclaims, proudly, “That’s my ADD!”
Example number three. Another great friend is notoriously stingy. I empathize with frugality when one is short of money, but she’s enjoying a secure and prosperous old age. We met for lunch and she saw I’d gone shopping. “What did you buy?” I said I’d bought a pair of Lululemon running tights in a shade of pink I coveted (not, let us be clear, a designer dress). She asked, “How much did they make you pay?” When I told her, she almost fell off her chair, though she could easily buy a pair of tights each week without it affecting her finances.
She held up her hand for the waiter. I knew what was coming. “Could you bring me some lemon for my water?” This is always her request at a restaurant, though she never has lemon in her water at home. I wonder about this. Does the slice of lemon in her water make it seem like she’s having a drink and therefore she won’t want a cocktail? Or does she get a little thrill at getting something for nothing? She’s well aware of her stinginess, saying, “I’m so tight my ass creaks when I walk.” Images like that, and her general wit and fearlessness, glue me to her.
And what about my own flaws? Should I unfurl them here? Unlike my fellow Substacker, the one with no friends, I find I cannot. I need fiction to reveal and conceal my flaws. To know who I really am, and am not, you’ll have to enter the worlds I’ve invented. Try either of my last two novels: The Feud or Cybill Unbound. Competitiveness! Sexual abandon!
Meanwhile, you might want to consider your own favorite flaw and whether and why you parade it around!
I recently loaned The Feud and Cybill Unbound to my friend to read while she was in covid quarantine. Good reads to occupy her mind.
Always a pleasure, Cathy...see you soon...t and gang