Last night I was thinking about how much my old life centred around being an arsehole. It was targeted. I wasn’t an arsehole to everyone. I was selective. I worked with a bloke an age ago and this example isn’t meant to target him because it is just one story. He was a bit miserable and I was somewhat the same. When wealthy people came to our work he would try and buddy up with them and impress them. He lived in a wealthy area in a cheaper apartment.

We both were miserable and we kind of tried to take each other down a peg or two. He was quick witted and I was sneaky. I think me and some of my exes were into being arseholes mainly because it was entertaining. In a way my work day was a kind of entertaining competition that nobody enjoyed but it burnt through the general boredom of work. There were little cliques, rumours and a bit of slander.

The times when I was a terror to some unsuspecting neighbour one of my exes would love the sheer audacity. Admittedly I had so many unresolved issues for an age and I was talking to someone today in a brief way about being an arsehole and they said that it is a coping mechanism. I agreed and can see that those times when I took it upon myself to have these petty qualms I was just trying to cope with my own inadequacies.

This though is actually the norm. We go to movies to watch people being arseholes, we switch on the TV or streaming service to watch A grade acting arseholes do their thing. It is entertaining and that is just how people cope with life. A while back I had an old mate who would try and hijack my head space with some hair brained idea and I would push back and be difficult and on one of those occasions he called me an arsehole.

I suppose I am soft spoken, I try to think through what I say to people if they ask me something but I will push back if it suits me. After a decade of recovery from the underlying issue holding me back, aka my main inadequacy I for some reason became content. After more work some time later I hit other highs. I actually cut right back on being an arsehole. I kind of had no reason to. I had suffered a major trauma and actually came back stronger from it.

Admittedly I am not perfect and I can still be an arsehole but I was like a pack a day arsehole and now it might be once in a blue moon. In all of that I think of a friend who had a woman who was into him. He is a nice guy and quite constructive but he was trying to take things slow. Inadvertently he kind of lost her interest and she jumped straight onto the loins of a major arsehole. As you can imagine it started off fun but went down hill fast.

Then when my friend admitted his mistake and said he was trying to take it slow she was just constantly hot and cold. He can’t make any sense of it and she is basically acting strangely and erratically. I suppose it shows that arseholes are attractive and entertaining and the constructive guy is now a major bore and not worth the effort. Admittedly her liaison with the arsehole was pretty traumatic and she is probably trying to make sense of that. I am convinced though that being an arsehole is a winning strategy. That’s why I am happy to lose.