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Manhating Narcissist

June 11, 2012 by 781 Comments

My interview outfit. Also, the face of evil. Manhating evil.

It’s hard being an evil manhating narcissist. But someone has to do it.

You may have noticed something going on here at LyzLenz.com. I’ve been taking things up a notch.  Ads. Sponsored posts. Links on sites like AOL. It’s like I I’m all too good for my WordPress britches. Like I don’t know where I belong (Answer: in the internet kitchen).

But I want to explain something. I love to write. Like so many people, it’s what I want to do. And I want to be good at it. Make it my life. Weave it into the fabric of my existence, along with chicken nuggets, my chubby baby and my spreadsheet-loving husband.  And sometimes in order to be the person you want to be, you have to step out there. Send emails that say, “Dear You, I am awesome. Love me! Affectionately, Lyz.”

Emails like that aren’t what good girls do. Good girls are polite. They blog quietly in their corners until someone says, “Hey you, you’re decent enough, come here!”

And then you curtsy and come forward.

But I’ve never been that good at being good. I mean, I once skipped out on work to play tennis. I got reprimanded at church camp for arguing for animal rights.  I’VE SEEN THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES!

You get the point.

Lately, I’ve been sending emails like that. “Hey, I’m Lyz, let’s work together. PS Love me.” And as a result, I got interviewed on a local AM radio station. My only other radio experience was in high school, when I went on a Christian radio station to explain how to stay strong in your faith in that godless hell of “public school.” I broke the headphones and when they finally got me on the air, all I could say was, “I don’t know. It doesn’t seem that hard.”

They ended my segment pretty fast.

With that experience under my belt, last Thursday, I strapped on an outfit with pants (something the internet suggested over here) and mosied on over to talk about my No Pants 2012 challenge on the local radio station.

You guys, it’s AM radio in the heart of Iowa. I wasn’t really expecting the hard-hitting questions.  Be ye not so foolish.

During the commercial before my segment, while the radio host and I chatted, he asked where I had gone to college. I told him. “Oh, you are pretentious, aren’t you?”

I blinked. I blinked so hard it was audible.

“Um, sure, ha, ha.” I laughed. It was a joke, right?

“You went to grad school too? Where?” He asked. I told him.

“Isn’t that a school full of lesbians?”

“Um…maybe. I didn’t notice.”

And that is when the interview began. It got so much worse from there. My favorite part was when he asked me if I was doing this for the money. Which, if you mean, money savings, then yes. But if you mean am I giving up buying clothes and writing on a blog so I can get rich? I’d have a better shot at panning for gold. In my alley.

You can listen if you like. I don’t recommend it.

And at the end, he shook my hand and was all, “Can I have your number? I’d love to have you on again!” You guys, the internet isn’t weird. Radio is. Radio is like blogging but with way more sound effects.

I went home that night and had some margaritas on my friend’s porch and we decided that lesbian college sounds really awesome and I probably should have gotten a scholarship based on my shoes.

I’m ashamed to admit this. But the whole thing rattled me just a little. Why am I doing this? Am I really a narcissist? Was everyone in grad school really a lesbian? But as I sat on the porch eating my weight in homemade hummus, I realized, I wouldn’t be friends with this lovely lady, K, and her gorgeous porch if it weren’t for the internet. I met K through a cooking club, which I was invited to because another lady met me at a coffee shop and started reading my blog and decided I was alright.  And because of K, I’m in an archery league and I can successfully shoot things with a recurve bow, which justifies everything.

K told me about her own internet friends and how they helped her when her son was little. “Being a mom is so isolating sometimes,” she said. “You can’t just call people at 2am and say, ‘I’m going crazy!’ But you can tell the internet.” And isn’t that why we are here? Because we want to listen and we want to be heard. We want to scream, “I’m a crazy person!” And have someone answer, “Me too!”

It’s not new. We do it all the time. In life and online, we’re all in one never ending quest to scratch our “I was here” graffiti on each other’s hearts. I have a hard time being angry at the people in the store who want to touch my kid or ask really personal questions, because I get it. In that moment, they want to bump up against life. To come away with a  connection, no matter how small or temorary. And I don’t think that’s sad. I think it’s beautiful. It’s the same reason we blog. Every little post is a reaching out. Thousands of tiny outstretched hands saying, “I don’t want to do this by myself.”

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Filed Under: No Pants 2012, We Aren't Normal