I've only really hated-hated two people in my life. The first was Leah Schenone and I believe that the years 1998-2000 were spectacular for the simple reason that I had to be better at everything than Leah. She was going to a party? I'd throw a spectacular party on the same day. She was taking a history class? I'd win the university's history prize. She'd start smoking? I'd start yoga, just to rub it in. Namaste, bitch.
Leah Schenone was a perfect archnemesis and hating her made me a better person. When I found out her skateboard shop had failed, her husband had left her and she had been diagnosed with a rare bowel cancer I was genuinely disturbed. Well, I did gloat a bit at the first two - but bowel cancer at 24? That's not really how I want to win.
Since then I've had a dry spell on the archnemeses. Surrounded by a supportive community and wonderful friends I have found nobody against whom to strive, to measure myself against, to loathe. Until now.
Unhappily, and also happily, a disgusting bit of rotting porcine entrails in human form has recently infected my world with her existence. I will call her "Ebola" because that is, in fact, what I do call her.
Despite the fact that she lives a scant block away, she mostly keeps to the back-alleys and gutters so I rarely see her. This is great as it means I rarely lose my lunch at the mere sight of her but also deprives me of ways that I can be better than her.
I saw her on Saturday night, at the much-publicized Forgotten Cocktail Club, a speakeasy-style pop up which celebrates the lost art of prohibition-era mixology. She slunk in with her generic "Bro" boyfriend about two hours after we arrived, and I noted with glee that I was in fact better looking, thinner, much better dressed and was having a much better time with my 10 closest friends.
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| Having a much better time |
Greg earned my undying admiration when he proclaimed, "Really? She's the one? That's disappointing...I mean she'd be okay-looking if she wasn't carrying that extra 25 pounds of ugly."
It was the meanest, and most perfect, thing I've ever heard.
In the end, it drove me to have an even more fantastic time than I normally would have. As I glanced up periodically to see her spiteful little frog face staring out from dark corner of silence I felt even better about my pretty, witty friends and their handsome and funny husbands. We drank, we laughed, and we planned all of the fabulous things we would be doing in the coming weeks.
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| What did we have? The answer is YES! |
